We hear a lot of talk today about technology in business as if it’s a new thing. But modern connected services have been reshaping companies for over two decades - and there is one force of change that has been doing more than any other: email.

Every day the world sends well over 200 billion emails. Exchanging information, making deals, staying in the loop… email has become the nervous system of the business world. Deals are still often closed through human interactions, but much of the legwork happens over electronic letters.

A bad email experience means negative things for your company. Yet we tolerate problems with email all the time: lost mails, slow access, draining costs and poor customer support are things we just assume to be part of the email landscape.

Fortunately, email has evolved tremendously. Today you can use an affordable, reliable and supported business-grade email service that offers all the modern conveniences - such as search, archiving and mobile - with little effort or cost from your side.

How does this work? Let’s take a look at business email in the 21st century.

Getting the right email

There are three types of email setups. The first is where you have your own mail server and everything that runs it. The second is to get cheap hosting at your ISP. The third is to use a business-grade email service such as Office365. Let’s weigh the differences:

• Your own email server: this is how things used to work. You owned the hardware and software, and you paid someone to maintain the server for you.
• Cheap ISP hosting: you are using a free or lowcost email service provided by your ISP. You don’t own the server or software, and the ISP takes care of the maintenance.
• Business grade email: though similar to the cheap ISP route, here you pay to use a highly secure and well-maintained email service.

The first two models have serious drawbacks. Owning your own email server is costly, especially to pay for the people who maintain it. You also want proper security, which is an extra cost, and you have to have the tools that make it easy for users. For example, can someone reset their password themselves if they forgot it?

An ISP service seems like it solves all that. But that service is not necessarily as well maintained or secure as you think. Often ISPs sell email services as a value-add and not a core offering, so they don’t invest that much into it. These services also share IPs (the numbers that computers use to identify each other online) and your business email might be unfairly blacklisted as a spam address due to how others behave on the service.

Next generation email

Thankfully modern business email has changed how we manage electronic mail. Safe, secure, affordable and easy to access, these new platforms give you all the benefits with none of the drawbacks.

At Vodacom now! we are big supporters of Office365. For less than R100 a month you access email services that are as good as what big businesses use (and they do - Office365 is the most used app among enterprises). You can easily search and sort emails: on a web browser, desktop client or through a mobile app. You also gain access to a lot of other great tools: calendar, Word, Excel, PowerPoint. OneNote, Sharepoint, Dynamics CRM and more - and all still for the same price! For more info please click here.

This new generation of email services are powerful and continually updated. Never worry about backups or losing an email. Never be out of touch with your customers again. Today you can easily afford a professional email service, without any hidden traps and plenty of wonderful surprises. And you can use your business domain, so no more cheap-looking ‘free’ email addresses.

Stop worrying about your email. Today there is no excuse not to use a professional email service such as Office365. It is cheaper, better and safer than the alternatives. If that’s not good enough for your business, what is?

For more information visit Vodacom Business online today.