Back story

Back in May, shortly after setting up a Google Apps account (to help me manage email for the various domains that I own), I had the idea to write an article on the blog explaining why it was awesome, and why anyone running a small business should use it (i.e. it was Gmail for your own domain, you had up to ten mailboxes for free, compatability with other Google services, etc..)

Google drop the bomb

Fast forward to the second week of December, during which time I was on holiday in Iceland (no I didn’t see the Aurora Borealis, but I did go spelunking), and the news broke that Google will no longer be offering their free plan to new subscribers.

The news continued to reassure existing customers that it would have no impact on them, and that they’ll be able to continue using the service for free – which of course was a big relief for me personally, but a huge disappointment as I knew that I’d no longer be able to offer it as a solution to my customers.

So what now?

So what do you do if you’re one of the unlucky ones that took too long to get an account set-up? Thankfully the answer to that question can be found in an article on Lifehacker.

For the most part, I’m only be interested in the email hosting facilities, for which the article offers a couple of solutions, including that of sticking with Google Apps (after all, $50 per user per year isn’t too expensive, considering everything you get for the money), which I would happily recommend to my customers that can afford it, but for anyone looking for a free lunch, depending upon their needs, I think I’d recommend Zoho Mail or Outlook.com:

Zoho Mail

Zoho offer a single domain with up to three 5GB mailboxes, which (importantly) features two-way mobile sync functionality (which I think it fancy talk for IMAP). You might be slightly put off by the fact you might have never heard of Zoho before, but they offer a wide range of business apps, and reportedly have seven million users.

Outlook.com

Outlook.com offer a very generous 500 mailboxes for free (far more than many of my customers are going to need), and I believe that you’re able to host multiple domains with them, but they don’t offer IMAP (although it is apparently coming soon). Being a Microsoft product should also put your mind at rest in relation to stability (and the fact that they’ll hopefully not be going anywhere for a while).

Watch this space

At this time I’ve not yet used either of these services, so I can’t yet give any opinions on them, but as I intend to try them out with future customers as soon as possible, I’ll come back and update this post accordingly once this happens.

Essentials

Bitbucket (Free)

I like GitHub. I use it to host my public repositories and I like what it has done for both Git (making it the de facto version control system) and the open source movement (made it easy for people across the world to collaborate on open source projects for free). But as a lone developer who currently manages 41 (and counting) private repos. across two accounts, it would cost me $100 per month to host them on GitHub.

BitBucket, on the other hand, since it added support for Git, does everything that GitHub does, but charges according  to number of users on each repo., and seeing as each repo gets 5 (or up to 8 if you refer people) users for free, I’d be throwing my money away if I didn’t use them.

Dropbox (Free)

At the time of writing my Dropbox account has 23 GBs of free storage, of which I’m using just under 80%. This is quite a bit more than the 2 GBs of free storage you start with, but if you know how, it’s quite possible to get this much (if not more) with relative ease.

Google Apps (Free)

Google Apps is a great way of having a Gmail account on your own domain name. Sure, it’s possible (via a series of email forwards, aliases, additional reply to settings, et al) to sort of do this with a regular Gmail account, but Google Apps is much more fluid, and provided you don’t set-up more than 10 mailboxes on your domain, it’s totally free. (I plan on writing a full review of Google Apps at some point in the future, so watch this space).

Basecamp (Budget package @ $20/month)

Since it’s recent rebuild, Basecamp has gone from strength to strength. I used to use Asana for my project management needs, which is free for up to 30 collaborative members, but Basecamp, which allows me unlimited collaborative members across ten active (and unlimited inactive) projects, just works better.

BE Broadband (Pro @ £28.89/month)

I think this is a very reasonable rate for what I get: 14 meg download speed, a static IP, unlimited downloads, and telephone line rental. I’m tempted to go for a fibre optic connection in my next flat, but I’m happy with this for now.

Hetzner (X2 Dedicated Server @ €29.00/month)

Up until around a year ago I was more than happy using JustHost. I had a 50% off discount code (50OFF), and paid two years in advance, meaning that hosting all my websites cost me less than £2 per month – but this was holding back my development. Since setting up my dedicated server (a local development server with the same set-up) I’ve learnt a lot about server management, Bash, Git, Apache, BIND, Samba, and so much more (even if I did get hacked in the process).

Backup script (Free)

Using a slightly modified version of a script created by Gina Trapani, both of my servers automatically create a backup, which is saved to my Dropbox account, at midnight every day. I mention this only as Chris pays $40 a month per site for for a backup solution called VaultPress.

GIT-FTP (Free)

In a similar vein to the backup script above, whereas Chris spends $15 a month to use Beanstalk to deploy his Git-based projects, on projects where I don’t have SSH access to the server, I use a simple Bash script written by René Moser.

Font Squirrel (Free)

If you’re looking for a custom font to use on a website you can’t go far wrong looking for it on Font Squirrel. Not only do they have over 800 (and counting) font families available, each of which is 100% free for commercial use, but they also provide all the tools you need to make them work. Move over Typekit, Font Squirrel got it covered.

Optional

Orange (Panther 26 @  £32.35/month)

Although not strictly needed for my job, my Android-powered mobile phone lets me keep connected on the move.

Conclusion

Unlike my previous post – which said that even though I was paid a fraction of his start-up costs, I still had all the same abilities as him – this post tells a slightly different story.

Like my previous post, I’ve listed various free alternatives to services that Chris pays for, but on a number of occasions, while the free alternative is OK, you get more for your money with Chris’s option.

For example, I’ve got 23 GBs of free storage on Dropbox, but it has cost me time and effort to amass that amount, which I did by testing beta editions of the software, linking my university account and around four years of referrals.

Also quite telling is what I don’t have on my list, such as the lack of CDN services – although It could be argued that none of my sites need it (I get nowhere near the levels of traffic that Chris gets) – or accounts/invoicing – I don’t have enough freelance clients to make this a necessity currently.

Anyway, all in all, just under £100 is leaving my account each month. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more freelance clients in the near future, and this amount can go up as I pay for more services, but in the meantime, I think this is pretty reasonable.