Don’t Pay For Email: Google Apps, A Beginner’s Guide

By Craig Agranoff  August 7th, 2008

One of the first things I ask a company when they come to me for consulting is, who handles your email?  Approximately 7 out of 10 say GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, or one of the other domain registries.  This baffles me, time and time again.  It’s astonishing  that a company/corporation would settle for some type of web based email, let alone one that they have to pay for!

A little unknown service offered by Google, is called Google Apps.  In Google Apps there is an email program, that allows you to use your company URL but receive emails through gmail.  I use it for every single one of my websites currently.  Setting up the app to work with your company URL is simple and should take you less then 5 minutes to complete. With a simple change of the MX information you are almost done. Although there is a verification process, to validate that the URL is, in fact yours, you usually can have the email up and running within the hour.

Since there are too many amazing features to highlight during this article, I will only focus on a few of them.  Google Apps lets you set up to 100 different email accounts for free.  Each one of these email in-boxes contains 25GB of storage.  Creating a new email name for a friend or employee is a breeze, and is done by entering their Name and Email address.

Included in the app are the regular features of Gmail, such as archiving, and spam protection.  To access your new Gmail app email account, you would go to a link similar to this http://mail.google.com/a/yoursitename.com. If you do not like this way you can also set it up to be http://mail.yoursitename.com.  This is totally up to your preference.  Once again, did I mention this is free?!

After recommending this service to every single one of my clients, it is safe to say not one will ever go back to using regular web based paid for email services.  If you have any questions regarding this, I would be happy to help you set it up.  Just leave me a comment.

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    • v
    Um, in what way is this news? Any startup worth its salt has been using Google Apps for at least two years. It's great, and obviously the only real solution. The real question is who's going to one up Google Apps?
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    Joe, you would be utterly shocked how many startups have no idea about Google Apps. This is what prompted me to write the article. People who use the web everyday usually are aware of these type of services, but we are probably 1% of the actual people out there.
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    I have people asking me to set them up all the time. I explain to them how easy it is, i set mine up i got the premium edition $50 bucks but i am not certain that you get 25GB for each email acct ? with the free edition ? but i think i will have to start charging them to set them up ? what do u think ? cuz people are always asking me about that ? o
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    • v
    well it's a good post craig,
    but i would not suggest Goggle Apps ( mail solutions etc.. ) , for you business purpose and the reason is quite obvious , google reads all of the mails for it's stupid adsense , which i personally feel , a big question mark to your privacy and security and Google profiles each user based on there interest and stuff and target with the ads which makes sense to them and probably make them click , profiling at this extent literaly means google pimps al my activities , which i don't like.
    The suggestion is for personal use : gmail is fine but for business needs google Apps is not a good decision.

    Guys i'm sorry if i made my point hard , but this is how google works and it's not like i hate google procducts, i love them , but privacy sometimes restict me to use google.
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    vinod, you happen to not know every thing about Google Apps as you can have control over your account with regard to ads. Do a little research before commenting. Although most people do allow Google to read email for targeted display of ads it is optional in google apps as a service and for all other gmail users too with "CustomizeGooge".
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    I wouldn't suggest Google Apps as the single-source solution for businesses of any size. Primarily, the customer service is very poor. An attempt is made to direct users to the web for answers to their questions, putting the burden on the customer rather than company. It is difficult to acquire help from a live person, and without knowing the exact terminolgoy and where to find answers to your questions, very hard to get help online. You pay for some minimal features, but nothing you can't get from Outlook, and without the benefit of a representative dedicated to delivering the product you purchased.
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