17 Jan2011
A Professional-looking Personal E-mail Address with Gmail Benefits
In addition to e-mail overload, I’ve been diagnosed with e-mail address overload syndrome. People usually say “whoa!” with their mouths wide open when I tell them that I have five e-mail addresses. Of the e-mail addresses I currently use, I created my first with Hotmail many years ago. Shortly afterwards, I tried Yahoo. A few years later, I created one with Gmail. After I add my work and school e-mail addresses to those, I’ve got five that I use somewhat regularly. Recently, I created yet another e-mail address, adding to my misery. This one, though, is different. When I bought my domain (dustinwheelercpa.com), I thought it would be really, really cool to have an e-mail address with that domain. I won’t type it out here for the spam bots to harvest, but for you humans out there, it’s (my first name) @ (my domain). That’s easy to remember, isn’t it? It’s definitely easier for other people to remember than my Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail addresses, which contained a cryptic combination of letters and numbers. Also, people might check out my blog out of curiosity when they see my domain at the end of my e-mail address. The reason why I haven’t done this sooner is that I haven’t liked the webmail interfaces from a few web hosting providers I have tried. Gmail has been my favorite interface among the e-mail addresses that I use, so I set up my domain with Google Apps Standard. With Google Apps, I have my e-mail hosted by Google’s servers with the features of Gmail and also can use Google Calendar and Google Docs with my domain. Since Google Apps Standard is free, it can be a good alternative to an Exchange server for small bootstrapping business. Google has an easy setup guide which took me less than an hour to complete. The guide kept referring to me setting up Google Apps for my “organization,” which seemed funny since my domain is just a blog, not an organization. In the process, though, I discovered how easy it would be for an organization such as a business or non-profit entity to get started with Google Apps. The only mildly brain-racking part was configuring the MX records on my webhost’s control panel, which I figured out thanks to Google’s instructions. Now I have a professional-looking personal e-mail address with the Gmail interface and my data is where I like it – on the cloud.
Tags: Gmail, Google Apps
Trackback from your site.
W. Michael Hsu
| #
Dustin. Great write up. I, too, love the email interface of Gmail and its calendar and found google apps absolutely amazing for business – yes, DeepSky’s email run on google apps too. Good bye squirrel mail or exchange servers. Good bye tech support for email syncing to my ever changing mobile gadgets. If it works with Google – it works with our company email.
Cons… Cons.. Cons.. I guess you can’t really put your users into different categories? (or I haven’t figured it out yet) google contacts is still lacking. Google calendar still lacking. But all in all as a sole email exchange – no complaints. Just praises.
Reply
Dustin Wheeler
| #
Michael, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree that some of Google’s products are lacking, but the good thing is that Google often adds features and improves them – and since they’re SaaS, there’s no need to go out and buy new versions of software to get those features.
Reply
Janett
| #
Bootstrapping business, that is us for sure. I started us out with Google Sites integrated with Google Apps when it was in beta. Then you got 150 users free, wow. Like I will ever need that many (we have 5). Now the standard free version comes with 50 users. In beta you also got a start page for each user that you don’t get now. I read a comment saying that there were adds around your email. Not so with mine. A free website with as many pages as I like that I can design the look of myself or use one of the many templates available for free. We share calendars, documents that we can work on at the same time,chat, a professional sounding email address. I can create forms for contact information, comments or just a list of questions. We got a client today with one of those forms. I have links for my Intuit affiliates account that generates some cash. I could go on and on about how great I think Google Apps has been for us. $10 a year that goes to go-daddy for the domain name an some time learning is all it has cost us. I too, like you Dustin, have what some think are a lot of email addresses, one for business,one for my youtube account, one I use to sign up for sites with and that one generates a lot of junk mail, one for…well you get the idea. I think it is good to keep some things separate. I keep my business just for business.
One last thing I wanted to mention was all the free apps that you can get for your Google account. I got gTrax for us when it was in beta and now that it is a marketplace app we are grandfathered in for life. Some people are afraid of beta but I love it. My, I sound like and add for Google Apps.
Your website here by the way is great.
Reply
Dustin Wheeler
| #
Thanks for the comment, Janett… on April 15th! I hope your tax season went well!
Reply
Janett
| #
Thanks Dustin. The IRS had some software problems causing their efile to start late this year so we have till the 18th this year and we are working right down to the wire.
Reply
Chris Farmand
| #
I use it, I love it, I have gone Google. Any new team member that starts at CFCO goes through google school. We dedicate a week per section (mail, calendar, docs) and teach each other one fact per day about the google suite of products. I learn and the team member learns. If we feel a week is not enough, we extend it, until the person is comfortable. Email, calendar, and task organization is WEAK if not non-existent in most firms. A strong basis to organize those can be a lifesaver….literally. Great post man!!!
Reply