

GMail is not a business tool. Period. - lostbit
http://www.formortals.com/gmail-is-not-a-business-tool-period/

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burke
To play Devil's Advocate:

> Problem #1: Over-aggressive spam filtering

In five years of using exclusively GMail (and GAfB, which has the same
filters), I have never once missed a legitimate message (or, at least,
noticed). A quick poll of my friends indicates they have had the same
experience.

> Problem #2: “… sent on behalf of…”

This is already countered by #3.

> Problem #3: Fixing “… sent on behalf of …”

Just because this is a minor pain in the ass doesn't make it an illegitimate
business tool. A few extra minutes to figure it out is certainly worth the
productivity gains from all of GMail's other features.

> Problem #4: Calendars

Author should either cancel his GMail account, or read the email that gets
sent to it. Either would solve this problem. This is not a valid complaint.

> Problem #5: Customer Service? What’s that?

Semi-legitimate. Every time I (and anyone I've even heard of) have had an
issue with GMail, it is fixed promptly with no action on my part. Google has
monitoring for this and actively works to solve problems, rather than waiting
for support requests. How is this not preferable in every sense?

Mainly what I take issue with here is that the author is claiming GMail to be
completely unacceptable for "Business". Full stop. That's an absurd statement
to make. I fully respect his decision that it's not suitable for _his_
business, but how he is putting this across is immensely arrogant.

~~~
Groxx
re #1: I've had a few, and I have relatively low volumes of spam (a dozen a
day or less). Strangely enough, most of them have been from major emailers -
Borders, a couple tea sites, etc. A couple personal emails, but the last one
was over a year ago.

The major business-problem I see with Gmail is the 10-connection limit with
IMAP (a single client often has multiple connections). Totally screws over
people with multiple devices, which seems to me to be more likely w/ business-
oriented uses. I could be wrong, but I think it applies to apps-for-business
as well as regular Gmail, which is a bit crippling.

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sleepyhead
Gmail is a free personal email service and this guy complains about lack of
customer service? Boohoo. Wish I could downvote links on HN.

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MenaMena123
"The problem is, GMail is absolutely unacceptable for business usage, but the
folks who use it don’t see it that way."

Its odd you say that above. The people who use it are the ones that matter.?
If its used for it, well its works for them for business. End of Story.

