Most recently I had been improving my web development workflow. I did fair few things to improve my work flow structure, and planned few things for future too.
I had been involved in few projects as freelance web developer lately and I was using the POP email setup from my host to read my emails on mobile. I had used a google account i.e. normal account to sync the emails, but the problems I was facing was the email taking way too long to appear on the desktop. This is the main reason I went looking for an ideal solution.
Google Apps fits in my bill perfectly
My main reason to choose Google Apps were:
- I still wanted to use my company email
- I wanted to read email much faster
- I wanted larger storage to store my emails and data
Google Apps is cloud based and hence it’s fast and reliable. In terms of ease of use and ease of customisation, it’s relatively straight forward. For example to move the emails form existing server to Google Apps all you have to do is to change the MX Records to that of Google and delete the existing MX records from current server.
Other things like importing previous emails to Google Apps is relatively straight forward too.
Here is short video about Google Apps.
Pricing of Google Apps
Initially when you sign up for Google Apps, you get a free month for trial. And the price starts at AUD 5/user/month [I am based in Sydney] or AUD $50/user/year. In this I get 30 GB of Gmail and Drive Storage, 99.9% uptime which are some stand out features. Details about upgrade and what’s included can be found here.
Google Apps for One Man Band
For someone like me, who works most of time, Google Apps does provide a way to collaborate, with various features as:
- Calendar
- Google Drive
- Google Docs
- Google Sheets
- Google Slides etc
Benefits of Using Google Apps
- Getting things done faster
Google Apps account can be synced to read from mobile devices. So it’s relatively to get up-to-date with list of emails even when you are travelling.
- Safety and Security
As said by Google, Google Apps includes dozens of critical security features specially designed for keeping data safe, secured and in control.
- Team Collaboration
The ability to share data and information in Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets etc to list of people or team or clients does provide a way to work effectively as a team. All changes and edits on document can be shared in real time, and hence the time and effort that can be spend on email threads can be avoided and used for better things.
More details about benefits of Google Apps can be found here.
Conclusion
Google Apps had been well trusted brand. And there are plenty of reasons for that. At the point of writing, its website says more than 5 million business are using Google Apps. And this number speaks for itself. I you are planning to have better workflow as a single one band man like me or as a team with multiple members, Google Apps can really help you grow and be more productive.
