Really? 300 employees? Let's do some math. A google apps for business setup will cost just under 14 cents per day per account. So, that's going to come to 41.10 per day for 300 accounts.
Seems like a lot -but look closer. You have 300 employees? What are you paying for email right now? Are you using an exchange server? Do you have a few staff that run it and handle all the problems it brings? No space, corrupted PST files, Electricity for your servers, Software for all of your computers running outlook? Software upgrades and updates that break your server and bring it crashing down? How about all the tech support staff that have to handle all the software installs and setup? How much is all the downtime costing you in terms of production?
Google apps eliminates all that for your organization for 41.10 per day. If you compress that money into a 5 day work week, that's like paying someone 57.54 per day. My employer pays me more than that for just 2 HOURS of my time.
If you also consider that Google Apps includes online solutions for, company video & voice chat, voip phone service (make phone calls from your email inbox), calendar, documents, powerful spreadsheets (with scripting), email and web forms, drawings, presentations, online document storage, websites for internal and external use, company video storage and portal, company photo storage, 25 gigs of space per account, robust administration tools, and 60+ other services for your business to access.
And your company data is stored in the most secure, replicated, high tech data centers in the world. So you can access your data from anywhere you have an internet connection. That means if you're paying for office space and cubicles and office computers making all your employees drive or commute to work, you can make some of your employees happier and reduce turnover by allowing them to telecommute and save some trees and gas in the process.
All of this makes your business more efficient and productive.
How much money are you going to save with more production, and less software, hardware, upgrades and IT staff?
Can you afford not to use Google Apps?
Alternative?
Just for email?
If you don't need the company-wide email administration tools, setup regular google accounts like employee.name.company@gma
That way your company can use most of what google apps has to offer without the security features of a domain administration console for all the services.
Later, when you can afford $60 per day, the transition will be pretty smooth.
Otherwise, I don't see an alternative that offers anything compared to google apps for the money.
What is the best cheap alternative to Google Apps Email for a large organization?
