Zoho Mail takes on GMail

As known, Zoho uses to make friends with Google. Despite the fact that both companies are developing online offices for SMB, Zoho always combines its applications with Google Apps, rather than compete with them. Zoho is the champion by the number of applications in the Google Apps Marketplace (i.e. integrated into Google Apps). And maybe that's why Zoho for a long time didn't touch the holy grail of Google Apps - email app GMail. In fact Zoho launched it's email service (Zoho Mail) almost two years ago, but it was just a personal email service. It was as functional as GMail and even allowed to use your own domain, but it had no administrative panel that allows to create accounts and manage security policies. So it couldn't be used as a corporate mail server. Now it can.

But we don't think that Google will apply any political sanctions against Zoho because Zoho Mail - is no longer completely free, so won't influence Google's business much. It's free only for 3 users with 1GB mailbox limitation. After that - you have to pay $2 per month per user. At the same time, Google Apps Mail provides free version for 50 users with 7.5Gb mailboxes.

But anyway Google should be beware. Because in functionality Zoho Mail even exceeds Google Apps Mail. It features:

- multiple domains support

- multiple accounts per user

- multiple signatures, depending on the account

- tags and subfolders

- threaded discussions

- filters

- contacts (with shared folders)

- antispam, antivirus (with black and white lists)

- autoresponder

- powerful search that can even scan attachments

- mobile access (iPhone, Android, Blackberry and other smartphones)

- offline mode (using Google Gears)

- POP3, IMAP support

- archiving and exporting messages

Moreover, Zoho Mail - it's not just mail and contacts, but also super-calendar (Zoho Calendar), which is not inferior to Google Calendar and Tasks module that makes Google Tasks look like a toy. There is also the Notes section, but it's not the powerful Zoho Notebook, but a simple notes list.



The value of Zoho Mail can be considerably increased by integration with other Zoho services - messenger Zoho Chat, office editors Zoho Docs, CRM system Zoho CRM ... Funny, but Zoho Mail is better integrated with Google Docs, than GMail. In particular, Zoho Mail allows to send files directly from your Google Docs account.



And, as we noted, Zoho Mail now has the control panel where administrator can add / remove users and groups, assign roles, mailbox quotas, add domains, configure filters, unjust security settings.

See also: Top 10 Email services