We thought we’d start a series of articles on services that we use that have really helped us as a small business. These services will focus on great value for money, as well as flexibility and ease of use. We’re big fans of web based applications too, since you can use them whilst out and about as well as at home.

Google Apps for Business
Choosing to use Google Apps for our email, calendaring, file sharing and online spreadsheets and word documents was probably the best decision we have made when it comes to choosing services. If you are not going to use more than 10 accounts, it’s also completely free.
Google Apps is basically Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar, but for your business. You can use your own email address, and can even use your own company domain to access these services (e.g. mail.mygreatco.com).

You can sign up here:www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html

All you will need is a domain name (we’d recommendwww.namecheap.com) and a little bit of technical knowledge to get set up. Google Apps is great for a number of reasons:

• It’s completely free
• You can use their tools in a web browser, but you can also configure your smartphone or tablet to the email and calendaring services
• The spam filtering in Gmail is the best in the world
• If you prefer reading your mail in something like Outlook or Mac Mail, you can still use them
• Creating new user accounts (or removing them) is dead simple using their administrator site.

Don’t worry about the hassle of managing your own email – let Google worry about it!
Another great service for a small business is a virtual office, like the one we offer at The Hoxton Mix. A virtual office is a registered address that can be used for both commercial and legal matters. A virtual office is one of the core services offered by the Hoxton Mix.