Gmail

Would you like to manage your own email accounts without the headaches of setting up and maintaining software or a server? Gmail provides one of the best email interfaces for any organization’s needs – spell check, virus scanning, POP and IMAP capability, and rich text formatting being some of the essential tools at a user’s disposal. Gmail offers plenty of storage space, with approximately 6GB being the standard for those not using the Premium edition.

Already have your personal mail server? Google makes the transition to their system easy and without requiring a degree in networking. For organizations with a few users (under 20), Mail Fetcher may be the best approach. This is also useful for organizations where employees use their personal account scattered across different services. Here are the two alternatives to moving existing email:

Mail Fetcher: This service uses POP to take email once an hour from outside email accounts. If you want to move old email to your new accounts, years of messages can be moved in a matter of days. MailFetcher does not preserve labels from other Gmail accounts, but you can put email from specific accounts into a folder by using a filter, or give all incoming email a label from that email address.

Email Migration Tool: For those who host their own mail server, Google offers a tool specially designed for email migration. You can set up this feature to spread the move over days or weeks in case you don’t want to overburden your server. Google’s Email Migration Tool uses IMAP and works with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Cyrus IMAP Server, Courier-IMAP, or Dovecot.

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