Gmail is one of the most famous e-mail services in the world, used both for private and business purposes. Due to its popularity, the gmail.com domain has quickly become commonplace – thanks to this, it works well in personal correspondence. However, sending messages to contractors with an email address such as good.printinghouse@gmail.com is not associated with professionalism.
Building brand equity and a positive image of the company on the Internet is particularly important, since widespread digitization has enabled customers to find hundreds of thousands of product and service offers with one click. To meet demands of business customers, Google has created a package Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) What are the benefits for entrepreneurs of using the Google mailbox and application in the professional version?
What features does Google Workspace have and which free Gmail does not
Own domain in e-mail address and aliases
In building a positive brand image, it is helpful to use e-mail addresses which are not only easy to remember, but, above all, inspire trust. If a customer visits your website, e.g. mariasflowers.com, will leave your contact details, and then receive an email from you from email address maria010@gmail.com, one may start to suspect that this is an feeble attempt of personation and phishing.
With Google Workspace, you can replace the generic @gmail.com domain with your unique website address. Just add a domain in your admin panel and verify its ownership in a few easy steps so that you can use a presentable e-mail address. If you don’t want to do it yourself, then a team of specialists from FOTC will gladly guide you through the initial configuration.
Gmail in Google Workspace also allows you to create email groups and aliases. Aliases are different variants of an email address assigned to one mailbox. For example, the person whose main address is r.krawczyk@windows-krawczyk.com, can use aliases robert@windows-krawczyk.com, sales@… com, service@…com and so on. Within the subscription to one email account, you can have up to 30 alternative addresses.
On the other hand, groups allow you to set up a joint e-mail address for several employees, e.g. for all those who deal with technical support. If the client writes an email to the group’s address support@….com, it will also go directly to the mailboxes of assigned people, for example customer service employees.
More data space in the cloud
Each user of free Gmail has access to 15 GB of data space. Many private users never reach the limit, but those who save photos, files and attachments from e-mail or backup phone data on the Google Drive must take into account the fact that data purges will be necessary from time to time.
The implementation of the Google Workspace package immediately increases the space for files and photos.
- The basic Google Workspace Business Starter package provides 30 GB of data space.
- Within the Google Workspace Business Standard package, each employee has 2 TB of data space.
- Google Workspace Business Plus accounts let you store up to 5 TB of files in the cloud.
- Google Workspace Enterprise users have unlimited storage space.
More space means easy access to all documents, projects, backups and other files from any device connected to the Internet.
More space is not the only advantage of the business version of Google Drive. Google Workspace is a service that maximizes collective productivity and facilitates collaboration. Therefore, company Drive gives teams a unique tool – Shared Drives.
A Shared Drive does not have a single owner because it is a space for multiple users to collaborate. Files stored in a Shared Drive are owned by anyone who has access to it. All you need to do is share the disk with all colleagues from your department to work freely on files and collect an archive of the results of joint work. Shared drives have many practical uses as they offer:
- Access to files even after an employee has left. Typically, when one of the employees leaves a company, one’s accounts are deleted. If you forget to change the owner of the files, you lose them irretrievably. Team Drives allow you to keep files, even after you’ve finished collaborating with a given person.
- Improved sharing rules. Each team member sees the same disk content, but it is possible to give users different permission levels based on their roles.
- Easier access to content. Adding a person to a Newsgroup causes that person to be automatically added to all disks of that group.
- Sharing the drive with external people. It is possible to make the disk available to people from outside the company in order to conveniently cooperate with contractors. If you do not want your company’s data to be shared outside the organization – you can prohibit it.
Security and management of Google Workspace accounts
Google Workspace administrators have everything under control from anywhere in the world thanks to an intuitive and functional settings console. The admin panel enables remote management of the company’s data security. This is where you can apply, among others, blocking access to important files for users from outside the domain – it protects sensitive data against unauthorized persons, and thus protects them against leakage.
Administrators can also verify whether users are using sufficiently strong passwords when logging into mailboxes. Additionally, for greater security, administrators can force a password change every 30 days and check on which devices employees log in to be able to react to suspicious activity. The free version of Gmail does not provide such features.
When a company uses free Gmail, the accounts are owned by individual employees. Within Google Workspace, it is administrator who manages accounts of all employees. Thanks to this, when one of them leaves their job, work correspondence will still be sent to the company, and not to his or her private e-mail address. Additionally, the administrator has the ability to block access to files to people who no longer belong to the organization’s structures.
Spam filters for increased comfort and safety at work
Gmail offers basic spam filters. However, it happens that important correspondence with sensitive attachments or content may be treated as spam. Google Workspace, on the other hand, makes it easy to configure spam filters. It is possible, among others , to add the contractor’s IP address to the whitelist, which guarantees the delivery of the message.
Automatic backups
Free Gmail account users cannot take advantage of the automatic data backup feature. The situation is different in case of Google Workspace. The administrator can order automatic backups to Google Drive. Thanks to this, in the event of accidental deletion of files or failure of any device, damage will be minimized.
Technical support
Unlike private Gmail mailbox, Google Workspace guarantees customers access to constant technical support – both from Google consultants and the FOTC team. Google provides support only in English, while Google’s partner – FOTC – serves customers both in English, as well as in local languages of selected CEE countries.
If you want your employees to be fully effective in using new work tools as soon as possible, take advantage of the FOTC training offer. We organize dedicated Google Workspace workshops for users and administrators, designed to significantly accelerate the full implementation of the service.
Is it possible to have Gmail for business for free?
In certain cases, organizations and research institutions can use the full functionality of professional Google Workspace packages free of charge.
Google Workspace for Non Profit Organizations
Non-governmental organizations can use the free version of Google Workspace. Cloud tools allow you to improve the work of the entire organisation, create online collections and engage new people.
To take advantage of the free version of Google Workspace, your organization must:
- have the status of a charity,
- be verified as a non-profit organization by TechSoup or a regional TechSoup partner,
- be a public benefit organization, foundation or association registered in the National Court Register.
Google Workspace for Schools and Universities
There is also a special, free version of Google Workspace dedicated to schools and universities – Google Workspace for Education in the Fundamentals variant. To use this service, two conditions must be met:
- The institution must be an educational, accredited unit, recognized by state authorities.
- The institution must provide nationally or internationally recognized educational certificates.
Free Trial
FOTC, as a Google Cloud partner, offers a test period of the service extended to 30 days. Regardless of the size or type of your business, you can try any Google Workspace package for free for a full month and then receive favourable discounts from the partner. To start the trial period, contact us via the form on the website.
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