I have been really surprised over the last few months at the amount of people who have been referred to Broadbyte with email capable mobile phones that they have never been able to get working properly. Either they have no access to e-mail at all, or they can only receive e-mail. These people, or their company, have spent good money on the latest smart phone technology yet aren't reaping the benefits of their investment. This trend hasn't been confined to one particular phone, OS or manufacturer; I have seen these problems on Symbian, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.

In my opinion, none of these problems have been a fault of the individual phones, the OS, or the email software. In fact in general they are all very straight forward to configure. However if you do run into problems then they can be a little tricky to resolve if you don't have at least a small amount of knowledge on e-mail protocols. The alarming recurring theme amongst all of these problems is that the mobile carrier was either unwilling or unable to help, or at least point the customer in the right direction for a solution.

The main problems users of the phones faced when setting up their email can be split into two categories of email, SMTP (for POP3 and IMAP email), and Exchange Server. I'll deal with both of these separately.

SMTP (for POP3 and IMAP email)

In the majority of cases where this is the problem, users have managed to set their phones up to receive e-mail, however they are unable to send e-mails. This is generally because the incorrect SMTP details have been entered. Even if you have entered the exact same settings as you have in Outlook (or other email client), they may not necessarily be appropriate for your mobile. The reason for this is that many POP3, and IMAP email providers recommend that you use your ISPs (Internet Service Providers) SMTP server to send e-mail. ISPs generally only allow their SMTP servers to be accessed from devices connected to their broadband network. Therefore this will work fine on your PC when using outlook (or another e-mail client) as it is connected to your broadband, however, as your phone doesn't use the broadband connection these SMTP settings won't work for sending e-mail on your mobile.

You therefore have two options:

1. Use an SMTP server from another e-mail account. Most mobile networks provide an SMTP server that you can use if you sign up to their e-mail service (or you could sign up for a gmail account and use their SMTP server). The downside of this solution is that the actual e-mail address that sends the e-mail won't be the main account you want to use. This may not concern you as reply e-mails will still go to the correct address, however it can look unprofessional if you are using the e-mail for business purposes.
2. Find your email providers SMTP settings. Although many e-mail providers recommend that you use your ISPs SMTP server, they generally have their own as well but are not so forthcoming with that information. If you delve around deeply enough in their FAQs on their website you can generally find the correct settings, and if not you can always try phoning them for these details. This is the ideal solution as all e-mails will be sent from your actual e-mail address. If your email provider doesn't offer an SMTP server I'd recommend you move to another which does (please contact us for a recommended email provider). 

Exchange Server

For mobile phones which need to be configured to access an exchange server, the majority of problems I have found are actually due to the exchange server not being configured correctly (or at all) for mobile email access. In this scenario you really need to speak to your network administrator, or IT provider if it is configured or hosted by an external company. (Just a small plug now for my own company: we do configure exchange servers as one of our services, so if you don't have an IT provider or you do but they can't get your phone email setup please complete our contact us form and we'll quote to sort this out for you. It is only a small job so it shouldn't cost too much).

Due to the different setups that all organisations and e-mail providers have, I'm afraid this article can't give you the correct settings to fix your specific problem, however, if you are still experiencing problems sending or receiving e-mail from your mobile phone after reading this article, please enter details of the problem in our contact us form and we'll try our best to help.

Google Apps has now been available for a couple of years, and has recently been given an official non beta status by Google. I believe that with the improvements that Google have made over the past few years, Google Apps is now a viable, cost effective alternative to other email and office solutions. Here are 5 good reasons why you should consider Google Apps:

1. It's all backed up

All of your e-mail, contacts, diary entries, documents etc are saved on Google's servers. Therefore should you lose your laptop, or suffer a hard drive failure all you need to do is log on to another computer and they are all available to you straight away! No waiting, no restore process, you can just get on with your work. This is my favourite feature of Google Apps, as for small businesses their e-mail, contacts and diary are generally the one thing they can't do without and now they won’t have to. An alternative backup method could cost £10 a month for only 1GB of information. Using Google Apps you will have a whopping 7GB storage available for free (25GB if you use the premier edition for £33 per year).

2. Access it from anywhere

Wherever you have access to the internet, you have access to all of your important information. Maybe you are at a client’s office and need to arrange an appointment, you could check your diary on their PC. Or you can access it all direct from your mobile phone, or direct from the comfort of your desk via your favourite e-mail client (e.g. Outlook).

3. More cost effective than exchange hosting

Many businesses use either their own exchange server, or a hosted exchange server for sending and receiving e-mails as well as keeping track of their contacts and calendars. Hosting your own exchange server can cost thousands of pounds for the initial setup, plus ongoing support and maintenance fees. Subscribing to a hosted exchange service can cost in the region of £10 per month (plus setup fees) with a storage limit of only 2GB. Using Google Apps you get a hosted email service, plus calendar and contacts with a 7GB storage limit for free, or a 25GB storage limit for £33 per year.

4. Built in Antivirus, Anti-Spam, and Message filtering

Google Apps includes built in antivirus, anti spam, and message filtering services (message filtering on premium edition only). This saves you the cost of upgrading and maintaining your own email security and filtering software. (NOTE: you should still maintain good security practices on your individual servers and PC's and at the perimeter of your network).

5. Offline Access

A real concern that many have when using 'cloud' applications, is that if you lost internet connectivity you would lose all of your important information. With Google apps you are able to access all of your data offline so this needn't be a worry.

Summary

There are of course many other advantages and some disadvantages to making the move to Google Apps, but hopefully this covers the big benefits and demonstrates that in the majority of cases it should work out cheaper. There will be many indvidual factors relating to each business that could effect your decision to move to google apps, and you should of course weigh up all of the pros and cons before you make the move.

If you would like a free consultation of the benefits and cost savings that using Google Apps could bring to your organisation please visit our contact us page and either complete the form, or contact us via one of the other methods listed.