Google Apps Premier has launched and it plans to take on small business customers. Should Microsoft be worried?
Google may undercut Microsoft Office with its business apps subscriptions for a mere $50 per account a year, but there are a few fine print items to consider. Here’s a look at the sign-up process and where I hit trouble spots. Step one: Forking over the dough. That’s easy enough.
Since this is a hosted service I was very interested in the service level agreement. Here’s the link. Unfortunately…
…it didn’t work. Could be a deal breaker for some.
Here’s the administrator account setup. Looks easy enough. One big problem: I don’t have a domain name. The help page says there’s an option to get one if I sign up for Google Apps Standard and then upgrade to premier. For giggles I proceed with the domain name I used to own.
A pretty snazzy dashboard. Again though I have to verify my domain–which I don’t have–or get a new one.
This verification gets a little complicated for sole proprietors or anyone that wants Google apps sans the ads.
More dashboards. Very Google-ish with a simple interface.
Stuck in the domain loop.
These settings will be swell once I find a domain name.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief at Celonis. He was most recently Vice President, Editorial and Editor in Chief at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, and The New York Times. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.
