Proven cost savings

Google's web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses. End users can use the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface for email, contacts and calendar as they transition to Gmail and Google Calendar.

A leading research firm found that Google Apps is as little as 1/3 the total cost of competing solutions. Want to see how much you could save with Google Apps compared to Microsoft Exchange 2007? Estimate your savings

2- 50 times more storage than the industry average

Each employee gets 25 GB for email storage, so they can keep important messages and find them instantly with built-in Google search. Gmail is designed so employees can spend less time managing their inboxes, and more time being productive. Time-saving features like message threading, message labels, fast message search and powerful spam filtering help employees work efficiently with high volumes of email.

3- Mobile email, calendar and IM access

With several options for accessing their information while on the go, employees can be productive with Google Apps even when they're not at their desks. At no extra charge, Google Apps supports over-the-air mobile access on BlackBerry devices, the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android and many less powerful phones. Learn more

4- 99.9% uptime reliability guarantee with synchronous replication

We guarantee that Google Apps will be available at least 99.9% of the time, so your employees are more productive and so you can worry less about system downtime.** With synchronous replication, your data and activity in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites is simultaneously preserved in multiple secure data centers. If one data center is unable to serve your requests, the system is designed to instantly fall back to another data center that can serve your account with no interruption in service. The Radicati Group found that Microsoft Exchange typically has 60 minutes of unplanned downtime per month. Google Apps customers typically experience less than 15 minutes of downtime per month. Read more

5- Information security and compliance

When you trust your company's information to Google, you can be confident that your critical information is safe and secure. Google's information security team, including some of the world’s foremost experts in information, application and network security, are focused on keeping your information safe. Google and many other customers trust this system with highly sensitive corporate data. Learn more

Businesses get these customizable security features with Google Apps:

• Custom spam and inbound mail filtering tools, powered by Postini, to complement powerful spam filters that automatically work with no up-front configuration.
• Custom outbound mail filtering tools to prevent sensitive information from being distributed, powered by Postini.
• Custom information sharing rules to determine how broadly employees are allowed to share with Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites.
• Custom password length requirements and visual strength indicators to help employees pick secure passwords.
• Enforced SSL connections with Google Apps to ensure secure HTTPS access.
• Optional email archiving, up to 10 years of retention.

6- Full administrative and data control

Administrators can deeply customize Google Apps to meet their technical, branding and business requirements. Integration options let you connect Google Apps to your existing IT infrastructure.

• Single sign-on API connects Google Apps to your existing authentication system.
• User provisioning utility and API connect Google Apps to your existing user directory system.
• Email routing and email gateway support let you run Google Apps alongside an existing email solution.
• Email migration utility and API let you bring mail from your existing email solution into Google Apps.

System branding and data ownership give Google Apps your look and feel, and ensures customer ownership of employee data.

• Custom user accounts on your compay's internet domain.
• Custom logo and colors in the applications.
• Contractual customer ownership of employee data.

7- Helpful 24/7 customer support

Google Apps is highly reliable and easy to operate, but support is available for administrators should you need it.

Support options include:

• Phone support for critical issues
• Email support
• Self-service online support

• Attachments. Gmail lets you add attachments in the same screen as the one you're writing your email in. Yahoo moves you to a different screen and makes you add attachments one at a time. To add more than five attachments requires adding addition boxes in which to input information. Some people may find this annoying. GMail allows drag and drop attachments.

• Chat feature. Although Yahoo! has an IM program, it's not the same Gmail's chat function which is built right into your email. Some people like this option because it makes it easy to send quick messages instead of longer emails when you're conversing with someone else who is already online. However, some people don't want to be seen online when they're answering email and so don't like this Gmail function. Of course, you can opt out of it.

• Contact storage. Gmail and Yahoo! differ slightly in the way that they organize your contacts. Gmail automatically keeps addresses that you've emailed on your contact list unless you delete them. Yahoo is the opposite; you have to manually opt to add them to your address book. The basics are the same but the appearance is a little different so it's a matter of preference. It should be noted that Google is now letting you expand your personal profile so that the contacts you have may provide more information automatically through Google.

• Conversation organization. Gmail keeps your conversation going for you - every time that you reply to someone's email, it automatically gets added to the same conversation thread so you can easily look things up within the conversation again. However, this can be annoying because to change your "subject" line, you have to re-compose a new email which is not true of Yahoo! Mail.

• Folder organization. The main thing about Yahoo! Mail that I prefer is the way that it lets you set up folders and organize your information. Google lets you label your folders but they're all kept in basically the same places. (They're in your inbox or they can be archived.) In contrast, you can create many different folders on Yahoo! which makes more organizational sense for my work.

• Professional credibility. sanju Most people who use their email accounts for professional reasons don't use a free account at all. However, those that do almost always go with Gmail. It is considered to be the more professional of accounts and lends greater credibility to freelancers and home business owners who receive email from clients and investors. Gmail recently added a function that lets you set up an email account with your own domain name so that you can get some serious professionalism from it. Although Yahoo! Mail accounts are common, they aren't considered quite as professional by the average person working online today.

• Spam folders. In my experience, Yahoo! Mail gets more spam. Additionally, I've had more problems with my Yahoo! inbox mail and spam mail getting tossed into the wrong folder than I've had with Gmail. But that could be just one user's experience and not indicative of the whole situation.