Your Gmail business account is a POP3-enabled email account that you can set up with your iPhone's Mail application. Once you complete this setup process, you can.
. Gmail 'stacks' and organizes conversations into threads: As you receive and send messages, the emails are automatically grouped according to the, regardless of the age of the conversation. As someone replies to you, Gmail automatically brings up all previous related messages for your reference in a collapsible vertical thread. This conveniently reviews what has been discussed before, and spares you the effort of searching folders to see what you wrote four weeks ago.
This feature is absolutely invaluable to organizers, team managers, public relations, professionals, and anyone who communicates with many people and needs to keep accurate tracking on the details of each conversation. Gmail has very thorough malware and virus checking: This is also invaluable because it removes 99.9% of the that your computer will be infected. Not only are file attachments saved on Google's Gmail servers, but Google constantly updates its anti-malware software to give you the most modern anti-virus protection possible. When a nasty payload does make it to your inbox, Gmail will send up a warning and immediately quarantine the offending payload to keep your personal computer clean. Whether you are an email beginner or a computer expert, this protection will serve you well.
Gmail offers a one-stop portal for calendaring, file storage, photo hosting, financial advice, and more: Because Google combines ('federates') all of its main services into your Gmail navigation bar, it is very easy to go about your computing day from a single interface. Book your appointments, upload your files for sharing, read the latest news from the Olympics, see the latest YouTube, find a restaurant, and surf the web, all at the bar at the top of your Gmail window.
10+ GB of email storage space: 10 GBs is five times more space than most people need, but it's comforting to know that there is no pressing need to delete anything. If you are a packrat mentality and like to hang onto emails then Gmail is an excellent choice. If you are a clean freak, then consider tagging and archiving your read emails so they vanish from your inbox, but relish that there is no urgency to delete.
25 MB per email capacity: Yes, if you want to send 25 MBs of file attachments to a friend, Gmail will support that. While many people's inboxes won't take more than 5 MBs, another Gmailer can. Most people will never use this capacity, but it's good to have for when you return from that trip to Europe, and you have a boatload of photos you want to send. Yes, using online are probably more convenient in the long run, but for those rare instances where a big send is necessary, Gmail is a good choice. Really good uptime: 'Uptime' is how many days per year that the service is working properly.
In the case of Gmail, crashes are few and far between. For a service that charges nothing, it's tough to complain of the occasional downtime. Composing a new email has many rich text features: 'Rich text' is about having the full ability to use stylish fonts, colors, indents, bullets, hyperlinks, and the pasting of photos directly into a message.
Gmail offers all of this, and its functionality is 8/10 strong. On some occasions, copying and pasting text doesn't quite preserve font and paragraph formats, but it is still very possible to make your emails look like beautiful and professional documents. POP3 and combining multiple email boxes into your Gmail: Gmail will connect to your other Exchange and online email boxes and combine them in your Gmail inbox. Conversely, Gmail lets you send an email with the identity of your other accounts. This is invaluable to people who use at work, or who use different email addresses. Many power users choose to use Gmail instead of MS Outlook as a way to protect themselves from viruses and malware but still, access their work messages. Good work on this, Gmail!.
Keystroke shortcuts: If you are a hardcore typist, then you can enable keystrokes to speed up your messaging. Press C to compose a new email, press E to archive a message, press M to banish the conversation from your inbox and more. For those people who do use, this feature is both confidence-inspiring and very convenient. Spam handling is excellent: Gmail does a very good job of scanning your incoming emails and identifying by patterns. This is the power of Google at work, folks. The annoying offers for cheap pharmaceuticals are kept to a minimum and quarantined quite conveniently in your spam folder. The power of Google: Yes, when you come from a family as powerful and wealthy as Google, you're going to have the backing of hundreds of full-time employees and a powerful brand that people trust.
This means the gets full-time maintenance attention, the clout of a respected Gmail.com domain name, and the lateral benefits of YouTube, Google Drive, Flickr, and Google Maps. It's nice when Gmail is respected enough that you can use it as a business email address without stigma. It's also nice when you have so many related services at your fingertips. Composing reply messages uses a small screen: Unlike the brand-new message screen, Gmail displays advertising to the right side of the reply screen, which cuts into your available reply viewing space significantly.
Just like being forced to work on a small desk, this narrow screen space is frustrating for people who value the quality of their writing. Gmail gives you 'Labels' instead of folders: People prefer folders. While are ultimately more practical for tagging and organizing messages (i.e. You can put on a message, a big advantage over using multiple folders), most users just don't like labels. There is no undelete: Sure, there's no reason to delete anything in the first place, considering that you've got 10 GBs available to you. But should you actually press the delete command, then you're stuck with the results because there is no recovering that message or the files attached to it. Believe us, the two times per year that you will do this, you are going to miss undelete.
We use a multitude of different here at Kinsta to keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes and to improve the productivity of our team. One product that we couldn’t live without is definitely G Suite!
We aren’t afraid to come right out and say it’s by far the best email solution on the market right now for your business. ? Not to mention the other features that it comes with, such as Google Drive storage and tools such as Google Docs and Google Sheets. Today we’ll dive into the unparalleled benefits of G Suite, why we use it and recommend it to all of our clients, and how it compares to other similar solutions on the market. What is G Suite?
Is Google’s suite of intelligent apps. This was formerly known as Google Apps, till it was re-branded in late 2016. We primarily recommend G Suite for clients that are needing email hosting for their business. However, G Suite is much more than just email. It also includes a variety of apps and features that can come in quite handy.
In fact, you’re probably already using or are familiar with some of them. Features We Use on a Daily Basis G Suite has three different plans you can use (of which we’ll dive into a little later on). We utilize the Basic G Suite plan for our employees here at Kinsta. This starts at just $5/user/month. For many of you, the basic plan is probably all you’ll ever need. Here’s what it includes: Gmail According to, Gmail leads the way as the most popular email client, with a whopping 26% of the market share based on open rates. It’s no surprise as has been around since 2004 and now boasts over.
One of the best things about G Suite is you basically get an enhanced ad-free version of the online email client you’re probably already using. G Suite essentially allows your employees to have their own Gmail accounts with email addresses with your business domain name (example: [email protected]). A very small business with one or two users might be able to get away with free Gmail accounts and some alias+forwarding rules. But once you start hiring two or three employees, you’ll find yourself needing accounts that can be managed separately. Gmail custom domain Google Calendar None of us here at Kinsta could live without.
Many of us rely on it for scheduling calls with clients and setting due dates and reminders for important projects. Google Calendar can help you keep your schedule organized. One of the great things about using Google Calendar in G Suite is the ability to create multiple calendars that are accessible to everyone in your company (or even a subset of users). For example, you might want a group calendar for events like team holidays and regular meetings. Having all your employees attached to the same organization makes tasks like these even easier when compared to the free version.
Google Calendar Google Drive allows you to store, access, and share your files in one secure place. You then have easy access to them from any device. G Suite Basic plans come with 30GB of storage for every employee. G Suite’s Business, Enterprise, and Teams editions provide unlimited storage so you will always have enough space for your files. Note: If you’re a smaller team with fewer than 5 users, you only get 1TB/user. If you haven’t used Google Drive before, one of the best things we like about it is the amazing search functionality!
Although, it’s probably not too surprising seeing as they also run the largest search engine in the world. Did you know that you can search based on the content within a document (regardless of the file name)? Pretty handy. This means you can easily find what you’re looking for, no matter how disorganized you are. ?. Google Drive search The paid version of Google Drive gives you twice the storage of your free personal drive and Gmail, 24/7 support, sharing controls, and advanced reporting. Google Docs and Google Sheets and pretty much speak for themselves and again are tools we use every single day. These allow you to create and edit text documents and spreadsheets right in your browser. Import your documents to make them instantly editable, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PDF files (.docx,.doc,.pdf,.rtf,.txt, xlsx,.csv,.html,.ods). As of, you can now even collaborate and comment on Microsoft Office files without it having to automatically convert to Google’s format.
You can also export to common third-party formats. This makes it easy to collaborate with other individuals or companies and send files back and forth, without ever needing to install or purchase additional software. Note: Google Docs and Spreadsheets created directly in G Suite don’t count towards your storage limit. ? Here are just a few of the common tasks we use them for:. Getting feedback and comments from team members on new website content. Working with guest bloggers on content for our blog. Sending content to others when writing on third-party sites. We’ve never had anyone in the past couple years request a Word document, everyone always requests a Google Doc.
Because it’s just super simple and easy to use. Crunching spreadsheet data from Ahrefs exports. Running quick financial figures. Keeping track of PPC budgets and online advertising copy variations. Analyzing CTR changes as it pertains to SERPs. Writing up content for paid sponsorships (WordCamps).
One of the best features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets is the real-time commenting and unlimited versions. Previous versions are kept indefinitely and they don’t count toward your storage. This makes it super easy to track changes made to a document or undo a mistake. Sharing documents with your coworkers or other individuals is also incredibly easy. Google Docs versions Google Keep seems to be one of those well-kept secrets that nobody knows about. If you’re looking for a basic Evernote alternative, Google Keep rocks!
This is a great little tool regardless of whether or not you’re using G Suite. Being a Google product, it works flawlessly within the Google ecosystem. It can be an easy way to keep those frequently asked questions you get from customers in a convenient place.
Create to-do lists, notes, and set reminders to stay on track. Everything syncs across your devices, so what’s important is always in reach. Easily share them with your team and archive them when you’re done. And once again Google’s search works flawlessly with it. G Suite not available Additional Features Here are some additional features that we don’t use at Kinsta very often, but you might be interested in:. Google Hangouts Chat: Have you heard of Slack?
The new (released February 2018) is basically Google’s new competing tool. It’s a dedicated group workspace with 1:1 chat and group chat.
You can make conversations more efficient by interacting directly with deeply integrated Google bots and 3rd party apps. Hangouts chat is included for free with all G Suite plans. Google Hangouts Meet: We prefer Zoom or Slack video chat ourselves here at Kinsta, but still makes video calls and conferencing a breeze. Meet is fully integrated with G Suite, so you can join meetings directly from a Calendar event or email invite. If you’re running the Enterprise version of G Suite, you can also take advantage of dial-in numbers for when people are on the road or perhaps without internet access. Google Forms: Most of you have probably all filled out a before. While we prefer to use other applications for this, preferably branded forms in our WordPress site, it can be an incredibly quick and easy way to gather information. Google Slides: Want a decent alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint?
Is just that. Just like with their other products you can take advantage of their real-time collaboration and commenting, as well as unlimited version history. Google Sites: We don’t recommend using as WordPress is much better for this. Check out the reasons. Mobile Management: If you’re worried about an employee’s device getting stolen, don’t.
That is what is for. Easily enable this as an admin and remotely wipe G Suite data from devices if needed. Additional Features for G Suite Business and Enterprise Users It’s also important to make a note of the additional features in G Suite Business and Enterprise plans. If you’re a bigger business and rely on email heavily, these can help ease some of your worries.
Cloud Search: Want to take search capabilities in G Suite even further? The feature allows you to search across your company’s content in G Suite. From Gmail and Drive to Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, and more. Vault: You can never have too many backups. Allows you to manage, retain, search, and export your organization’s email, Google Drive file content and on-the-record chats. Basically, you can archive all your data and set retention policies. Unparalleled Benefits of G Suite While all those features above are great, now it’s time to dive into some of the real benefits of using G Suite for your business.
Hosting Email With Third-Party Is Always Recommended It’s never recommended to host your email with the same company you use for WordPress hosting. That’s why we don’t and will never offer email hosting to our clients (other than perhaps a G Suite add-on down the road in MyKinsta. ?) We go into great detail about the reasons. But we’ll give you a quick summary of why below:. If you use your host, you’re tied to IP addresses that your host has configured for outgoing email. If something goes wrong with that, such as a client suddenly spamming, there is a chance the IP address could get blacklisted for spam. Then you’re suddenly left hanging with no control.
One of the biggest downfalls to relying on your WordPress host for emails is deliverability issues. With G Suite, you can authenticate outbound mail using DKIM and SPF records which can positively impact your spam rating. Sending emails via your WordPress host could potentially result in server resources issues. By offloading email to a third-party, especially G Suite, you’ll never have to worry about this.
Spreading services across multiple providers is always a good thing. We always recommend separating DNS (we include for all clients), WordPress hosting, and email.
This way if anything goes wrong with one, your email is always flowing. Most likely your DNS will still route regardless, but by using multiple providers you can guarantee this.
So as you can see, going with a third-party for email hosting is actually beneficial to your business. Caveats (Transactional and Marketing Emails) While G Suite accounts don’t have an SMTP limit, for those of you sending thousands of emails every month, we generally don’t recommend them for sending bulk emails or transactional emails (purchases, registering, resetting a password, etc). You can read the laundry list of their. For these types of emails we recommend the following transactional email services. Mailgun. ( we utilize SendGrid here at Kinsta for our transaction emails). If you’re small and just starting out, don’t worry about your transaction emails until you start sending out large volumes.
You can get started with just G Suite for everything and be just fine. Also, some of the providers like Mailgun above, let you send 10,000 transactional emails per month for free. So in a lot of cases, this doesn’t have to be an extra expense. And additional emails after that are pennies to send. Read more about.
You then have marketing emails, such as newsletters. The same thing applies here. Typically you’ll want to use a third-party provider due to better deliverability rates and tools for list building, A/B testing, etc. Here’s a few we recommend. MailChimp. ( we utilize MailChimp here at Kinsta for our weekly newsletter). Some of the transactional providers above also handle marketing emails and mention that on their sites.
So in some cases, you could always combine your transactional email service and email marketing software. Read more about. Familiar, Compatible, and Easy to Use One of the greatest benefits of going with G Suite for your business is that most of your employees are probably already used to using products like Gmail for email and Google Docs. This makes the transition super easy and ensures you don’t have to waste time explaining to new hires how to utilize company tools; unlike Zoho or Office 365 where there might be more explanation needed. G Suite also has the best compatibility on mobile devices compared to any other email provider. It simply works, everywhere! And if you already have a personal Gmail account, Google makes it super easy to one-click switch between accounts (personal Gmails and G Suite accounts).
G Suite switch accounts Uptime When it comes to uptime, Google is one of the best when it comes to reliability. If you want to dig into the technical details, G Suite offers a 99.9% (SLA) for covered services, and in recent years they’ve actually exceeded that. Also due to the fact that email is such an important part of every business, G Suite has no scheduled downtime or maintenance windows.
All of their data centers are built with redundant infrastructure. But just like any service, they can never be up 100% of the time. Therefore, you can always bookmark the for updates on all of their products.
G Suite status dashboard G Suite Isn’t The Cheapest, But It’s Extremely Affordable There are other providers out there that are cheaper, such as Zoho (we’ll dive into a comparison further below). However, just like we always recommend you invest in, your business email is not one of those areas you should try to save a buck. Having an email host that you can rely on can save you money down the road. Here’s a look at G Suite’s pricing and what’s included in each plan. Struggling with downtime and WordPress problems?
Kinsta is the hosting solution designed to save you time! G Suite Is as Secure as It Gets G Suite is built on top of, which offers the highest security on the market. It’s trusted by some of the biggest companies in the world; such as HP, Verizon, Whirlpool, and Salesforce. As Google says, they are leading with a “ security-first mindset.” They have industry-leading knowledge and expertise backing each and every one of their products, including G Suite. Here are a few highlights of ways G Suite protects you and your data:. G Suite Admin: Offers administrator the ability to control how data is protected, view reports, and even control mobile devices.
G Suite administrators can also disallow employees from having the ability to enable “.”. Encryption (TLS): G Suite provides email encryption in transit. Certs, Audits, and Assessments: G Suite undergoes several independent third-party audits on a regular basis. Data Retention: G Suite offers the ability to retain, archive, search, and export your data.
Privacy: Google does not collect, scan, or use your data in G Suite services for advertising purposes. There are also no ads in any of the G Suite products.
You own your own data. Transparency: Google continuously provides to keep consumers informed. You can check out Google Cloud’s for more information. G Suite vs Office 365 vs Zoho There are thousands of email hosts on the market. But when it comes down to serious business email hosting, you can really narrow it down to these three providers:,.
So below we’ll do a little comparison. Pricing For pricing, we are taking the monthly cost from each provider. G Suite Basic Office 365 Business Essentials Zoho Standard $5/user/month $6/user/month $3/user/month Additional notes:. Some do offer slightly cheaper plans if you commit to their annual plans or purchase licenses in bulk. For example, you can get Office 365 down to $5 /user/month and Zoho down to $2/user/month.
Zoho does, in fact, have a free plan for 25 users. However, it is limited to 5GB with single domain hosting. It’s important to note that Office 365 Business Essentials doesn’t include their Office desktop software, only their web-based apps. Software and Tools Below are comparable products across providers. G Suite Basic Office 365 Business Essentials Zoho Standard Gmail Outlook (50GB) Zoho Mail Google Drive (30GB) OneDrive (1TB) Zoho Docs (30GB) Google Docs Microsoft Word Zoho Writer Google Sheets Microsoft Excel Zoho Sheet Google Slides Microsoft PowerPoint Zoho Show Google Sites Sites (SharePoint) Zoho Sites Google Hangout Meet/Chat Skype + Microsoft Teams Zoho Meeting + Cliq Google Keep Microsoft OneNote Zoho Notebook Google+ Microsoft Yammer Zoho Connect Additional notes:.
G Suite’s 30GB of storage is counted as combined storage across Google Drive and Gmail. Zoho’s 30GB of storage is counted as combined storage across Zoho Docs and Zoho Mail. If you’re comparing presentation software, Microsoft PowerPoint still probably wins hands down. Gmail also has a lot better integrations with third-party apps than that of its counterpart Outlook. Zoho’s standard (Workplace) plan does include a few additional tools that neither G Suite or Office 365 have, such as Projects, BugTracker, Vault (password manager), ShowTime, Sprints, Wiki. But as you can see, all three of the above providers have very similar offerings when it comes to the tools and services they provide.
So a lot of your decision will probably come down to price and ease of use for your employees. Disadvantages of G Suite To be completely honest, there aren’t many disadvantages that we’ve found using G Suite, and our team has used it for over four years. Although it definitely depends on the type of business you are. Here are a few things you might consider:. G Suite is entirely web-based with no options for software. If you’re used to using Microsoft Office you’ll probably find that Google Docs and Sheets aren’t as powerful.
Office 365 is still winning the enterprise market, while G Suite is still playing catch up. Office 365 does offer more storage off the bat. However, G Suite does offer unlimited storage if you upgrade to higher plans. How to Move to G Suite We personally think that G Suite is your best option for email hosting and other tools, and that’s why we recommend it to all of our clients. They also offer a free 14-day trial, so you can even give it a try before committing to anything. Their onboarding process is also incredibly easy. Here are some quick steps to get started with G Suite for your business: Step 1 for your free trial.
G Suite domain alias Step 4 In your Admin console, you’ll then need to follow the steps to verify that you own your domain. You’ll get a verification code to add to your website or your domain settings. G Suite has excellent instructions for literally every DNS registrar and DNS provider on. If you’re using Kinsta DNS, we also have a tutorial on how to in our MyKinsta dashboard. If you’re coming from another email host, such as GoDaddy, BlueHost, or Office 365, you’ll most likely also want to migrate your old emails over.
Here are some helpful links:. Note: If you’re just starting to use email for your business for the first time, you can skip the above migration process.
Step 5 The final step is to then follow G Suite’s for setting up the additional apps, such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, etc. And that’s it! Summary As you can see, G Suite can be a great solution for any business when it comes to email hosting and providing an all-in-one solution for document collaboration and storage. It’s extremely affordable and easy to use.
Most of your employees are probably already familiar with Gmail, which helps reduce the time required to learn new tools. If you’re just getting starting with G Suite, we recommend to keep up to date with new features and releases. Do you have any questions about G Suite or how it works? We’d love to hear what you prefer when it comes to email hosting. Let us know below in the comments. Name Purpose Cookie Settings If you've set preferences (which cookies you accept and which you don't) we store your preferences here to make sure we don't load anything that you didn't agree to. WordPress Cookies WordPress sets a couple of cookies that track logged in users and store user preferences set in their WordPress user profile.
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