[Closed] Email system for small business, please?

Google mail (the paid for service).

Google for Business. $50 per user p.a.
no ads, gmail, google drive & docs, calendar etc etc.

I run 2x companies in Google world. Its just so easy to use, transparent and platform independent.

They tried gmail, but it didn't fit their requirements - as all staff work remotely, rather than in a centralised office. Cheers tho, 5thElefant & Stoner. I'll put it to the team to have another look tho.

What difference does that make? It's an online service.

Office 365 any better for you?

I don't understand why google apps wouldn't work.....I'd say that situation is exactly where it would work? And anywhere else for that matter. Every platform at any location pretty much

as all staff work remotely, rather than in a centralised office.

thats exactly where it works best. Im currently on a video call with my collegaue 150miles away, while we work on a file together etc

@cougar - errr, good question, actually. I'm not sure, but will find out.

Stoner - sounds great - but does it allow the team to see each others emails and then file them into individual inboxes?

stoner - is it possible to harmonise your personal google account (gmail, drive etc) with the business account ? Or do you have to log on to each one individually to access content ?

Office 365 for business with hosted exchange server.

They tried gmail, but it didn't fit their requirements - as all staff work remotely, rather than in a centralised office.

Seems an odd way of working TBH. I'd be looking at what they're trying to achieve to see if there's a better way of doing it.

for instance; here we have 'team' mailboxes where inbound mail goes to a shared account. Each team member opens their personal mailbox and the shared mailbox (you can open multiple accounts simultaneously in Outlook). When they reply, they can do it as themselves or as the shared account persona.

In other words, it's already centrally stored and they take out what they need, rather than your way which is arse about face and reliant on people putting things into it (which IMHO is almost certainly going to be unreliable because People).

There may well be a compelling reason why they want to work like that (NB: "we've always done it like that" is not a good reason to do anything), but I'd certainly be asking a question before going down a road that's going to cause murders when those five people are now 50.

atp - yes, will detail ina bit. busy.

Thanks for taking the time Cougar, I hear you - I'll pass this along. ;o)

We've gmail at work (20 folk spread over 4 locations), works well although I'm missing certain Exchange functionality - ie we use gSyncit for the calendars, but it just doesn't work as well.

I'm lucky though, been surrounded by Techies so I don't have to worry about how stuff works, I just ask for it TOO work 🙂

It could be though that they've no one 'technical' enough to work out the requirements and implement them?

Hm. I use gSyncit also, it works really well I found.

It could be though that they've no one 'technical' enough to work out the requirements and implement them?

That's the thing. And they'll perhaps not want to pay someone to do it, but a short-term hit is probably going to pay long-term dividends. Ie, it'll cost them considerably more in man-hours over the years if they're constantly battling with a system that isn't fit for purpose.

Gmail fine with 5 of us working across a continent here. The shared inbox thing is it for support etc? We have a couple of these sales@ support@ and team@ all go to everyone or specific people then forward on.

Several Google Apps for CRM type stuff that means you can view all emails by client and company/project/account

Stoner - sounds great - but does it allow the team to see each others emails and then file them into individual inboxes?

As others have said you can also use groups (e.g. info@...) to share messages between lots of people.

I've not tried but if you make the group your delegate then presumably everyone in the group can access your mail. As a general rule I would think that is bad practice, but might be useful if someone is on holiday.

In terms of filing everything in one place - it actually sounds like they might be looking for some sort of CRM. Many are available with gmail integration.

them into individual inboxes?

how quaint 😉

what do they [i]really[/i] mean?

Google groups allow collaborative inboxes
https://support.google.com/a/answer/167430

You can also use Mail Delegation instead
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/138350?hl=en-GB

filtering rules applies labels automatically to email so that they get classified together - a bit like making folders, but less restricting.

ATP

I have my own company account and also a second company account.

You can have multiple sign-ons in chrome running simultaneously if you want (so for example I will have two tabs open in Drive - one for MyCo, one for OtherCo), I dont have to sign in each time.*

I also have mail that arrives at OtherCoMailbox, automatically forwarded to MyCo so I only need to have one inbox open if I want to. These emails are automatically labelled so I can identify them easily. I can reply or compose emails in MyCo inbox from OtherCo email address too so I dont need to switch about.

the only time I need to open OtherCo mail box is if I want to do one-click saving of attachments to OtherCo Gdrive - if you do it in a mail box, regardless of to which address it was sent, it will go to the Gdrive associated with the mail account. I can however, always download an attachment and then drag it into the open OtherCo Gdrive tab without having to go to OtherCo mailbox. It takes 3 or 4 seconds longer. But time is money Rodney! 🙂

For details go to cogwheel settings in Mail:
Accounts > Send mail as (to create email origin address authorisations - PS you can also apply "from" specific signatures - so my OtherCo sig is appended to all mails I compose from OtherCo address while composing emails even if doing so in MyCo mailbox.)

Also Accounts > Grant access to your account

It all sounds a bit complex, but in reality it is so simple and seamless I dont have to think about it.

* something to bear in mind on chromebooks is that while I can have open/signed in Gdrive Tabs for multiple accounts, only the account for which I am currently signed into the chromebook OS for will sync offline Gdrive stuff.

If I need to have a sync'd local copy of something on OtherCo (v rare) before I leave the house, I just log into OtherCo on my chromebook for 10 minutes to let it sync to the local SSD any recently opened files.

Office 365 for Business Essentials gives you Office 365 Exchange (cloud version of Exchange, so everyone can use it remotely), 1TB OneDrive storage and Skype for Business. £3.10 per user per month.

Or depending on your budget, try Office 365 Business Premium. £7.80 per user per month, but gets you the whole Office suite as well (including online versions).

https://products.office.com/en-gb/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans

Office 365 or Google Apps. Used both and both should do the job.

It really does sound like they need someone to show them some pictures of arses and elbows and explain the difference 🙂

I've recommended these before to a small company who didn't have any real technical skills in house. Price wasn't ridiculously high and the tech support from Eclipse\KCOM at the time was very good - it was a few year ago now.

http://business.kcom.com/products/cloud/hosted-exchange/

Our Exchange server went down about 6 years ago and (to get us through the emergency) we switched to gmail temporarily.

6 years later and we never went back to Outlook. Gmail all the way.

Cheers stoner!

Google Mail for Business all the way - I mean, why wouldn’t you?

In my previous job, I was a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, looking after European-wide Exchange systems. Now I’ve set up my own business? I just use Google - it’s less hassle and lets me get on with doing proper work…

Rachel

Out of interest, do you gain any privacy from Google when you get a paid for account? Do they still get full access to your data?

And secondly, are there ways to back everything up, away from google. If my business used it, I want a robust google going bust disaster plan.

Google is perfect for what you want. We run a 300 person business on it and it's brilliant. Takes a bit of adapting if you're still in an outlook frame of mind but it's easy and all the widgets and plugs ins are super useful too. For me it would be the obvious choice.

Privacy addressed here
https://support.google.com/a/answer/60762?hl=en

365 all the way.

https://apps.google.co.uk/intx/en_uk/learn-more/how_google_protects_your_data.html

[i]6 years later and we never went back to Outlook. Gmail all the way. [/i]

Eh? I use Outlook with Gmail, can't stand the functionality of the standard Gmail client - or did you mean you never went back to 'Exchange'?

For those of you using the likes of gmail for hosting, do you have any requirements from clients regarding where their confidential information is stored?

This seems to be a stumbling block for my employer, but I can't help but think that companies other than us also keep confidential client data

There are some outlines of the google privacy stuff above.

[I]For those of you using the likes of gmail for hosting, do you have any requirements from clients regarding where their confidential information is stored? [/I]

Do you mean where in the world, or are there more exacting requirements around data security?

Prefer O365 myself but Google just as good.

O365 (I am sure Google does this) allows the creation of "sites" (Sharepoint) for collaboration as well as Onedrive and installed and cloud apps.
It couldn't be easier to set up.

bamboo - Member

For those of you using the likes of gmail for hosting, do you have any requirements from clients regarding where their confidential information is stored?

This seems to be a stumbling block for my employer, but I can't help but think that companies other than us also keep confidential client data

We've bumped into the same problem a few times, basically a requirement that the data is always held within the EU, I know 365 does as does AWS (although it's not an email platform).

I know Gmail has it's fans, but we've had a bloody nightmare with Google Mail in the past, but 365 is a breeze once you get past migrating the data to it, which isn't hard, just slow.

Setup the trial business apps account up.

Lovely! Nice and simple and I've got multiple logins sorted in Chrome.

Cheers Stoner 🙂

One note to all the Google links above, many of them are quoting out of date safe-harbour and the like information. You may want to check if there are revised versions available now that safe-harbour is dead.