Michael wrote me an email to share his list of reasons why you should be using Google Apps on your own domain… possibly even instead of something like Exchange.

• Use your own domain. – This might not necessarily be a big deal to the vast majority of users but to people like me it is. For example i could use my own domain for my e-mail address. That gives me a much higher selection of (good) e-mail addresses than if i had a standard GMail, Yahoo!, hotmail etc. account. For example is it (for the most part) not possible to have an e-mail address like name@gmail.com. usually you would have to accept having something like name33482@gmail.com. not only is it longer, it also seems less professional (that of course is generally spoken). instead I can now have an e-mail address such as example@myname.com. Another thing is that Google also allows me to use my domain as a part of the URL that I write down to visit Googles services (such as GMail, Google Docs, Google Sites, etc.). that means that when I for example want to use Google docs or GMail I just have to visit mail.mydomain.com or docs.mydomain.com.
• Use it with Google services. – Of course it is great that you can let Google take care of your e-mail system. but they do also deliver other great services such as Google docs which is a great office suite that does not require a local installation on your hard drive since all the software runs in your browser. Google also supplies with apps like Google Sites, Google calendar, etc. again and all of these apps run in your browser. that means that you do not waste up unnecessary hard drive space and you do not have to update the apps since Google takes care of that automatically.
• Collaborate (without installation). – Another thing about “Google apps for your domain” is the great collaboration features. For instance, I could make a document in Google docs that someone else could edit at another point in time. This might not sound as a big deal since you could manually send the document to those that you are collaborating with. But Google apps takes care of that automatically. And if you wish for even more features you can also chat with those who are editing your document. Right from within your document!
• It is free. – Google apps does not cost a dollar at all. Of course it requires you to purchase some kind of domain but that is usually fairly cheap. I pay around 7 dollars a year for my domain at www.cheapdomain.com. But Goolge themselves does not charge anything at all for this valuable service.
• It is secure. – Yes, Google apps delivers a lot of secure things like a great spam-filter and anti-fishing in GMail. But what i find really secure is the fact that Googles servers take care of my e-mail, etc. and then also the fact that I use my own domain for my e-mail etc.. Googles servers are so fast and are almost never down (not working). that means that I am almost sure to get my e-mail as fast as possible. And since I can use my own domain name for my e-mail address I also know that if Google cancels my account then I can just use another e-mail service without changing my e-mail address. if my e-mail address were name@gmail.com and Google banned the account I would have lost the e-mail address forever.

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