Why do I need Gmail?

In the next description of the ”17 Must Have Cloud Applications“,  let’s look at GMail.  In case you don’t know, Gmail is Google’s mail product.  They offer it for standard personal use at mail.google.com and also for business use through Google Apps.

Why do I need it?

As a small business, it is very important to have email that comes from your custom domain (joe@joescompany.com) instead of a yahoo.com or even gmail.com address.  It lends credibility to your business venture.  In the past, it could cost companies quite a bit of money to support this.  They would have their own mail server or else have to pay significant amounts of money to support it.

Google Apps has removed this heavy expense.  The starter package on Google Apps is free.  It provides you with mail for your custom domain in addition to many other applications.  GMail supports your email services for all of your business users.  It will provide you with a pretty advanced email package.  Also, it has one of the most advanced spam filters built in.  On top of that it provides all of your people with web based email that can be accessed from anywhere and can even be easily accessed from mobile devices.

What should I do with it?

Sign up for Google Apps Gmail and provide accounts to each of your users.  It’s quite simple to use and for basic small businesses there is no cost.  Once you get a little bigger or want more features, the prices are still pretty nominal at $50/user/year.

How does it help me?

It provides you with a robust email solution that is web and mobile enabled.  You will have a custom address for your business and it can all be controlled from one place.

Summary

The benefits of GMail for a business and it’s cost (or lack of) make it a pretty great option for many small businesses.  It’s a very robust platform and gives businesses a serious options for hosting their email accounts.  On top of that making it easy for small businesses to provide web and mobile based email to their employees can be a huge benefit.

Next up we’ll talk about another Google App solution – Google Docs.