For several months now - probably closer to a year - I’ve been on the hunt for the ideal business email solution. I have emails all over the place and I’ve come to realize that I need to STOP DOING NOTHING, pick a solution and run with it. Managing all of the email is starting to make grey hair shoot out the sides of my head.

I am the leader of my company Focus Consulting (http://www.allaboutfocus.com) and we do serious large scale web development. Growing the business means being out and about. So the first thing I concluded was that I needed to get a webmail solution. After that my criteria was pretty loose. Here is what was in the the running:

Outlook Local (PST): This has been my default solution for years - and I love it. Outlook is the only application I have found that has the ideal management of all three components of my email/contact/calendar management. It also syncs up with every mobile device I buy perfectly. Every cell phone or PDA I buy has a complete copy of all of my Outlook data as soon as I get the device home. In my ever so humble opinion if you are someone who does not need any mobility in your solution this is the best option.

Outlook with Exchange, Local: I’ve had some suggestions from friends that I should install and run my own Exchange server from my house. Since I am trying to get out of the software running and maintenance mode of my life this is one of the worst options for me. I have little to no skill in managing an exchange server. And what would happen to my marriage if there were Exchange problems and my wife or daughter could not get to their email? That might actually be listed as the primary reason for our divorce in the paperwork. I can see it now: “Reason for dissolution: Failure to adequately maintain and supply sufficient email services as head of household”.

Outlook with Exchange, Hosted: Companies like Intermedia who are alot better at Exchange than I am offer this service. They run the server, and you connect to it from anyplace. They also offer OWA - Outlook Web Access - which is a very nice web version of Outlook. It looks and feels just like the desktop client. Since there is only one copy of the data there is no ‘mirroring’ that has to be done.

Gmail: At some point in time I ‘drank the KoolAid” and signed up for a Gmail account. I cannot really remember why - it might have been the javascript chat they use which allows me to chat with people with no windows client install. Over the months I have become addicted to my gmail. Oh baby have I become addicted. The mail and the google calendar are the two best features I like. The fact that I also have other Google features and I can use them all from a single sign in is very nice. With the calendar it takes a single click to get an event on there. As a matter of fact most things only take a single click. That was not one of my criteria, but it is a nice bonus. The contact management is not their strongest feature in my opinion. And of course no syncy syncy with me phone Also: a HUGE problem with this solution is the “From” address. They say that you can set up other accounts to send/receive from. However I noticed I started getting people replying to my address@gmail.com. Not cool, and not professional. More investigation showed that gmail sends the header as “From yourname@gmail.com on behalf of yourname@yourdomain.com”. Depending on the email program you are using you may get the reply at yourdomain.com or at gmail.com.

Google Apps for your Domains: This is an interesting option. All of the functionality of Gmail, except it runs at my domain. I think they might have also fixed the ‘Send from’ issue in the paid version. Needs more investigation.

Webmail at my hosting company: Very easy simple solution. Almost no contact or calendard functionality. Cheap - already paid for! Boring too.

I’ll post soon about my experience and what I ended up doing with. Until then - STOP DOING NOTHING.

Have a great weekend.

Love,

Patrick