Manage your inbox from anywhere in the world

As many of you know, I have been on the road a bit recently. Things have changed the way I have to work. This is a good thing as everyone needs change in their life. It is what keeps things exciting. One of the big obstacles I faced being on the move vs working at home is that I can not lug my desktop around and having everything with me. In fact even a laptop is not always a possibility. Webmail is what I needed. Now I could set up webmail, but I manage many different websites, so need a centralised system to manage all my accounts from.

Key properties I need from a centralised system

1. Ability to receive email from multiple websites
2. Ability to send email from multiple domains
3. Simple filing and searching
4. Ability to synchronise with my desktop email client
5. Simple to set up and manage
6. Affordable (ideally free)

What was the solution?

Well the business solutions typically revolve around Microsoft exchange server and similar systems. These are neither simple nor affordable in my eyes. The solution I went for was Google Mail. It is simple, fast and oh so easy to set up and use. I already use many of the Google tools and Mail has now become a key part of my day to day life, even when at home. It does everything mentioned above!

How I set it up

The way I set it up was to set all my email accounts as forward only accounts on my hosting control panel, and send them to my Google Mail address. From here I would then sort them. You can add loads of outgoing accounts and it is very easy to set up. My only gripe was having to forward emails to the Google account as opposed to being able to just enter the details. You can only enter details for five email accounts in Google Mail.

I have to say – the spam filter at Google Mail is unrivaled in my eyes. I have gone from deleting around one hundred emails a day manually from my inbox that my spam filtered missed to one every other day!

Extra benefits

I have found that Google Calenders and Documents all work well together with the email client. I am actually writing using Google Documents right now. It is just simple and lightweight. It also has the power to post directly to your blog although I have not experimented with that just yet!

Your experiences

I know many people work on the move today. The only drawbacks to this system are that you have to be online to do anything. Personally, almost all my business is online anyway, so that is a given anyway. Do you use Google Mail as described above? Any tips and tricks? Do you use anything else?