What business email service should you use?

In today’s fast moving world, having an email address is crucial. Whats even more important is that as a business, you must use the right type of email address! Most people do not pay attention to this issue, but the truth is that it says a lot more about you and your business than you think!

With millions of business email services out there, how do you find the one that is right for you? Well that is the big question I will try to discuss and hopefully shed some light on in this article.

The most obvious email services people use are provided by three giants; Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. There are many others that are less known but most people opt to use one of these three. While its understandable that using an email service that is free has its benefits, it can also make your clients take you less seriously!

Benefits of using free business email services

I like Yahoo and Google’s free email services for personal use. They are convenient and provide a quick, on-the-go solution. One of the best things about using these web-based email services is that you can check them from anywhere. You could be half way on the other side of the world and still be able to log into your account using a user name and password.

Another benefit of using these free email services is that you have almost unlimited amount of storage space. Somebody might need to email you a marketing presentation that is an hour long. It is safe to assume that the file being sent to you will be of considerable size. Worry not, as Google email (Gmail) allows you plenty of space so you never have to delete anything you have received to make room for more.

That is about where the benefits of having a free email address ends. While the benefits can look tempting, they also have another side that a person should be careful about.

Other side of free email services for your business

Have you ever wondered why companies are willing to provide you with unlimited storage and free email addresses? If you have, you should know that its because they serve you contextual advertisements based on what the contents of your email says. This should lead you to ask another question; how do they know what I am reading? Well that is where the problem starts. Since these companies have to know the content of your emails to serve you related advertisements, it is safe to assume that they know who you are talking to, what you are talking about and everything else you wish to keep private.

Gmail allows you to store almost unlimited emails so you never have to delete them, ever! But is that necessarily a good thing? If your business has sensitive information that you wish to keep private, is it a good idea to use these free email services? Probably not. But this is an issue that should be discussed separately than the point I am trying to make in this article.

The biggest problem with using a free email service is that your customers will not take you seriously. There is no reason for your business to not have its own website. If you do have a website, then you should also have an email address related to that website. For example: If your website is www.bestcaliforniapeaches.com, you should have an email address that looks something like mike@bestcaliforniapeaches.com.

Doing this looks more professional and lets your customers know that you are serious about doing business with them.

Ease of keeping business and personal life separate

When you come home from a hard day’s work, do you really want to be bothered? By having a professional email address that you only use for your business separate from the one that you use for your personal life can make things easier.

The last thing you probably want is to overlook a really important business email that you had to reply to. If you are mixing business email with personal things, it makes things harder to keep track of. You might get side-tracked trying to reply to an email that has nothing to do with your business which can result in lower productivity and increase the amount of time you waste.

Using a free email service for your personal life is perfectly fine. Having a professional website and an email address that relates to that website can give a really good impression about your knowledge and seriousness.