Its an increasingly common problem.You have a SmartPhone and a PC and maybe a Tablet or Laptop as well . All of them can send and receive email but unless you have a synchronised email service you can end up with your sent and received emails in multiple places .Aside from the convenience issue (which machine did I send that email to John on ?)a single audit trail of email is becoming more and more critical .

There are two  market leading solutions to this problem Microsoft Exchange and Google Apps  . Both enable you to synchronise your mail ,contacts and calendar across all the devices you use so they are always the same on each device. Change a contact on your PC and it will change on your Phone/Tablet and Laptop. At a meeting with a client and enter a date in your calendar on your Smart Phone when you get back in the office you see it already there on your PC.

In the past to have this you needed a Server running Microsoft Exchange with all the hardware and support costs that entailed .That made it uneconomic for smaller businesses . Now we have Cloud Computing you can have all the features as hosted email features . Certainly we have a number of clients using our Hosted Microsoft Exchange solution.Prices start from £15+vat per mailbox per month and include a copy of Outlook 2010.

Both Google Apps and Microsoft Exchange are great products .

Google Apps is a bit cheaper and works really well as you would expect with Android Phones and Tablets.Its is a bit more limited re integration with Microsoft Outlook .With Exchange its the other way round . All in all it depends on if you use Microsoft Outlook, if  so you would be better off with Exchange.If you use Gmail then Google might be for you. If you have a Windows 8 Smartphone then no contest go for Exchange.

As you can see its complicated .

Confused ? If you would like a free consultation  Contact Us .

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Richard