Are you Still Using Free Email for your Business?
If the answer to this question is yes, you should probably read on – it’s quite a big thing. There are plenty of businesses out there, especially smaller, local ones, that keep using free email services such as Gmail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail. It might be understandable when the business doesn’t have an official website, but plenty of companies choose to keep their old email even when they decide it’s time to get a website. While using free email services might be convenient, it can hurt your business, as well as the overall image of the company.
Free email services have become much more advanced during the last several years. Starting with Gmail, most of them offer (nearly) unlimited storage, integration with other applications, and convenient accessibility on any computer or mobile device. People get used to them and don’t want to try anything new as the service they have been using for years seems to be doing everything perfectly. That’s probably the main reason why plenty of businesses, especially older ones, keep using the old email they created when they’ve been just starting up.
But once your business has an official website, you must update the email to one having your website at the domain part of the address. It’s common sense really – you can reach most of the companies by writing an email to info@companyname.com, so why should your business be different? It’s inconvenient for your clients, as they can usually easily find your company’s email in their address book by typing the company name. Now if your email address is company@gmail.com, or, even worse, name.surname@gmail.com, finding the address becomes much harder.
Another important thing here is that a free email address for your business is unprofessional. You just won’t look serious in your prospective customers’ eyes, as you’ll seem a little backwards when it comes to using the internet, and that’s certainly not a good thing in the technology age. Another thing here is that newsletters or any information sent from a free address might be mistaken for spam, resulting in lost potential sales and miscommunication with your prospective clients. There is also a possibility of your email address being flagged as spam by a handful of people, making your messages appear in the spam folder for anyone you send an email to. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?
It’s inconvenient and unprofessional – these are two great reasons to switch to an email address including your domain name at the end. But if you don’t want to use Outlook and don’t want to switch from your free service, you can at least readdress all the emails from your official address to your free one. It doesn’t solve the problem of you replying your clients from a free address, but at least the first impression of your prospective customers will be better. It solves just half of the problem though, so it’s still better to brace yourself and say goodbye to the free email service forever.
The best email solution for your business? GSuite
The most simplest solution for businesses now is to move to GSuite – Google Apps that run e-mail. Major hosting companies now even have the ability for you to easily switch your email to point to GSuite in a matter of a click. For example: Host Gator, Site Ground, Dream Host and many other already have this capability directly within the hosting panel. Major hosting companies like WP Engine, don’t even allow email to be hosted on their servers, which means most companies are moving to GSuite.
GSuite Costs:
$6 USD per user with 30 GIGS of space for Gmail, Drive, Photos etc.
$11 USD per user for 1 TB of Space for Gmail, Drive, Photos etc.
The benefits of GSuite are endless especially with collaboration, storage, and even being able to chat with your team members within Gmail itself. A lot of major companies have made the move and have even removed Office Suite from computers as everything moves to cloud based systems.
If you need any help moving your email over to GSuite, feel free to reach out to our experienced team. We constantly move our clients over to GSuite for email.
