does anyone use gmail for business?

[omnivore]

we are thinking of changing to gmail for our customer facing email solution (so we can all answer mails from any computer and any location)

has anyone else used them and how reliable are they?

and what's support like if things go wonky?

cheers
Tom

 

[matth]

I use Gmail to run all my email accounts.. I send from my domain, rather than using @gmail.com

Never had any issues with it tbh, so can't comment on the support front, so I guess they must be fairly reliable.

 

[MrTempleDene]

I don't know, but a client of mine has just switched to google mail for business, I'll let you know how they get on

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Tom,

have a look at your previous thread re email!!!

I now have 3 businsses that use it and have helped 2 companies migrate!

 

[omnivore]

I use Gmail to run all my email accounts.. I send from my domain, rather than using @gmail.com

Never had any issues with it tbh, so can't comment on the support front, so I guess they must be fairly reliable.

yes thats what we are going to do but am slightly spooked by the fact that they have never replied to any of our e-mails asking questions or regarding a log in problem so my fear is that we'll be high and dry in the event of problems

 

[iboxsecurity]

we use Google apps for domains for our business and have probably helped 100+ clients migrate there. Never had any issues.

 

[JamieM]

yes thats what we are going to do but am slightly spooked by the fact that they have never replied to any of our e-mails asking questions or regarding a log in problem so my fear is that we'll be high and dry in the event of problems

Use your own domains for email and forward them to Gmail. If there are any problems you can revert to your own mailboxes.

 

[matth]

yes thats what we are going to do but am slightly spooked by the fact that they have never replied to any of our e-mails asking questions or regarding a log in problem so my fear is that we'll be high and dry in the event of problems

To be fair, they offer a password retrieval page on their accounts, and as mentioned above, it's all passed over your own servers anyway, so you can still get at the email if some catastrophe happens

Just do it - You'll not regret it

 

[oldeagleeye]

I have only useed it for private mail because Google sounds too much like free Hotmail free and sucks as far a biz is concerned. Times are achanging however. Hotmail is being advertised now as suitable for biz and I think Google have already cracked it by using the more simple and business like GMAIL so I am reconsidering as there is that huge space tgo store emails and I like the new video coneference too.

All in all then another thumbs up for Gmail.

Rob

BTW. A bit of trivia. I think most people like I did thought that ' a thumb up' meant the gladiiator was reprieved afterr his fight in the arena.After all that is what we saw in the movies. Apparently not. It was the other way around as scientists have just discovered thanks to headless gladiators bodies found recently in the UK.

 

[matth]

You can link domain email accounts via gmail though...

I use gmail and all my emails are sent from [email protected] - so no one will ever know I use gmail

Interesting trivia too - I'll add that to my memory warehouse!

 

[CaterTrade]

I have mine set up like matth and others above and in my experience occasionally some MS Exchange servers dont like the email 'cloaking' method where it's really sent from gmail but appears as another domain. The emails don't bounce but the gmail address is displayed as the sender and the reply to field gets changed to gmail too. Not much of a problem though.

 

[foalface]

I don't understand why you can't juse use your domain's email through webmail? Don't all webhosts offer webmail capabilities?

 

[Snowgoat]

We use Gmail on several business accounts and forward mail between them for backup. We also use Thunderbird to download and backup all online accounts.

Keep in mind that on the free accounts there's zero tech support besides their forums - it can be unnerving when occasionally you can't get access to your account.

We've found one major bug: if you're having a dialogue with someone, and the messages string into a 'conversation', sometimes a new incoming mail is not shown 'unread' in bold. It can be a killer. One workaround is to change the subject line, even by a character, or space, when replying. It is the identical subject line which appears to group a dialogue into a conversation.

One other minor problem is that we can't test email forwarding on other webmail setups. Sending an email to yourself makes it back to your Gmail account but isn't accepted by the Gmail system (apologies - badly explained).

 

[oldeagleeye]

I just had a similar problem with the 'messagethread/conversation in that a reply seems to have gone to the bottom of the thread. So too it sems go attachments.

I do like this numbered back an forth emails however and I a sure it won't take Gmail long to sort out any bugs and lets face it. They are nothing compared to any MS software.

Rob

 

[benjamin_c]

How do you set up G mail to send from a private domain? is paying for the apps service the only way?

 

[crossdaz]

How do you set up G mail to send from a private domain? is paying for the apps service the only way?

No, you can do that for free. Just look through the options, it is there somewhere.

 

[bizfox]

I use gmail for business. It's very reliable and easy to organize emails. Pretty certain it will still be up even though my private hosting goes down

 

[JamieM]

How do you set up G mail to send from a private domain? is paying for the apps service the only way?

Instructions are here:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=22370&expand=sc1

 

[Snowgoat]

Ol' EagleEye - when you say numbered back and forth - where are the numbers? Or have I misunderstood?

One problem with using your own domain is that although you can set it up as your default address, in our experience it doesn't mean that it always sends from that address - you have to double-check the outgoing address. No big deal, but it can catch you.

 

[oldeagleeye]

The numbers are in brackets at the side of the name of the incoming message sender and start after the first message.

If you reply for instance and get another reply back that will register say DANNYBOY (2) then the message header.

It is a much simpler way of keeping track of regular 'conversation' that looking through your saved box.

Rob

 

[indeedam]

of course you can use a gmail mailbox for your company!
we use gmail mailbox in our website too.

 

[Springmedia]

I agree about using a forwarder - Use gmail if you want, just don't let your customers know as my view is that it creates the wrong impression about your business

 

[Snowgoat]

The numbers are in brackets at the side of the name of the incoming message sender and start after the first message.

Don't see it, Rob. Do I need to tick an option somewhere?

 

[Dreamwaver]

I also use gmail. But the maxisim I can send a day is 500.

 

[limessl]

My employer uses gmail for corporate mail, the mail.domain.com URL simply points to gmail.

It's alright, and you can use Outlook with it so really you can treat the gmail thing as simply a mail server that has webmail and is probably a hell of a lot more resilient than having your own exchange server, and slightly cheaper too.

Nobody would be able to tell we were using google mail unless they had a good look at mail headers etc.

Google Apps on the other hand generally suck sh*t, can't stand them. Give me Excel and Word any day of the week.

 

[omnivore]

just to say many thanks to all who gave advice on this

we have now opted for a microsoft exchange server

from http://www.simplymailsolutions.com/index.php

it is very cheap

basically you get an on-line outlook mail box
(90% same as local copy on your computer)
and you get as many local copies of same mailbox as you need on as many computers as you want
you can access the same mails on-line and on any of the local copies
any time you press send and recieve all updates and actions on the other copies get updated

great solution

cheers aLL

 

[BowlerHat]

Great thread guys - we are also thinking of migrating and this was a real help.

 

[milian]

I don't understand why you can't juse use your domain's email through webmail? Don't all webhosts offer webmail capabilities?

They are normally terrible, terrible apps though.

We use Gmail via our domains, and I have mine synced via IMAP to thunderbird so I have a offline mirrored backup.

You also get loads of extra free web space for emails even on the free version of google domain apps.

 

[DPOM]

Big vote for gmail, its brilliant for business - but use your own domain name not the @gmail.com as that just looks a bit pants!

 

[WHUK]

Hi


If it is your business emails, then I think it is important to have a professional email id. I surely agree with the fact that gmail is a good source of emails. However it is always preferable to get an email id that has your company's name with it. You must esquire about this with your web host. The web host can surely give you with email ids that can be accessed from anywhere.

 

[BowlerHat]

Sorry guys - this is an old thread here but I thought I'd chip anyways....I did some work out in Florida earlier this year and they used gmail through the business. They had their own domains too [email protected] and not @gmail.com.

It was very cheap and they ran it through Outlook - they were all very happy.

 

[petlover]

in the past ,i have used gmail but find it is not very stable indeed...
now i changed to another one