Amid a tough economy, free or low-cost Web-based e-mail services such as Google's Gmail or Google Apps, Microsoft  's Hotmail, and Yahoo! mail are hugely popular, not just with consumers but also with small businesses. Microsoft, for instance, operates a free service called Office Live Small Business that boasts 2.5 million customers. But while convenient and low-cost, these services also carry a lot of risks that heavy e-mail users, especially small businesses, should consider carefully before signing up.
One person who wishes he hadn't dived in with his eyes closed is Rom Mettesich. Four months ago the retired telecom engineer came up with what he thought was a great idea to save Avant Construction, a Punte Gorda [Fla.] general contracting firm run by his wife, Frinee, a few hundred dollars a year. The company has been pummeled by the downturn in the real estate and construction industries. Mettesich decided to move the Web site and employee e-mail accounts off Avant's old Internet service and onto Microsoft Office Live Small Business. But there was a snafu when Mettesich tried to create e-mail addresses for the company's 19 employees that would be identical to the ones they had with the prior service. He tried to correct the problem by deleting the accounts and starting over. But when he re-entered the addresses, he ran into problems. "The service told me the address I wanted to create was already in use, but I had just deleted it," he says.
Lost New-Business Leads
The glitch proved to be more than just an annoyance. E-mails to Avant Construction's staff -- including messages containing leads for badly needed new business -- were bouncing back to senders as if the addresses didn't exist. Mettesich contacted Microsoft tech support via e-mail but was told there was no way around the problem. A Microsoft spokesman says Mettesich appears to have run up against a policy on the service that prevents e-mail addresses that have been deleted once from being recreated for 120 days. But even after 140 days, he still hasn't been able to recreate the addresses.
If e-mail is crucial for your business, no matter how small, then it's too important to entrust to a free Web-mail service, says Roger Matus, CEO of Inboxer, an e-mail archiving gear company, who also blogs frequently on e-mail issues at deathbyemail.com. E-mail accounts, he says, aren't only for communication but are now virtual filing cabinets containing important documents, contact information, sales leads, and other crucial business information. "Everything important that happens to a company these days, happens in e-mail," he says. "It's like your crown jewels, so you want to be careful in handing them over to someone else." (continued...)
© 2009 Business Week Online under contract with MarketWatch. All rights reserved.
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