Make the right first impression with a professional email address

In life and indeed in business, first impressions are everything. Deals, jobs and even marriages have been sealed on first impressions.

When it comes to email communication you want to have your client at Hello, which is why an email address like JohnyFixStuff@yahoo.com is not going to cut it. With so many cheap options available to setup a customised email address, there really is no excuse. It really is dirt cheap.

So what are the steps?

STEP 1: Get your domain name.

There are literally hundreds of domain registrars out there. Find one and register your domain name. Alternatively, you could claim your FREE domain name with a 2 year registration from us – see offer at the bottom ????.

STEP 2: Choose your email hosting provider.

By far the 2 biggest players in this space are Microsoft and Google. Both offer a number of subscription services at a very affordable price. Their services are extremely reliable, both have countless data centres around the world with several layers of redundancy to ensure 99.99% systems uptime. Google’s offering is called GSuite – a suite of apps for businesses (including email). Microsoft offers Office 365 Plans and a number of standalone email only services. See links below for full details:

https://gsuite.google.com/intl/en_au/pricing.html

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/library/office-365-plan-options.aspx

For the purpose of this article I will do a brief side by side comparison of the 2 most comparable service offerings from both giants.

“So which service is right for me?” you may be asking. The answer is not that simple and can’t merely be derived from a stats sheet. We have clients on both platforms who are quite happy with their tools. We have also migrated clients from Office 365 to GSuite and vice versa because they wanted something the other service was offering that they weren’t getting.

a) In general, we have found the following to be true:If you love your outlook and can’t do without it then go with Office 365. On the other hand, if you don’t mind working out of a web browser you will be right at home with Gmail. Having said that Outlook can be configured to work with the Gmail service.
b) Your online / cloud 3^rd party app may integrate better with Gmail and Google chrome browser.

Our Preference:

Having worked with both suites both in the front and back-end we tend to favour Office 365 for the following reasons:

a) We love the bigger mailbox and the additional 1TB of cloud Storage available in One Drive.
b) When terminating a user, an Office 365 licence can be cancelled without needing to delete user data / emails. This allows for an online archive to be created which can continue to be accessed. GSuite on the other hand requires that data and emails be backed up and downloaded and the user account deleted to cancel a licence. A 3^rd party email application is required to be able to read the downloaded emails. Moreover, the downloaded email loses its original folder structure and tags making it difficult to work with.
c) In Google Drive whoever creates a file owns it regardless of where that file is created. If a file is created in a shared folder the owner could block other users from accessing which makes file administration very difficult. In Microsoft SharePoint file permissions are administered at the library level and are much easier to manage. Google Teams which is available on the $10 GSuite plan has addressed most of the file sharing issues of the lower plan. If you intend to do a lot of team collaboration / file sharing, then we strongly recommend you use Team Drives.

So you have a cheap to free email plan that came with your domain purchase or web hosting plan?

I am afraid that service just isn’t good enough. It doesn’t begin to compare with the Google and Microsoft services and could actually be holding back your productivity. Here are some of the cons:

a) Limited mailbox storage
b) Most if not all of these services use IMAP or POP which cant sync contacts and calendars, notes and tasks to your devices. This means every device you have will have a different copy of these items. Google and Microsoft services ensure that all mail and calendar items are synced across all your devices.
c) No calendar sharing feature

STEP 3: Put it all together

In this last step you put it all together and create your new shiny mailboxes. If you already have an existing setup you may wish to migrate your emails to the new service.

Don’t panic we can HELP. Click on the link below for a no obligation FREE consultation and we will be more than happy to hold your hand through this process. Be sure to claim your FREE 2 year domain name if you engage our services.

Our team has carried out hundreds of Email setups and migrations – you are in good hands.