We're aware that some users are experiencing technical issues which the team are working to resolve. See the Community Noticeboard for more info. Thank you for your patience.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!

Google Apps for Business

Options
anyone use it? I am looking for a cheap and effective tool to be able to send and receive email professionally, rather than having an @googlemail address which simply looks unprofessional, this allows me to be able to run an office package without the expense of having to buy microsoft office... this would help as I am just starting out so would be needing calendar, email, documents etc

I appreciate calendars can be done free, but not sure about an email package, allowing me to send receive email under my websites name,

At $50/year/user (which would be just one user fot the time being) it seems pretty reasonable, and am sure when I am contacting companies for new business, they'd much rather recive a myname@mybusiness email...

Thanks for your help
£4988 Lloyds TSB Mastercard
£400 O/D Lloyds TSB
£2650 Lloyds TSB Loan
£5070 Black Horse Finance

Skint, but I have a plan.... an MSE Plan!!!

Comments

  • It all really depends on whether you are going to have a website for your business, as if you are then quite a few webhosts offer a handful of email accounts in with that so that would be the email sorted, and they would all be you@yourdomain.co.uk addresses
  • marksaver
    marksaver Posts: 45 Forumite
    edited 1 January 2010 at 12:03AM
    Hiding away on the Google Apps for Your Domain website is a link to the Standard Edition:

    www DOT google DOT com SLASH apps SLASH intl SLASH en SLASH group SLASH index.html

    (Sorry, new user so can't post links)

    Don't be scared by the lack of ticks in the chart, it still gives you access to the @yourdomain.com feature, basic website design e.t.c., you just don't get access to the 'Advanced' features or the business class SLA, which as a small concern you simply don't need.

    As such, you'll just need to buy a domain name, which Google sell for $10 per year, or you can buy elsewhere if you want a .co.uk
    Hope that helps,

    Mark

    Full Disclosure If this is a mobile phone related post, I'd like to disclose that I currently work for Three retail but any posts I make are my own, and not endorsed by the company in any way. I use this forum in a private capacity.
  • paulwf
    paulwf Posts: 3,269 Forumite
    I haven't had any experience with Google Apps but please make sure your domain name doesn't get tied to them. Generally you can buy a domain name anywhere then buy a server account anywhere and point the domain name at that...allowing you to change providers at any time. Remember how many businesses got caught out by having AOL addresses then got tied into them as ISP?

    Personally I would look at getting a server account (I pay £40 a year) so that you can have unlimited email addresses, it is always handy to have a few "disposable" accounts to keep spam down etc.

    BTW OpenOffice.org provides a completely free desktop office suite. I've used it for years and it does most things a small businesses needs unless you have any niche requirements.
  • Paws
    Paws Posts: 306 Forumite
    edited 30 December 2009 at 4:53PM
    marksaver wrote: »
    Hiding away on the Google Apps for Your Domain website is a link to the Standard Edition:

    www DOT google DOT com SLASH apps SLASH intl SLASH group SLASH index.html

    (Sorry, new user so can't post links)

    Don't be scared by the lack of ticks in the chart, it still gives you access to the @yourdomain.com feature, basic website design e.t.c., you just don't get access to the 'Advanced' features or the business class SLA, which as a small concern you simply don't need.

    As such, you'll just need to buy a domain name, which Google sell for $10 per year, or you can buy elsewhere if you want a .co.uk

    :T great post
    £2014 in £2014 challenge
    £2 collectors club
  • Savvy_Sue
    Savvy_Sue Posts: 47,308 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Don't ask me exactly how we do it, because I don't have my work brain engaged at the moment, but we use googlemail at work but our email addresses are firstname@companyname.org.uk - we do the same at home as DH has a website.

    One advantage of the business bit would, I think, be that you can update everyone's address book at once if there are a lot of addresses you hold in common. If there's a way of updating someone else's google address book without going down that route I'd love to know what it is.
    Signature removed for peace of mind
  • Savvy_Sue wrote: »
    One advantage of the business bit would, I think, be that you can update everyone's address book at once if there are a lot of addresses you hold in common.

    That's part of the free package I mentioned above, there's no need to get the business plan for that.
    Hope that helps,

    Mark

    Full Disclosure If this is a mobile phone related post, I'd like to disclose that I currently work for Three retail but any posts I make are my own, and not endorsed by the company in any way. I use this forum in a private capacity.
  • (guess who is babysitting while the wife works... hence the 1am New Years Day post!)

    My business uses google apps. I have my domain registered with someone else (who also host my website) but have everything else (google docs, mail and calendar) through google apps.

    I find the mail rock solid. It is easy to administer. I know that if disaster struck everything is backed up 'in the cloud'. It syncs with my local machine via google gears in case the internet goes down, and finding old mail somewhere in my account is made simple by the full power of google search locally.

    It was also very easy to customise the mail log-on screen to have my company logo. All of this cost me nada, zip, nowt. (Haven't upgraded to premium).

    The calandar functionality is superb and syncs with my mobile phone (with a third party app). The few google apps functions I do use (to be honest just a shared spreadsheet for expenses) work ace.

    Recomend without any hesitation whatever. The right price: Free.... ( and yes, you can transfer your personal email for free)
  • Oh yes, the other thing that was cool was the ability to upload you old outlook mail to your new account - handy for that search power when you are in a dispute with someone you had email correspondance with five years ago as I just found out! Obviously there is a leap of faith that you trust them with your data...
  • marksaver wrote: »
    Hiding away on the Google Apps for Your Domain website is a link to the Standard Edition:

    www DOT google DOT com SLASH apps SLASH intl SLASH en SLASH group SLASH index.html

    (Sorry, new user so can't post links)

    Don't be scared by the lack of ticks in the chart, it still gives you access to the @yourdomain.com feature, basic website design e.t.c., you just don't get access to the 'Advanced' features or the business class SLA, which as a small concern you simply don't need.

    As such, you'll just need to buy a domain name, which Google sell for $10 per year, or you can buy elsewhere if you want a .co.uk

    yeah
    that is a good idea, one domain name is enough ,you must not have a webhosting.
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 350.9K Banking & Borrowing
  • 253.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 453.5K Spending & Discounts
  • 243.9K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 598.7K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 176.9K Life & Family
  • 257.1K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.6K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.