I have been test-driving Google’s email (“Gmail”), routed so that it uses my own domain. So far, it has worked great, though I let my hosting service do the heavy lifting as far as changing the settings where needed to get the routing done properly. My hosting service made this easy – so it required hardly any time on  my part.

I love that I am able to use my own domain, which means that I do NOT change my email address or lose the reference to my business website.

The reason I decided to give this a try is that I became frustrated with accessing my email from multiple locations – IMAP service was not a perfect fit. I also really liked Google’s approach to handling email in “conversations,” and it does a good job of linking separate emails appropriately.

If you have an exchange server, and it is working smoothly – I think you should stick with your investment. If your email is always “going down” or not working properly, you may want to experiment with Gmail. I recommend setting up a personal account and just using it for awhile. This will give you an idea of how it looks and feels. If you decide to make the change, Google even offers an easy conversion tool to move all of your existing email and contacts from Outlook and other software – to Google.

Next up, I will be experimenting with Google Docs!