One of the things I have been reviewing is pay for e-mail management and marketing tools. I have yet to decide if I want to go forth into this realm because of a few ethical issues I have. Mainly, the freeness of Google.
I can teach people to use Google to manage their entire lives. I manage my entire life with Google. From Android to Google Docs, everything runs through my Google Account. Why? Because:
- It’s Free
- Storage Upgrades are Cheap!
- Reliable, large company, not going anywhere anytime soon.
- Free E-mail Forwarding.
- Mobile Sync! (Android)
- (New!) Full Mutliple E-mail Address Management
Sure, there are a couple things it doesn’t do automatically, like send pretty HTML links with video of yourself . But thats what youtube is for! You can embed or link Youtube videos manually if you REALLY want to.
Everything that a pay for App does, I have found I can do for myself for free…except drip marketing, and a couple of e-mail analytics.
So, are there benefits? Sure…Google services are kind of piecemeal. They are all unified under one account but they are technically the developed remnants of older (bought out) products, and mostly in Beta! But, the fact that everything synchronized with my android phone is amazing.
However, these online tools feature microsoft exchange…or at least work like Microsoft Exchange (supposedly), so I am sure for a blackberry or iPhone user they could come in handy for sure.
What are your thoughts? Would you pay 10 – 40 $ a month for E-mail / Marketing service packages and storage? (Doesn’t that sound like alot?!!?) when extra space on Gmail is 5$ / year / 20 GB or so!
I may try this online e-mail service I have found, and will write about it at a later time if it has any benefits over Google Apps. I could continue to do what I am doing: helping people better there lives with Google and all the apps that they don’t know exist (Docs, Picasa, Voice), or I could start offering simple 1 cost all in one solutions from newer/less known companies.
I guess people trust their e-mails to worse companies (Godaddy! OMG!) and Outlook POP3 Accounts accidentally configured to pull all e-mail from the web and delete it (Ouch! No Cloud Backup!) So there should be a market for it!
Your thoughts? Twitterverse? Facebookland?
Alexander Conroy is Chief Optimization Officer and Co-President of 
