We used to set up emails using the same server as the website, we have learned that is not the best solution. A better choice is Google Workspace (formerly referred to as G Suite) – which is better for many reasons.

Let’s say you’ve been using free Gmail accounts for your business communications. Maybe your employees may even be using assorted Yahoo Mail and cable company email addresses for business purposes. But your business is growing and you want to start to use a more professional-looking email with your website domain.

Potential customers are far more likely to do business with a company that uses a business email address than those that don’t. Did you know that you can easily get business email addresses, but continue to have the exact same Gmail user experience that you and your staff have become accustomed to?

That’s where Google Workspace comes in. The email offering within Google Workspace is simply a business version of Gmail. No training is needed for current Gmail users. You may or may not be fully aware of the extent of your free Gmail account functionality—but your Gmail account includes Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Forms, Google Drawings, Google My Maps, and Google Sites. G Suite includes collaborative business versions of all of these and more. Google Workspace does come at a small cost: $6 per user per month for the Basic version. (But not only is this a nominal fee —it might be one of the easiest costs to justify).

You already own your own domain for your website address—that you got from a provider such as GoDaddy — there’s a straightforward one-time setup needed to use the same domain for your Google Workspace email addresses.

Here are fourteen reasons to consider a move to Google Workspace

1. Email Account Ownership

Your company owns all employee email accounts. Your employees don’t own them. What if someone were to leave your company to work for a competitor or to start a competing company, but they personally own the email address that your customers use to contact them? Within G Suite administration, if someone leaves the company, you can immediately change that person’s password and forward any emails sent to their address to someone else. You can also access all of that person’s email history.

2. File Ownership

With G Suite, all Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets created by employees are owned by the company. Keep in mind that Google Drive is also a cloud backup alternative to services such as Dropbox. You could create a company policy that requires employees to back up their local PC or Mac files to the company’s Google Drive. If, for example, you decided to terminate an employee, you would have full access to all their business files.

3. Document Sharing

It’s easier to share documents with your team when you’re all on the same G Suite account. For example, if you wanted to give all employees view-only access to a Google Doc, that can be accomplished with just a few clicks.

4. Group Email Addresses

Add an email address like support@yourwebsite.com. You can easily route emails sent to that address to multiple people or to a customer service system such as Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Salesforce. There’s no additional cost for creating group email addresses. Also, you can add as many as you want.

5. Multiple Email Aliases

For any Google Workspace user, multiple email aliases can be created. Here are examples:

GKimmes@G-ForceCreative.com   |   Greg.Kimmes@G-ForceCreative.com    |   Greg@G-ForceCreative.com

With email aliases, they all lead to the same email box. It might be easier to verbally tell someone that your email address is Greg@G-ForceCreative.com, even though your business card reads the more formal Greg.Kimmes@G-ForceCreative.com. There can even be multiple domains associated with each user’s email account. If you decide to rebrand your company to “Greg Kimmes Creative” and you get the domain GregKimmesCreative.com, you can tack this domain onto your G Suite account as a domain alias.

6. Ability to Use Outlook as an Email Client

For employees who insist on using Outlook, Google provides G Suite Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

7. More File Storage

The default storage for free Gmail accounts is 15GB. For G Suite Basic, it’s 30GB per user. There are a number of options for increasing storage beyond 30GB per user. G Suite Business includes Shared drives, which gives a business a lot more administrative control over file sharing.

8. Ability to Make 2-Step Verification Required

Gmail and G Suite both have an important layer of security called 2-Step Verification (2SV). If you log into Gmail or G Suite from an unknown computer, you can be texted a verification code. With free Gmail, each person can decide whether or not to enable 2SV. With G Suite, an administrator can make the use of 2SV mandatory for all users.

9. CRM Integration

At some point, you may decide to invest in a CRM system to better track leads, prospects, customers, jobs, and more. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Sheets, and Google Drive can all be integrated with Salesforce. A number of other CRM systems integrate with Gmail.

10. Single Sign-On To Other Business Applications

Users can be set up using their Google Workspace credentials to sign in to cloud business applications such as DocuSign, Marketo, Salesforce, and Slack—without having to re-enter their usernames and passwords for these applications.

11. A Company Branded User Interface

Your company’s logo can be prominently displayed at the top right of the screen within all of G Suite.

12. An Included Online Meeting App

Hangouts Meet is an online meeting experience that is included with G Suite at no extra charge. Hangouts Meet is not available with free GMail. Premium features include meetings with up to 250 participants per call and the ability to record meetings to Google Drive.

13. An Integrated Business Phone System Option

If you have been thinking about a new or upgraded telephone system for your business, there is now a paid cloud phone system option that is served up natively from within G Suite and that integrates with Google Workspace.

14. Support

With G Suite, there is 24/7 phone, email, and chat customer support. There is no support for free Gmail. There are a number of other benefits to using G Suite, but some of them get a little more technical. Keep in mind that you can easily forward your personal Gmail account to your business account. That way, whether people send emails to your “old” account or to your “new” business account, all emails will end up in your G Suite inbox. If you want to migrate the email from a Gmail account to a Google Workspace, Google provides a service for this.

I can take care of updating your DNS records

I can manage your DNS records, verify your domain, and set up Google Workplace.