[Chuckit]

I was wondering if anybody had any opinions on premium email hosts. I'm not looking for free webmail or anything like that, but a place that's good for hosting business email addresses that see heavy use. Any Web or dedicated email hosts you guys prefer? I know I could set up a private server and admin it myself, but I'm hoping a dedicated hosting service would be able to put more time into it than I have to provide.

Any opinions on the email side of things?

[BasketofPuppies]

Google Apps or Google Sites or whatever this service is called now is nice. IMAP, POP and Web-based access to several gigabytes of e-mail per account and easy creation and deletion of e-mail accounts for a low price makes it my choice for low-maintenance, professional e-mail.

[64stang06]

Originally Posted by BasketofPuppies

Google Apps or Google Sites or whatever this service is called now is nice.

Weird....

Originally Posted by Chuckit

I'm not looking for free webmail or anything like that, but a place that's good for hosting business email addresses that see heavy use.

[moep]

Originally Posted by 64stang06 

Weird....

no?

Any Web or dedicated email hosts you guys prefer?

And if he doesn’t want to use a free service there’s always Google Apps Premier (~$50 per account and year).
I’m using it and unless you are willing to put up with running your own Exchange Server (which I’m not a fan of) it’s the best thing out there right now, period.

[imitchellg5]

Gmail is very good for business with IMAP and whatnot. I know someone who gets 400+ emails a day and is very happy with Gmail.

[Doofy]

https://www.hushmail.com

(If you're happy with the fact that it's not really as secure as they say it is)

But when all's said and done, nothing beats having your own boxen running the show.

[besson3c]

I would look at any web host that offers Cyrus IMAP, and will allow you SSH access to your mailboxes so that you can back them up yourself. This way, if the service sucks, you can simply take your mailboxes to a different Cyrus IMAP host.

I'm assuming that data ownership is an issue with this business.

[bpl323]

I love Gmail for a free mail service.

[mduell]

Google Apps

$50/user/year for 25GB/user, three nines uptime, no ads, and better calendaring than the free version.

I use the free version for markduell.com ("oh the vanity")

[Love Calm Quiet]

Pretty interesting discussion about whether GMail is best at:
http://www.justcreativedesign.com/20...-googles-gmail

I certainly haven't yet let go of other accounts, but I'm wondering whether *paying* for email (anywhere) really gives anything more than Gmail? [ Other than my paranoia about jumping on the bandwagon for "the future Microsoft-of-the-Web".]

[moep]

FWIW, I have 4 Google Apps accounts and only one of them is “Premier Edition” for the phone support and extra storage.

What I’ve noticed is that “Premier Edition” account has absolutely zero outage whereas Mail.app occasionally times out for a minute while trying to connect via IMAP to the other three. That’s very rare though, maybe once a week. Whether or not that is a coincidence, I can’t tell.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet 

Pretty interesting discussion about whether GMail is best at:
http://www.justcreativedesign.com/20...-googles-gmail

I certainly haven't yet let go of other accounts, but I'm wondering whether *paying* for email (anywhere) really gives anything more than Gmail? [ Other than my paranoia about jumping on the bandwagon for "the future Microsoft-of-the-Web".]

It doesn't, unless there are some client features in other web-based email systems that GMail lacks. The big things working against GMail are ownership of data, and the ability to trace and troubleshoot delivery problems. For companies that email private and/or confidential info internally, this is a problem - in some cases even illegal (yes, I mean that literally).