So you run a small business. What do you need out from your email. Here's what we came up with:

• Reliable. It just has to work all of the time.
• No ads embedded in my email. Some free email providers append ads to the bottom of each email. This is not acceptable.
• Easy to co nfigure and use. I don't have time to keep fixing email configurations.
• Plenty of space. I don't want to miss an email because my box was full.
• My own domain. I want my business emails to be from my company. In other words This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. is not professional.
• It has to work with all my devices and sync with all of my devices. I don't want to delete the same email 5 times.

We evaluated many email solutions. Some free, some paid. No one came close to meeting the needs like Google Apps. We tested one vendor who would have frequent outages. We would open a ticket which went ignored until the issue was resolved. They would then send us basic info on how to configure the email and never admit to the outage. This was beyond frustrating.  We dealt with another vendor that had lots of features on the web mail console. But, when clicked they tried to up sell.

Google Apps Standard Version

Google Apps provides email, contacts, calendar, and online document management and document editing tools. The standard version is free but you will need a domain. If you don't have a domain you can register one through Google Apps for $10 a year. They work through third party domain registration companies which they randomly assign. The upside is your DNS is completely configured for Google Apps. Google Apps Standard Edition http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

Email

You can setup 50 email accounts. Each user can store up to 7 GB of email per user. That's a lot of email. The email is gmail but with your domain and your logo. The standard edition does have advertising just like gmail. Its not intrusive and I have to admit I had to open my email and confirm there were ads for this blog posting. They do not append advertising to your emails. This would have been a deal breaker. Most likely your employees already use Gmail so you should not have to provide training. Google Apps can be used from your current email program. Outlook integration can be setup for email, contacts and calendar.

Calendar

Google calendar is decent basic calendar. It syncs with Outlook, iPhone, Blackberry and many other devices and services. You can track your appointments. It does not have a snooze. The event repeat functionality is basic. Going from the Palm calendar to Google is a big adjustment.

Documents

The Standard Edition allows each user to store up to 1 GB of documents. Documents can be organized into folders. Documents and folders can be shared with users within your Google Apps domain and third party users. This is a great place to store important information. The documents are versioned. You can see a list of changes that were made to a document along with the name of the person that made the change. Don't throw your MS Office out quite yet. The document editing is very basic. If you are a Word user you are going to find some more advanced features are missing. You need to be on-line to edit documents.

iPhone Integration

Google Apps looks like a Microsoft Exchange Server to the outside world. Apple, in order to make the iPhone more attractive to corporate users, added Microsoft Exchange integration to the iPhone. What does this mean for iPhone users? iPhone users can full sync calendar, contacts and email with their Google Apps calendar,  contacts and email. If you add a new contact to your phone they will instantly be added to your Google Apps Account. Add a new appointment to your Google Apps Calendar, your iPhone will notify you. Just remember if you setup iPhone integration DO NOT setup iTunes sync for calendar, contacts and email. Bad things will happen.

Google Apps. Premier Edition

For those that need more, Google has the Premier Edition. Here's the thing: it costs $50 per user account per year. You can have unlimited accounts but you pay for each one. Each mailbox can store up to 25 GB of mail. Google provides full 24/7 support. Google Apps can be integrated into your company's network security. If you need the features this is a good deal. If you have 20 employees your yearly cost is $1,000 a year. No software cost, no support cost and no server cost. It's hard to imagine doing this for less money in-house.

Why Is Google Apps Free?

The big questions that most people ask before making the leap are:

Why does Google offer this for free?

Just our view but

• Small companies become large ones that will need to upgrade when they cross the 50 employee threshold.
• Helps them sell ads
• They have you as a customer

What will Google do with my data?

If you use Google Apps, Google will have a lot of your company's data. Emails, contacts, calendar, documents and employee list. There are content specific ads to the left of every email that are displayed on the web client. There has to be a certain degree of trust before turning over that much data to one company.

All said we think Google Apps is an excellent tool. It very reliable and easy to use. It works with everything and there are not surprises.