How We Use Google Apps: Gmail

Finding a good fit with your business email provider is crucial, especially for a tech company. Our needs are simple; we just need to be able to receive and send email at all times. Sure, when you’re 35,000 feet in the air that’s a little impossible - but even that is changing as airlines are starting to add wifi to some flights.  Talk about cloud computing.

We’ve been on Google Apps Premier Edition for almost a year and a half now. The world knows about the few times we’ve had outages, as whenever Gmail goes down there’s a hue and a cry. Aside from those brief episodes (and we weren’t affected by all of them), Google Apps has been fabulous. And their downtime compared to previous solutions we’ve tried is a rounding error.

We can get mail at work, at home, and on our cell phones (FYI - those new Androids we scored at Google I/O last month have the tightest integration yet!). We use the web client, which means no additional software to purchase and support. And the client is stellar: loads fast, threaded conversation view, integrated Chat, and labels are all great features. And the search functionality can’t be beat. Don't believe me? The video below details the Gmail features in Google Apps.

I am a list moderator for DC Web Women, and Google Apps makes makes my job easy and fast. A filter slaps a “DCWW” label on all incoming list mail and automatically archives it for me. When I send out a message, it’s easy to make sure it sends from my “listmom@” address. The threaded conversations keep topics organized, and I can star messages/topics that I want to track. Plus, 26 Gigs of storage and the ability to search helps back me up if I need to track the history of an issue or list member. Listmomming would be overwhelming if I wasn’t using Google Apps.

Google Apps makes business communication easy, and the price point makes it a great equalizer. At $50/account/year, there is no barrier to a small business using the same quality product as a company as large as, say, Google. Contact us if you need help setting up your Google Apps Premier Edition today.