Attention! From 2012 December, Google Apps for new customers are only available at 50 USD/user/year.
Once you have your own website, it is time to think about e-mail system. Many people are using a variety of free services offered by such Yahoo! Gmail, Hotmail etc. All these systems are more or less similar and do their job. But those systems are united by the fact that the e-mail system is perfectly suitable for personal use, but a person representing the company does not seem a representative having free email with suffix This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. If the company has its own website with domain name, it is expected that representatives of the company will have e-mail like This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. There are many professional and expensive systems for the company to penetrate the Internet.
Probably everyone knows Google's e-mail system - Gmail. There are dozens of technical advantages that Gmail has in comparison with other systems, but we will not review them here. One of the aspects that consumers likes the most in Gmail is that there is no annoying advertisements. Google do not use advertisements made from images or flash banners, there is no sparkling, blinking and annoying advertisements. Such advertisements uses a lot of web traffic, so page load time can increase significantly. Google uses text ads, which are quite Inobtrusive and not annoying. Also, text ads loads very fast.
Google also offers very useful service - Google Applications. There is paid and free versions of Google Apps. What you will find in free Google Apps:
- E-mail. Your own e-mail system with the domain suffix. Actually you will use Gmail, only difference is domain suffix (not @gmail.com, but @yourdomain.com). This e-mail system is protected from spam bot as well as regular Gmail emails (Gmail is quite famous of its very good spam protection). Unfortunately, free of charge you can get only one email;
- Virtual calendar. It is very convenient for a variety of labeled events. Share your events with other personnel which uses Google Apps;
- Google Docs allows you to share files with other employees of the company. All files is placed on Google servers, so you will be able to access your data from anywhere;
- There are more options, such as Google Talk;
All these services are connected and integrated into Google Apps.
Google Apps is perfect solution for small or medium business. I recommend it to all my customers. However, you are always free to choose email system you desire.