Google's Gmail free email service
from Paul L.G. Morris: an experienced, respected and qualified Computer Advisor.
Some thoughts on using Gmail for your business
Gmail is is a free service from Google which provides an alternative to Hotmail, Yahoo! and other free email services such as those provided by their ISP (Internet Service Provider). It provides a number of options that can be of use to small businesses that are not always offered by other free services. It works from a Google account from where you can manage other Google services from the same login.
Features that may be of interest to you include:
You can set up other email 'personalities' enabling you to send emails that appear to have been sent from your other email addresses. This is especially useful if you forward those other email accounts to Gmail. You select one 'personality' as the default but can easily change it. You can set it up so that when you reply, your reply is from the 'personality' that received the email. This means that if you have your business mail forwarded to from the 'website address' to Gmail, you can reply to it from Gmail with it coming from that business address.
Emails sent and received using the PC email client are still visible when Gmail is accessed from a browser. The Google help provides simple step-by-step instructions on how to do set up an email client with Gmail.
Full details can be seen at Google Gmail Help.
Features that may be of interest to you include:
- It is accessible from any reasonably modern browser, so you can access your email from wherever you have internet access.
- There is a lot of storage: 2,500+ megabytes
- Google provides some level of spam protection
- Messages can be sent and read in most common languages - useful for those who trade in languages other than English
- It is accessible from a mobile phone - assuming you have a phone and contract capable of internet access
- Google do some virus scanning
- You can customized 'From:' addresses on your outgoing messages to display another of your addresses instead the Gmail address (see below)
- You can forward all your Gmail to another account. For example, you can copy them to your ISP email account for downloading
- There is a 'vacation responder' for when you will not be able to answer emails
- You can configure different email clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird for POP access to Gmail - this enables the e-mails to be downloaded to your PC, and sent from your PC
You can set up other email 'personalities' enabling you to send emails that appear to have been sent from your other email addresses. This is especially useful if you forward those other email accounts to Gmail. You select one 'personality' as the default but can easily change it. You can set it up so that when you reply, your reply is from the 'personality' that received the email. This means that if you have your business mail forwarded to from the 'website address' to Gmail, you can reply to it from Gmail with it coming from that business address.
Emails sent and received using the PC email client are still visible when Gmail is accessed from a browser. The Google help provides simple step-by-step instructions on how to do set up an email client with Gmail.
Full details can be seen at Google Gmail Help.