Microsoft’s email client is one of the most used around the world, with a huge number of users. Among these clients, the most prominent are those who make use of the service for their companies.
Thinking about this profile, Microsoft launched in 2011 the application suite known as Office 365, in which, in addition to the office automation programs Microsoft, a version of Outlook was included with special characteristics for companies.
While the Using this version of Microsoft Outlook is similar to your version free, It has many more very interesting tools, and in the next few paragraphs we will teach you everything you need to know about them.
What is Outlook for Business?
Outlook 365, or Business Outlook, is an email assistant released in June 2011 as part of the Office 365 Subscription Toolkit. It is an improved version of the mail assistant to which we have free access. The improvements in this version are intended for use by companies, with the aim of improving their performance through the use of information managers that allow us a continuous 24-hour work rhythm.
Thanks to these tools, employees using Outlook 365 have access to shared calendar, desktop and mobile applications, security add-ons, and smart inbox, among many other features. In addition to the tools provided for users, Outlook 365 has security features that allow the protection of sensitive information against threats like phishing or Information theft.
What are the benefits of using Outlook in your business?
The main benefit of a tool as versatile as Outlook is the increase in productivity that can facilitate, since in addition to providing a means of rapid communication between the members of the company, it gives employees access to a multitude of time and resource management tools.
In addition to this, the native functions of the Outlook mail service, added to the benefits provided by the Office 365 payment package, provides us with a large number of benefits, among which we can highlight:
- Easy handling and control of the interface: the interface and access to functions of Outlook remain intact, so that anyone who has used it before, in its free web application, will not have any problem handling the Premium version.
- Unify your email accounts: The paid version of Outlook allows you to collect data from several email accounts in a single inbox, regardless of whether they are from different providers, so that we can check our emails more comfortably in our Outlook tray. Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo!, for example.
- Mobile device adaptation function: By logging into the mobile application with an account attached to the Microsoft 365 application package, we will be able to access the Premium functions from our mobile device.
- Control and scheduling of meetings and conversations: With the meeting scheduling feature, users can improve their response times, saving the effort of contacting other team members.
- Links shared in the cloud: Being a business communication service, it offers the ability to quickly share links to files stored in the cloud, thus saving considerable hard disk space and promoting information security.
- Fast sending of attachments: Outlook offers its users the ability to send and receive attachments of almost any type. This greatly facilitates the transmission of sensitive information, data and discounts between members of the working group.
Outlook for Business Fees How much does it cost and what does it offer?
The paid version of Office 365 contains, among other tools, a version of the Outlook mail client with certain differences and improvements regarding the resources offered to the user.
In this sense, we can find a diversity of management tools that will allow better management of the user’s time and resources. Notably these functions are included as part of a work package. Of course, there are a number of options for acquiring Office services that come in a variety of prices.
The packages that can be purchased are as follows:
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic: Microsoft’s core business service includes only Exchange applications, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams. Although it includes the Exchange service, which can serve as a mail server, the Outlook application is not included in this package. You can purchase this service for € 5 per month per user
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard: In the standard Microsoft 365 package, Outlook contains basic email services plus access to time management tools such as smart calendar and to-do list Everything. The monthly price per user of this plan is 12.50 USD.
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium: The Premium version of Outlook has functions such as email personalization, high-level security, inbox encryption, adblocker, among many other facilities. To acquire this service with all its functions, the price is € 20 per user per month.
Microsoft Exchange What is this Microsoft 365 business tool?
Microsoft Exchange is a software developed by the creator of Windows to promote collaboration between business users through email accounts dedicated to professional or educational use. Exchange collaboration tools enable fast exchange of critical documents, and provides the user with a priority inbox, showing important emails first, and adapting to their work style.
This inbox adapts in an automated and intuitive way to the user’s operating methods, customized according to these and acquiring very useful features that are enhanced thanks to the add-ons you have access to.
It also has organization and time management tools, as a highly effective calendar that goes far beyond reminders and appointment notes. This calendar analyzes your mail and automatically captures events, noting them as future events with very little user intervention.
List of Best Outlook Alternatives for Business
In the same way that it happens with any other email service, the decision as to whether its features are as necessary is entirely up to the user, so maybe Outlook may not be the one for you.
If this is the case, do not worry, since there is a wide variety of email clients with very interesting characteristics that will be more useful to apply in your company’s communications:
Thunderbird.net
It is an open source multiplatform email client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. It also works as a news reader, chat application and calendar. It was created under the principles of free software, so it is completely free. It also has very interesting tools such as email account setup wizard, through which we can log into several accounts corresponding to different clients.
PMail.com
It is an email client created to be used by single or multiple users on individual computers, or connected to a local network. It was released in 1990 and since then It has served millions of users with its great power packed into a very compact size.
Its main attraction lies in its simplicity, since can function as an internal mail system on its own, without the need to add plugins. This is because it can send emails using the standard protocols: POP3, SMTP and IMAP.
SpikeNow.com
Spike Mail is a multiplatform email service available to Windows Y MacOS, in addition to having a web portal and mobile applications available for Android Y iOS.
With this service, We can see our mailbox in a conversation format that will make it much easier to locate certain emails. It also has functions such as calendar, contact list, chat and video function, with the possibility of exchanging voice messages.
Google Workspace
Workspace is a Google service that could be described as the counterpart of Office 365, since it is a set of business applications that provide a custom business domain name. Workspace’s native email app is Gmail, and it also has access to functions such as Google Calendar, Tasks, Google office applications and its own app store for Workspace called Marketplace.