It took me long enough, but I think I finally figures out a nice solution for my emailing needs.

Up to now I hosted my mail at an exchange hosting company (MyHostedExchange.com) so that I can access it online and mobile'ish in an easy manner. But I also had to take care of my growing spam problem (over 200 spam emails per day, much more on weekends, not counting blog comment email spam). So I paid SpamStopsHere.com their monthly due as well.

I also had a gmail account, hotmail account and several others.

And I hated every second of it.

A few weeks ago I got into Google Apps For Domains. I've started using their free service (2 GB Email. with your own domain name) and have moved all of my current emailing aliases into that email service.

I haven't looked back since (if only to be amazed at how better off I am now). The spam filtering is awesome (but you can always use 10minuteMail.com if you need as disposable email address), and the search capabilities are, well, Googlishious. No more need to pay for exchange hosting or spam filtering, and I get access from my mobile with Google mobile.

I imported all my existing gmail emails by using Google's cool ability to check multiple POP3 accounts from within your email account (by going to settings->accounts->get mail from other accounts), and actually adding my gmail account in there.

I find that the web interface is very easy to use, and sometimes I even prefer it to outlook. Of course I can access my emails with pop3 from outlook, so no problem getting a "hard copy" of my emails offline.

Calendar too!

I also am managing my calendar and syncing it up with Google Calendar. I have an account at scheduleworld.com and I have a syncing application that syncs outlook with scheduleworld. Then, ScheduleWorld knows how to sync up with Google Calendar, so I'm all set! (here's a link that takes you step by step in doing this)

Funnily enough, a few days after doing the switch, I find out that Hanselminutes has a podcast on exactly these kinds of matters. It's like we're connected in a magical geeky way!

 

There are only several possible drawbacks:

• No easy way to import existing outlook emails into gmail
• This is much more suitable for 1-5 people teams than anything. You can upgrade to a premium account (50$ per user per year) but besides getting a 10GB box, there are many complaints about this program