Claudio LR Switzerland Local time: 22:09 Member (2007) English to Italian + ...
Better have different providers
Nov 27, 2011
Jabberwock wrote:
It is worth noting that we are talking about three different things here...
The first one is the domain: this is the string that identifies your website address and/or email server. For example, www.translatorjohndoe.com. It is not (or should not) be bound to any other entity except you (the registrant), so in case the ISP/server farm etc. goes bust, you should be able to move it somewhere else. If you register it properly, it can stay with you forever (if you remember to pay the registration fees).
The second thing is the actual host (server) that is at the moment tied to the domain. It might be your ISP, but it does not have to be: I use ProZ hosting, for example. This is where your email (usually) goes, but it does not have to end up here - mail can be easily forwarded.
The third thing is the mail system you use: it can be a desktop client on your computer, a webmail service etc.
So, it is quite possible to: have your website (with your own domain) at your ISP, but route all your email to your gmail account and send all your gmail messages with the sender address set as your domain address. If you have a fixed IP, you could even host your website and basic mail exchange on your home network (not that I recommend it!) and still use Gmail for all your mail operations.
Personally I believe it's better not to have your ISP as any of these in case you want to change it, and also suggest using a different e-mail service than the one provided by your host: I have (bought) my websites with several registrars, have hosted them with a different host, have my mail system with google and my ISP only provides the Internet connection. If my host go bust, my website and e-mail will stop working, but only for the time I need to redirect everything to my new host. I doubt that google could go bust.... However in addition to the webmail provided by google for each address, I have Outlook for all of them... I do think gmail is the best "free" e-mail service around, though I am very disappointed with the changes they are making…
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Marina Steinbach United States Local time: 16:09 Member (2011) English to German + ...
Why are you disappointed about Gmail?
Nov 28, 2011
Claudio LR wrote:
I do think gmail is the best "free" e-mail service around, though I am very disappointed with the changes they are making…
Hello Claudio,
I did read that my e-mail account will be getting a new look soon, but why are you disappointed about these changes?
Cheers!
Marina
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Jenn Mercer United States Local time: 16:09 Member (2009) French to English
MODERATOR
Gmail does go down
Nov 28, 2011
Alexandra Pirotte wrote:
Thank you all for your input. I agree with Neil and Sheila regarding the advantages of a Gmail address. My computers, tablet and smartphone all synchronize with Google (mail, tasks, calendar, and document backups), so it would be a real pain in the derrière to have to switch to another system. Plus, Google services are hardly ever down and I don’t think that the company is going away any time soon. Belgian ISPs, on the other hand, have given me so much grief over the years that I’d rather shoot myself in the foot than send additional business their way. And cable/satellite Internet is not an option either since I got rid of the "idiot box" ages ago.
Tomás and Ty’s comments made me see the benefits of a personalized email in terms of image. If I understand Jabberwock correctly, it is possible to register a domain name, use ProZ hosting instead of my ISP to link to that domain, and then have my mail redirected to my Gmail account. That would certainly be a good compromise for me. I will look into it.
I agree that Gmail is nowhere near as bad as Hotmail, etc for scammers, it does look a bit amateur. Linking your own email through Gmail is a better approach.
Also,I do not know how frequently Gmail goes down, but it does happen. I occasionally see comments on twitter from friends saying "oh well, Gmail's down, I'll have to go do something else for a while..." I would go nuts. I use a email address with my own domain. In case that goes down[1], I have a Gmail address that I use as backup.
[1]Very rare, but it has happened once and occasionally I have needed Gmail to get around a size restriction for attachments.
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Claudio LR Switzerland Local time: 22:09 Member (2007) English to Italian + ...
Why I am disappointed
Nov 28, 2011
Marina Steinbach wrote:
Claudio LR wrote:
I do think gmail is the best "free" e-mail service around, though I am very disappointed with the changes they are making…
Hello Claudio,
I did read that my e-mail account will be getting a new look soon, but why are you disappointed about these changes?
Cheers!
Marina
I am disappointed for several reasons. Poor visibility, they have removed the frame around the messages (that separates them from the menus etc.). They have reduced the visibility of the lines between messages. The have removed all the shades that made a sort of nice 3D look (actually all the 3D effects disappeared, in buttons etc., this is a step backwards in my opinion, their reason is to have the same interface in android phones etc.). So there is lack of contrast. As for the first problem you can use a colour theme, but personally that disturbs me as well. The soft interface of the classic theme was one of the advantages of Gmail over competitors, now you get either an "aggressive" white or a you are obliged to play with colours (the messages themselves, including conversations, remain aggressively white anyway, unless you chose a sort of "night view").
Also, they have removed all the captions close to the icons (you need to mouse over each single item to see the caption). They have made the "conversations" more chat-like, they try to show pictures, but hardly anyone has pictures so it's wasted space (personally I find this chat-like look very ugly, but that might be a matter of taste…).
Then try to create a filter, you will see it's less comfortable…
Well these are some of the reasons. What's more I find nothing positive, no added value that compensate for the downsides…
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Mohd shadab India Local time: 01:39 Member (2008) English to Tamil + ...
your own domain, email and website
Nov 28, 2011
Giles Watson wrote:
Ty Kendall wrote:
In a way I do agree with Tomás in that a personalized private email account does "look good" or at least more impressive perhaps (to some people).
I have had my own domain, website and email addresses since the 1990s when this first became possible in Italy. To begin with, quite a lot of people were impressed - most of them translators, admittedly - but nowadays it's pretty much par for the course.
I have also had a Gmail address as back-up more or less since the service started. Before Gmail, I used Hotmail but Gmail's storage space and the ability to upload/download large files were the deal clinchers. Confidentiality is potentially an issue, of course, depending on your clients.
I do agree with you and follow the same.. Gmail as backup and better to use your own domain, website and email for more professional looks. It cost nothing now a days.
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Nicole Schnell United States Local time: 13:09 Member English to German + ...
It doesn't have to be your own domain name.
Nov 28, 2011
Mohd shadab wrote:
I do agree with you and follow the same.. Gmail as backup and better to use your own domain, website and email for more professional looks. It cost nothing now a days.
Just any email address that indicates that it is a paid service (phone company, etc, or anything that ends with .net and your service provider knows where you live).
We keep complaining about the increasing number of scams, usually sent from freebie email addresses. Translators should apply the same best practices that we request from our prospective customers. I wonder if any of those translators who keep sending me their applications, yet apparently can not be bothered to mention neither their full name, nor their physical location in their email, realize that no person of sound mind will ever open attachments from unknown sources and that their emails will be deleted?
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Michael Beijer United Kingdom Local time: 21:09 Member (2009) Dutch to English + ...
Google Apps for Business
Nov 28, 2011
Don't forget that there are many versions of 'Gmail'. I highly recommend Google Apps for Business:
That way you can have your domain in your email address, and:
- 25 GB storage
- 99.9% uptime guarantee SLA and
- 24x7 support
- SSO, forced SSL, custom password strength requirements and more, etc etc
$50 / user account / year
Incidentally, my website is actually hosted by GoDaddy, but there is no way I would want to use their email solution when I can do everything better in Google Apps.
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efreitag Germany Local time: 22:09 Member (2006) Dutch to German + ...
GoogleMail and Blackberry
Nov 28, 2011
Michael Beijer wrote:
Don't forget that there are many versions of 'Gmail'. I highly recommend Google Apps for Business:
That way you can have your domain in your email address, and:
- 25 GB storage
- 99.9% uptime guarantee SLA and
- 24x7 support
- SSO, forced SSL, custom password strength requirements and more, etc etc
$50 / user account / year
Incidentally, my website is actually hosted by GoDaddy, but there is no way I would want to use their email solution when I can do everything better in Google Apps.
Sorry if this is off-topic, but anyway:
Michael, this is interesting information, especially the bit about Blackberry integration that I've found under the link you provided. I didn't know this is possible, and this is the main reason I haven't switched to an Android phone yet. I'm very happy with my Blackberry, but Android would be nice as it offers an home automation app I would find really useful.
So, can anyone comment on how well GoogleMail works from the viewpoint of a Blackberry user? Will I be able to keep all my email adresses?
Kind regards,
Erik
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Armand C. Italy Local time: 22:09 German to English + ...
One other point about Google Apps
Nov 28, 2011
There also is a version that can be used for free, subject to some limitations with respect to the "Business" editions. The most relevant are probably that (1) no support is provided, and (2) the size of the mailbox is currently limited to about 7GB (and 20-something MB maximum size for each message, last time I checked), as for the free @gmail.com addresses.
One other major difference is that each subscription/domain is limited to 10 users. (It used to be 100 a couple of years ago, when they launched the service; then it was cut down to 50, and now to 10.) But I dare say there are not many freelancers who really need more than 10 different e-mail addresses on their domain.
For the rest, it's offering about the same services as any "normal" GMail account, including calendar, docs, etc. Oh, all accounts are also Google+ enabled since August or September.
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Claudio LR Switzerland Local time: 22:09 Member (2007) English to Italian + ...
Also no uptime guarantee
Nov 28, 2011
Armand C. wrote:
There also is a version that can be used for free, subject to some limitations with respect to the "Business" editions. The most relevant are probably that (1) no support is provided, and (2) the size of the mailbox is currently limited to about 7GB (and 20-something MB maximum size for each message, last time I checked), as for the free @gmail.com addresses.
One other major difference is that each subscription/domain is limited to 10 users. (It used to be 100 a couple of years ago, when they launched the service; then it was cut down to 50, and now to 10.) But I dare say there are not many freelancers who really need more than 10 different e-mail addresses on their domain.
For the rest, it's offering about the same services as any "normal" GMail account, including calendar, docs, etc. Oh, all accounts are also Google+ enabled since August or September.
To be added to the differences: no uptime guarantee
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Armand C. Italy Local time: 22:09 German to English + ...
Indeed, no uptime guarantee
Nov 28, 2011
But the uptime guarantee can be safely filed away in the "not worth mentioning" drawer in this particular case.
First, the uptime is not really an issue. Google uses six redundant clusters of e-mail servers, which can be configured for each domain (via the so-called "MX records"). The probability that they all fail at the same time is low, extremely low. Besides, you can always add yet another MX record where mail should be routed in case all Google servers fail.
Second, the 99.9% uptime guarantee might sound like some great deal, but... Doing the math, that only means Google promises your email won't be down for more than 8.75 hours a year (0.001*24*365). I'm not impressed.
Third, all e-mail hosted by Google, with or without uptime guarantee, is hosted on the same servers. In the unlikely case that all those servers fail, the only difference would be that paying members would get a number of days of free hosting in case of a monthly downtime of more than .1% of time, namely ~40-45 minutes/month (v. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/sla.html ).
Then, of course, there's the small detail that offering an "uptime guarantee" doesn't imply no catastrophic failure can ever happen. IIRC, not more than a few months ago, Amazon S3 (cloud storage) servers registered such an event. True, the customers received the sincerest apologies of the company, and presumably hosting free of charge for a number of days, but this still doesn't change the fact that tens of thousands of sites were inaccessible or unusable for almost a week, in spite of the 99.9% network uptime guarantee Amazon offers as well.
To sum it up, the uptime guarantee they offer is a species of marketing flypaper.
[Bearbeitet am 2011-11-28 18:28 GMT]
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Actually ,when we display company domain email ,there are many junk mail pouring ,it is really very headache ,almost everyday . Unlike company domain email ,Gmail has this function to prevent most of junk mail to upset me , so i perfer gmail.
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Samuel Murray Netherlands Local time: 22:09 Member (2006) English to Afrikaans + ...
I use Gmail because...
Dec 2, 2011
Alexandra Pirotte wrote:
I have just read in a thread about translation scams that a query received from a Gmail address can be seen as a potential red flag. That got me worried since I use a Gmail address to communicate with my business contacts. Does that make me look unprofessional?
I think if an agency uses a Gmail address, then it is a flag, but if a translator uses a Gmail address, it is less of a problem. One would expect an agency to be able to afford a web site and the necessary hosting fees to support a branded e-mail address. Translators, on the other hand, often use free or cheap things when it suits them, and I would not look askance if a colleagues used a Hotmail or Gmail address at all (there are other things that raise flags, e.g. some123name456@whatever.com...).
Gmail has many useful features that one don't always get with hosted domains. I have a web site with a domain name and I have the ability to set up e-mail addresses and aliases and FTP user names and stuff on the domain myself, but Gmail is just so much easier.
Gmail can handle larger attachments than my domain host can (unless I pay more money), and with Gmail I can keep all my mails on the server for years and years without having to worry about total space usage.
My domain host deletes all presumed spam directly, whereas Gmail keeps the spam in a spam folder, so that I can check it periodically for false positives.
With Gmail, my GoogleTalk chats are in the same place as my e-mails.
My domain host also offers webmail (two different ones, in fact), but Gmail is just soooooo much easier.
I often wonder whether my e-mail address makes me look unprofessional (or the way I greet clients in my mails), but one can tweak the little things in one's image forever and lose sight of the bigger things so easily.
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FarkasAndras Hungary Local time: 22:09 English to Hungarian + ...
G for business
Dec 2, 2011
Michael Beijer wrote:
Don't forget that there are many versions of 'Gmail'. I highly recommend Google Apps for Business:
That way you can have your domain in your email address, and:
- 25 GB storage
- 99.9% uptime guarantee SLA and
- 24x7 support
- SSO, forced SSL, custom password strength requirements and more, etc etc
$50 / user account / year
Incidentally, my website is actually hosted by GoDaddy, but there is no way I would want to use their email solution when I can do everything better in Google Apps.
If I were to get my own-domain email, this is pretty much the only solution I'd consider. People are sorely mistaken if they think that the email account they got from their ISP with their broadband contract or whatever provides better reliability than gmail. Every single agency I work for seems to have problems with their own in-house email system. Google and yahoo know how to provide reliable email service, stick with them. You can use whatever desktop client you want to, but leave the backend to the pros.
BTW I use a yahoo email address, and my opinion is that gmail and yahoo addresses are not unprofessional for freelancers at all. If a freelancer has an aol/hotmail/ISP email address, I might think they are not very tech savvy and be a bit reluctant to work with them on IT-related or technically complex projects. Conversely, if someone has a gmail address, that's a pretty good sign.
Of course it's different with agencies. An agency should generally have its own domain.
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The domain registrar offered me a free basic web site hosting package, with a tiny mailbox: only 20MB. At first I thought "OK, I will not use the mailbox; I will forward every mail to my hotmail address". But look what would happen in this case:
— A client sends me an e-mail to @glossotechnema.eu
— When I reply my @hotmail.gr address shows up as the sender's address, and it runs the risk of ending up in their Junk folder
So, I did this:
— I used Windows Live Custom Domains, which is a free service and lets you use a Hotmail mailbox, plus Office Web Apps, SkyDrive and Windows Live Messenger with your domain.
Now, my @glossotechnema.eu address has a 5GB mailbox, not a 20MB one.
Plus, I can use Skydrive for sending large files to my clients.
Plus, I can use Office Web Apps and Messegner with my professional address.
Plus, I get all my mail to Outlook and I can use all flags ("Today", "Tomorrow", "This week" etc.) and also colour-code my messages and tasks.
Plus, I can get all my business e-mail pushed to my mobile phone.
And all these things cost me 5 EUR: the amount I paid for registering my domain name for one year. I didn't have to pay for Office 365 or other 'premium' services.
What do you think of my solution?
[Edited at 2011-12-02 17:26 GMT]
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The translation workplace 
- but nowadays it's pretty much par for the course.
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