Are you using Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for your business email?

If not, there’s a good chance that you’re using some kind of basic mail system hosted by your web site hosting company. Something that’s either cheap or free.

Often, you can add as many email addresses as you like, if you have enough storage, which seems convenient for many small business owners. At a basic level, I can see the attraction.

but as with most things in life, you don’t know what you don’t know

We’re going to stick with the two main players, though there are other options for enterprise mail of course, however, the most common these days tend to be Google or Microsoft.

It makes sense when you think about it as for most of us, we’re either using Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for our productivity suites too. Word processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Chat apps are all provided by these companies, and we will almost without a doubt, be using one of them. So why not use them for our email too?

These platforms come with all kinds of useful applications that help us run our businesses, and behind the scenes they also have lots of great compliance and security features as well; features that are missing from the cheaper alternatives offered by the hosting providers.

what am I missing out on?

Web hosting company email systems can be great for personal use, when you’ve registered a “hobby” domain and want email addresses for all your family and friends. They’re not so great for a business user.

Even if you’re a business with just one person.

Why is that? Well, partly because of GDPR.

Since the introduction of GDPR, there has been a requirement to implement “reasonable technical measures” to protect your data, which can include adding things like multi-factor authentication and the ability to back up your data.

Again, often not things you can do with basic mail hosting, or indeed, free email accounts such as @hotmail.com or @gmail.com accounts.

Going further, using a business system will allow you to investigate the source of problems in a way that you can’t with a cheaper system too.

For example:

 

  • Why aren’t my emails getting delivered?
  • How can I prove I sent that important message?
  • Are my team using their email accounts?
  • Who did what, and when? Did they delete their email? Did they move it to another folder? Did they forward them on to their personal address or a competitor?
  • Where are people logging on from?
  • What devices are downloading our data?

As you grow your business, many of these things will become more important, and in the event of a data breach, they will be critical.

 

but what about the benefits of a cheaper system?

Well yes, there are some benefits. For example, as cited by one of our clients who was told by many of their contacts…

“We can have as many email addresses as we like without paying more, why are you having to pay more?”

It’s a good argument, and yet if those email systems aren’t quite compliant, if they don’t have safeguards and protections against spam and phishing, if you can’t back up your data easily or lock out people when you need to, aren’t you setting yourself up for a bigger problem down the line?

You also have to constantly set and manage passwords on all these accounts, I’m thinking about shared accounts here, like:

  • info@
  • admin@
  • hello@
  • sales@
  • accounts@

All these accounts might be shared with multiple people, all of them would have their own passwords, what do you do each time someone leaves your business or changes jobs?

Do you leave the passwords as they are? Do you risk that the departing team members could still access them?

Or are you vigilant and change them each time, and then must circulate the new password amongst your remaining team members?

There are so many problems which are solved by using a proper business email system that it surely outweighs the benefits of “cheap or free”.

what are the drawbacks of a business ready email system?

It depends how you want to look at it. Financial cost is always a drawback for some, paying more for something that seems to be the same can hurt.

That’s why it’s important to learn about why they are not the same. The benefits that you get from a Microsoft or Google system are many, and even though you may not see them yourself first-hand, they are still there, behind the scenes, protecting you, your clients and your team.

When it comes to costs, here’s some things that are important to remember.

  • Each person will have a cost attached. That’s because each person needs to have their own software license.
  • Shared email addresses don’t cost more. But can only be accessed by a licensed and paid for user account.
  • Data backups are not included, if you want to back up that data (and you really should), then you’re going to need to pay for a data backup system.

are there other disadvantages?

Sure, management is more complicated. Whilst you might have been able to easily add and remove accounts yourself with your simple mail system, you may find that setting up a true business email system is a lot more work.

After all, these systems aren’t quite designed to be maintained by the average business owner, they are designed to be set up and managed by techies. Get your IT support company to help with the setup, monitoring and ongoing care, it will be another load off your mind, leaving you free to focus on running your business.

If you’re currently using a system where you’re not paying a price per-user, you’re probably not using the best system for your business.

☎ Let’s have a chat about how we can help move you over to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and give you the benefits of a fully-fledged business email system.