Email, the center of so much communication for any individual or company. Protecting email communication is a most definite priority for any website owner. Where your email is hosted, what system it's using, and how secure it is are all concerns that should be addressed.

Nearly every web hosting service offers on server email solutions with some level of spam control and some "cookie cutter" features that users have come to expect. These, however seemingly convenient, are lacking when compared to other options, like Google Apps. Google has offered email that is branded to your domain instead of "@gmail.com" for quite sometime now and it offers nearly all of the same features you get with a standard Gmail account.

You can think of Google Apps as your own private company, organization, or personal Gmail installation including Google Docs, Calendar, Picasa, YouTube, Blogger, and more. You can create email lists, groups, alias email addresses, all with over 7 Gigs of storage space for email. The Premier Edition offers 25 Gigs of space plus a wide array of additional features, including an uptime guarantee.

There are obvious features listed that make this an appealing choice, but there are also underlying functionality aspects that go on to make Google Apps a far superior choice. With an "owned server space" email service, if the server goes down, so does your email. What's worse is if your information needs to be moved elsewhere, that means trying to move all your email with it, and relying on newly configured MX records that may require a propagation time period. It becomes very easy to lose email contact this way. With Google Apps, your email is hosted with Google allowing you to move your website at will and as long as the MX records are put in place before hand, email will always flow.

Google Apps also offers full SSL encrypted connections for accessing your email. This provides an extra level of security for you ensuring that any mail sent and received is encrypted from prying eyes. This has never been more important as many more gadgets, from tablets to laptops to phones and more, are used to access email regularly. Keeping your connection to email secure at wireless hotspots and over mobile phone connections is a must.

Spam filtering is also updated on a dynamic minute to minute basis through Google, who provides the best filtering in the business. Using your own hosting server for email means you are limited to the spam filtering delivered with the system and the rules you set up yourself. This can be time consuming and can easily lead to emails being wrongly marked as spam.

Millions of businesses and organizations have made the move to the Google Apps system!