Of all the technologies that run your business, chances are good that none impact your company as much as good ol’ e-mail. While larger organizations have the hardware, infrastructure, and human capital to manage e-mail in-house, small businesses with tiny to non-existent IT departments don’t have that luxury. Here’s how to get big-business e-mail efficiency on a small-business budget.
For businesses with 25 to 150 users or more, hosting your own mail server just isn’t worth the effort and expense involved, and can actually lead to more downtime than going with an outside service. While it can tempting for very small companies to simply rely on free e-mail services like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail, there’s something about having your own domain name that makes your business look more legitimate. Using a free e-mail account is a dead giveaway that your organization runs on a shoestring. Fortunately, both Google and Microsoft offer affordable and robust hosted e-mail solutions.
Recently, Google had a huge lead as the most cost effective hosted solution, but Microsoft recently slashed its prices in half to give the Google some real competition. Still, Microsoft Exchange Online at $120 per user per year is more than Google Apps Premiere Edition (GAPE) at $50. Both Google and Microsoft offer 25GB of storage with their accounts.
A huge factor for choosing hosted Exchange over Gmail was to use Outlook. Of course, Outlook supports Google Apps by way of IMAP, but since it’s a mail-only protocol, you won’t be able to share your calendar with coworkers without connecting to the Web. This is a make-or-break feature for lots of people. But Now with Google Apps Sync for Outlook that’s not true. With Apps Sync all your contacts and calendar will sync automatically
Google Apps Premiere Edition also has many strong advantages. If you’re a Gmail user, you already know how useful labels can be, and you won’t find them in Outlook. Google also has the advantage of being browser agnostic, you’ll get the same experience regardless of whether you prefer Firefox, IE, or Chrome. Until Exchange Online migrates to Exchange 2010 (still not launched), you’re limited to Outlook Web Access Light when using browsers other than Internet Explorer.
If you’re already a Google Docs user, you’ll enjoy having a single sign-on for e-mail, Google Docs, and other Google services. Of course Microsoft also offers a plethora of additional online features such as SharePoint, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Live, but you’ll need to upgrade to Business Productivity Online at $120 per user per year to use them.
Both Google Apps Premiere Edition and Exchange Online can synchronize with your organization’s Active Directory domain controllers. This reduces the number of passwords your users have to remember and enables a single sign-on experience.
Google Apps Premiere Edition gives small & medium businesses the best bang for the buck, by a narrow margin. Which guarantee of 99.9 percent up-time is no beat.
To Know more about Single Sign On for Google Apps contact Google Apps Reseller