As we have seen throughout this series of articles about Google Apps it is a very attractive solution for anyone searching for a very stable and secure email solution. You do not have to pay money for secure SSL certificates, install them on the server or use your web host’s email solution and rely solely on his network and hardware.
Google Apps is a good way to go, but there are some drawbacks as well. I think the word “drawback” is not really the one I should use in here because these are not drawbacks, but just limitations of the “free” Google Apps Standard package.
Limited number of email accounts with Google Apps
I consider this to be the first limitation which might be frightening people from using Google Apps, but you really do not need to be afraid as there is always the option to use the paid version if you really feel like you need it.
Another option how to bypass the limit is by really thinking about the whole “user email creation” and to:
- create only user accounts for people you need
- use aliases for people who need more then one address [like e.g Jerry is an accountant and he has one email address jerry@domain.com and 5 aliases accountant@domain.com, jery@domain.com etc. This way you will save a lot of addresses
] - use groups for people who should share one email account and you can add even people who are not in your domain to the group and they will get the email as well
The limit Google Apps has stands at 50 accounts per domain name and thus you can always use subdomains or another domain for a branch of yours with Google Apps to get more then 50 email accounts. 
Limited migration support
The paid version of Google Apps is really like a Ferrari. there is everything you could dream about – no limitations in user accounts, no migration limits etc. On the other hand the “Standard” version of Apps is really a somewhat limited preview of what you could get if you would really feel like spending 50USD per year is nothing for you. It is like a BMW – you have a pretty fast car, but it really does not feel like the Ferrari. You do have the option to use a very secure system, but if you want to migrate old email messages or users in bulk then it is a pain.
You can use the Google API and build an own tool, but this is pretty tricky. You can buy a third party tool, but it costs money. And there is still the “painful” way of using IMAP and uploading all the messages trough e.g. Thunderbird or Outlook – but it takes time
More next time here at Icethunder.net
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