I’m switching to Google Apps Premier Edition today.
Why am I switching to Google Apps?
To stay abreast of the competition/services offered for my customers. My consulting assignments put me in the position of “recommender”, I recommend technology and help shape technology budgets for companies of all sizes, and in order for me to be able to honestly recommend something, I feel I need to be comfortable using it, or have used it recently. I’ve been using Rackspace mail for the past 6 months, I’m even using their Exchange service connected with my iPhone, just so I can see how well the integration is, and how well managed Rackspace keeps the system. Currently, Rackspace is the leader in my eyes. If you need shared calendars, contacts, and the ability to use MS Outlook or Entourage, and lately Mail.app and Calendar.app with multiple people in the same organization easily, I will more often than not recommend Rackspace to you. They’re not cheap, so if you’re just starting out, I usually recommend Google Apps. I rarely recommend running your own mail server, as that requires a server, and someone to support your users, and none of that is cheap.
What am I comparing?
Uptime
This is a simple one, want to see how often the service becomes unavailable, if it all. I haven’t had any issues with Rackspace hosted mail, and I’ve only heard minor issues with Google Apps, I expect this to be a tie.
Self Support
Both control panels have access to their knowledge base, and well documented steps to configure a client, I’ll check to see how up to date these docs are, and how well written they are.
Phone / Live Support
Rackspace’s claim to fame, and best selling point, is the fact that a human will answer the phone, no matter when you call. Seriously, try it, call them at 3AM, you will get a human who will put you in touch with the right human within 60 seconds. Google, advertises Phone support as part of their premier plan, I want to see if it’s true or not.
Features
If both services cost the same (they don’t), what does one company do better than the other? Support etc is great, but usually, you want good enough service that you don’t need to call support, so what tools do the companies provide that make my life easier/simpler/productive ? Both as a user, and as an IT guy working in the trenches.
I will try this service with my iPhone and Snow Leopard, I’ll see how well things work with Exchange support enabled with Snow Leopard, iPhone. I’ll also test how well things work with Thunderbird 3 and MS Outlook within Vmware. The browsers I’ll be testing with are: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 8.
