At $50/year, Google Apps is a Bargain

We’re so used to online services offering at least some free option. Sure, it probably has fewer features or less something or slower speed. If you were lucky enough to be grandfathered into free Google Apps (I think it’s been a few years now), you won’t know that Google Apps (for your own domain, e.g. [email protected]) now costs $50/year/user (or $5 month if you pay monthly).

If you’re used to free, $5 is a huge increase. If you think that this is the cost of large latte (just one per month) for a service that can run your email, calendar, file drive in the cloud, contacts, Google Plus, oh, and Google Docs, spreadsheets, and presentations, you have to say, “Wait, what?” (Sorry, quoting my 13-year old niece … )

But it hit me today when I was setting up a client who had their domain at GoDaddy and wanted their hosting there, too. They asked about email and my first answer is always Google Apps. They were hoping to have everything at GoDaddy. I haven’t looked at GoDaddy’s email offerings in a while and if you choose their Managed WordPress Hosting (which I recommend), then you don’t get email. Then you choose from their other, non-hosting-related email solutions.

GoDaddy offers a package deal with Microsoft’s Office 365 and their email solution, too. I’ve become such a Google (for email) user, that I don’t even look at this sort of thing anymore, but hey, client is interested, so I took a look. I suppose if you use (and love) Microsoft Outlook and especially email using a Windows environment, this looks like it would all sync well. But I’m sure you can use your Mac Mail as well as your iPhone too. Well, I would hope.

So which is better? It might be more of a question of what you need. If you would like a Microsoft world and you love Outlook, maybe the GoDaddy option is a better one for you. If you don’t care one way or the other, Google offers a great product and service.