Google Apps email vs cPanel server email? Which is best?
 

Dear KPMedia,

Hope you are keeping well.

I need to know your expert opinion on FREE Google Apps Mail for small business vs. Server Based Mail ( cPanel).
I wanted to try Google Apps. Just wanted to know your thoughts on the pros and cons of the both.

If I try Google Apps and if I want to migrate back to cPanel, is it possible? Kindly help.

Thanks for your time.

P

Google Apps email is essentially the same as GMail, so I'll use the terms interchangeably.

I like Google for many things (search engine, Youtube, webmaster tools, analytics, etc), but this is not one of those times. I don't trust the Google monster with email.

The only way to "migrate" mail between them is via IMAP copying, using software like Thunderbird or Outlook, account by account. Not fun. I'd rather cut my lawn with scissors or watch paint dry.

It's only easy to migrate to GMail, not away from them.

I've been at several large organizations that were courted by Google, and encouraged to switch off of locally-hosted Exchange servers. But the long-term costs were not really lower, there were concerns about security and control of our own backups. Same for control of your own blacklists, and enforcing various anti-spam policies. As an individual and business owner, that's all still a concern of mine.

As far as I'm concerned, Google Mail's popularity has less to do with quality, features and benefits, and more to do with "being hip" and doing whatever is current. Sort of like Myspace (already forgotten), Facebook, iPods, and similar. The only thing Google Mail has going for it is that the system is backed up regularly, though that's still no guarantee that you won't lose mail.

Google support is also amongst the slowest and the worst in the tech industry.

If I'm going to pay for email, I'd rather buy the commercial version of MailEnable and install it on a low-cost Windows 2008 VPS. And then run a nightly backup of it. (Or just cache/download the IMAP accounts by using Thunderbird 24/7 as a background process on your local desktop.) For most people, the cPanel POP/SMTP/IMAP services, including the webmail app RoundCube, suffice quite well.