Top 10 reasons we use Gmail

We’ve been using some form of Gmail for testing purposes since it was first made available.  And for the last year we’ve been using it for all our business and personal purposes using their Google Apps hosted solution – using email @ my own domain names.  Here are some of the reasons why…

Spam filtering
The best spam filtering I have ever seen.  I had spam filtering before changing to Gmail, but I spent hours a week going through filtered messages because of over zealous “rules based” filters.  And I was still getting way more spam than I wanted.  Once Gmail learns your preferences you get almost no spam.  On a slow day I get well over 500 emails, and over 75% are spam messages I never have to see.  And if by some slim chance one of your important messages gets filtered, you can find it, un-spam it, and mark it so that it doesn’t happen again yourself.

Search
Everyone knows that Google is the best search engine in the world.  “Google it” is now a popular term for finding information.  Now you can search just as fast on your own email.  Try about one second on over 25,000 messages.

Archive vs. Delete
Most productivity experts tell you to delete messages you no longer “think” you need as soon as you are done with them.  To keep your inbox cleaned up.  But have you ever wanted to find a message you thought you wouldn’t need a few days or a month later?  Gmail’s archive function moves mail from your inbox but keeps it searchable for years.

Labeling vs. Folders
The old way to organize information was to drag it into a folder.  Great, if you can remember what “folder” you put it in.  Not so great if it applies to more than one????  With Gmail you can apply multiple labels to a conversation and even create filters to automatically assign these filters.  And, even through you have a label on a message it can still be in your inbox.

Threading
Ever had someone reply to your email as if they are the only person you ever talk to.  Something like “yes”, but they don’t include your email in their reply?  Now your conversations threat together and show you what you sent them, even when they don’t.  And when you archive, or label a message it applies to the entire thread too.  Twenty messages back and forth between you and five other people now appear in your inbox as one message.

Personalization and Integration
I now have one place for all my email accounts.  My multiple personalities (company names, organizations I work for, etc.) are all in one place, each with their one personalized domain and signature (I use some great add-ons that we’ll talk about some other time).

Storage Space
As of this writing you can store up to 7GB of emails, attachments (any files you want to) up to 20MB in size.  If you’ve ever used Outlook, you know that when you get over about 250MB performance starts to lag and the program eventually stops working completely.

Portability
You can access your email from any computer (Mac, PC, Linux) or your web enabled phone anywhere, anytime.