I have been using Google to handle all my many personal email accounts for many years (I’m what they call an “early adopter”). I fell in love with Gmail for its convenience (you can check your email at any computer, have near-unlimited storage, it’s incredibly customizable, allows for IMAP access, and has an unstoppable SPAM filter), and I have also found that I actually prefer Gmail as an Application. It’s an amazing example of what people call “Web 2.0”, which is just a trendy phrase that defines the current movement towards using applications that are used from any web browser, online, instead of applications that run natively on your computer, like Outlook, or Quickbooks.

Sometime last year Google offered the option of Gmail for businesses, called Google Apps for Your Domain. It’s a mouthful to say, but it’s been an incredible boon to this office. Basically GAfYD allows you all the joys of a regular Gmail account (whose suffix domain always ends in “@gmail.com”) but use your own domain (in our case, “@laneandsmythe.com”). And moving from your current domain email accounts to the new Google ones is about as painless as possible. If you pay for the Premier accounts ($50 per email address), you can even have Google migrate all your email in your current inbox/archives with a couple of clicks, and you won’t lose a thing.

The GAfYD also gives you a shared Google Calendar for your business, and lots of space to keep documents online– we can just throw up any Word, Excel, or even Powerpoint file to our new Google Apps server and store it for safekeeping, and then view it from any computer in the world.

I no longer hear any complaints about SPAM from the Lane and Smythe agents. They can easily check their email from any mobile phone, including iPhones, Treos, or Windows Mobile-based phones. And thanks to Google’s recent allowance for checking email via IMAP, they can use Outlook, or Apple’s Mail app, or any other email program, and have their email synced perfectly in any device or software program they use! This was a huge selling point, at first, but ironically I have found that everyone seems to prefer using the Gmail browser-based interface, for it’s speed, and functionality.

We used to have a server computer: a big, hulking Dell Desktop that sat in a cabinet, used a lot of electricity, and served our email and files. It was never convenient. It was always a beast to deal with. I was the only one that (barely) understood the inner workings of the Exchange Server, and if anything happened to the computer, or our T-1 internet connection, no one got email, no one had access to any files, everyone was upset. We could never truly get Exchange to sync with our mobile phones, and there was a constant fear of the computer just falling apart, and taking practically the whole office with it. And when some of the agents wanted to switch to Macs… forget it. Please note that I have nothing against Microsoft Windows Server, or Exchange, but we’re a small business, and keeping everything running smoothly was just too much work. We needed more flexibility, and we needed a system that could be monitored by practically anyone, but especially someone without a degree in Geek.

So Google Apps for Your Domain to the rescue. That, and a dead-simple Network Attached Storage (a hard drive connected to our network), that only has an “on” and an “off” button, and we’re set.

I would highly recommend looking into Google Apps for Your Domain, especially if you’re a smaller real estate company or business that has been frustrated in the past with email issues, sharing calendars, or files. It’s really set us free here at Lane and Smythe. And, just as a disclaimer, we’re not getting anything from this recommendation! I might be an Odd Duck in the GeekWorld, but I actually believe that the advancement of technology should help a job get done more efficiently, and not make things more complicated. Sometimes it can, of course, but when you find something new that truly allows you to “Work Smarter, not Harder”… I believe in sharing.