Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace

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Email service is a critical part of modern business infrastructure. Emails are key for communicating with customers, leads, employees, contractors, and suppliers. Heavyweights such as banks, insurance companies and government agencies use emails to communicate with businesses.

If you are just starting business, it is tempting to use your personal mailbox for everything. Many businesses are happy to advertise emails like putny_builders@gmail.com and cardiff_housekeepers@hotmail.com . Surprisingly, such mailboxes often work very well.

It is the best practice is to avoid using personal mailbox services like Gmail and Hotmail:

  • Lack of branding and credibility – businesses who cannot afford business email service cannot be perceived as serious!
  • Compliance with data privacy laws demand businesses to pay due diligence in delegating personal information storage and processing. Personal mail services are not designed to provide sufficient level of personal information protection.
  • Business continuity – with a personal mailbox a dedicated hacker is likely to find a way to destroy or contaminate your emails. Also personal mailboxes get deleted occasionally without any option of recovery.

What should you expect from a typical business email service:

  • Multiple mailboxes with your business domain at the end.
  • GDPR / Data Privacy compliance.
  • Regular backups so deleted or lost emails can be recovered.

Email is one of the most popular internet services and there are thousands of providers offering high quality business email service.

Before we look at recommendations, it is important to define criteria for selecting a high-quality business email service.

  • Deliverability – how likely it is that your emails will reach their recipients? Or will they go into spam folder? Will they simply get blocked?
  • Availability, virus and spam protection – genuine emails should be reaching you as soon as possible while spam shall be filtered away or flagged as spam at very least.
  • Webmail interface usability, integration with productivity tools and cloud storage.
  • Desktop client usability and data protection.
  • Mobile app for iPhone, iPad, Samsung / Android, app usability and data protection.
  • Data protection and recovery – it should be possible to recover emails after hacker’s attack or maybe a simple user mistake.
  • Compliance with data protection laws. Good providers help you to be compliant!

At Blue Star London we are big fans of Microsoft 365. As an alternative, we recommend Google Workspace (a business version of Gmail) and Zoho Mail.

For businesses with most basic needs, we resell email service provided by Blue Star Host.

Finally, one of popular budget options is MXroute. They only offer small mailboxes, but you can have a lot of them. Their key advantage is that they work very hard to ensure high email deliverability.

If you are using some other service, look at the comparison table below and decide for yourself if it is time to upgrade.

CriteriaMicrosoft 365Google WorkspaceZoho MailBlue Star HostMXroute
Price£3.80+£4.60+From FREEFrom FREE$3.75+
DeliverabilityVery goodVery goodGoodOKVery good
Availability100%100%100%99.8%
Spam protection Very goodVery goodVery goodOK
Virus protection GoodGoodGoodOK
WebmailGoodVery goodGoodGoodOK
Desktop clientVery goodNoneNoneNoneNone
Mobile appVery goodVery goodGood
IMAP supportYesYes

If you are not using any of sevices mentioned in this article, we are happy to assist you with review of your setup and discuss your current situation and how your experinece with business emails can be improved.