The difference between Gmail, a Google Account, an Apps Account, and an Apps for Business Account

Do you know what kind of Google Apps Account you have? Do you even know if you have a Google Apps account? There are many variations of accounts associated with Google from a basic Gmail account to a paid and fully secured Google Apps for Business Account. In this post, I will explain the four types of Google accounts and how they apply to enterprise users.

Differences

If you are confused about the different types of Google accounts, you are not alone. As Google’s product offering grows, they repeatedly change the name of account types and services. They also change the permissions and features associated with each account on a somewhat random basis. This is not a criticism of Google; it’s just the nature of the rapid development process of cloud applications. Google also uses the words app, application, product, and service inconsistently throughout their product documentation.

There are really four types of Google Accounts that you should know when it comes to Google for the Enterprise.

Gmail

A Gmail account is a free Google Account with an email address that ends in @gmail.com. Gmail accounts arrived on the scene back in 2004, and they were such a hot commodity that users needed to receive invitations in order to acquire account. At the time, the 1GB of storage space and the clever threading of conversations seemed so modern in contrast to the tired old Yahoo and Hotmail accounts. As the amount of free storage space grew, so did the applications that were associated with a Gmail account.

From the Gmail mailbox, user can also access Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites. The account also allows users to instantly login to the other applications like Picasa, Blogger and Maps.

Many Gmail users like the application and the anytime/anywhere access so much that they arrange to have their work email forwarded to Gmail. This is more common in smaller organizations where email security is more lax. The account settings of Gmail allow one to use their business email address to appear as the “reply from” address. Gmail accounts are administered by the individual who owns the account and not the business’ IT administrator.

Google account

A Google account is a user name and password that can be used to login to Google applications like Docs, Sites, Maps and Search (This is different than a Google Apps Account). These accounts do not necessarily end with “@gmail.com”. For example, a user can sign up for a Google Apps account that is associated with her @yahoo email address. Using this account she can create, edit and collaborate on Google Docs without using the Google Email system. A common myth is that Google Apps users cannot share and edit Google Docs with users who do not have a Google Apps account. But anyone can sign up for a free Google Account and use it to access and edit share docs and files.

Google Apps account

A Google Apps account (stressing the words “apps”) is an account associated with a domain that uses Google Apps (mail, calendar, docs and sites) for messaging and collaboration. When this product was first introduced it was called “Google Apps for Your Domain, then it was called “Google Apps Standard Edition” and now it’s just “Google Apps”.

These accounts currently come with 7GB of email storage space, access to Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Sites. This type of account is useful for organizations, clubs, and informal groups that do not need the enhanced security, support and administration options of Google Apps for Business. The only type of support that comes with this account is a link to the Google Help Center and Google Help User Forum. These accounts are free; however the domain is limited to ten users at one time.

Google Apps for Business

Google Apps accounts are nice to have, but when it comes to Enterprise the only real player in the game is the Google Apps for Business account. Google Apps for Business was previously called “Google Apps Premier Edition”. These accounts allow each user access to 25GB in Gmail storage space, Calendar, Mail, Docs, Google Video and Google Groups for Business. Businesses are guaranteed 99.9% uptime as well as email and phone support.

The accounts also come with access to the migration tools which are necessary when migrating old messages, calendar items, and contacts from legacy systems. Google Apps for Business also includes access to Postini Message and Security services at no additional cost. A Google Apps for Business account is the only type of Google account that isn’t free. The price is $50 for each user for each year or roughly $5/month. These accounts and services are managed by an Admin in the Google Apps Dashboard.

Comparisons

If you want to compare the features of Google Apps versus Google Apps for Business I recommend going deeper. It also shows the features of Google Apps for Education which is only available to schools and universities.

Many Google users have multiple types of account. For example, I have two Gmail accounts, a Google Account associated with my Yahoo account, and three Google Apps for Business accounts for the three domains that I own and manage.

MOVING ON TO THE TOP....GIVING UP THE REGULAR GOOGLE ACCNT AND GOIN' UP TO A GOOGLE APPS ACCNT

A few months ago I switched from my normal Google account (@gmail.com) to my Google Apps account (@filiwiese.com). I ran into a few snags along the way and I haven’t solved them all yet, however I thought it might be useful to share my experiences so far with my readers so you can consider what I have learned.

First, you will need to sign up for a Google Apps account, register your domain name (or use a domain you have already registered) and verify your domain ownership. Once you have done all of that we can move on to the next step: migrating your email.

Migrating Your Email

In order to email from your Google Apps account, you will need to activate the Gmail service in your Google Apps control panel. Once you have done this, you have two options:

1. Start over with a clean slate, in which case you can move on to the next topic.
2. Migrate your email from your normal Gmail account to your Google Apps Gmail account.

If you decide to migrate your email (like I did), you may want to explore one of the following two options:

1. A popular paid option is the easiest but requires your to share your password (even if you temporarily change it) to a third party and also your emails will temporarily stored on third party servers. If privacy is your top priority (although they have a good privacy policy), then personally I would probably decide against this option.
2. Alternatively, a free option is to do it yourself by using POP3 from one Gmail account to another.

It is important to keep in mind that both options mentioned above will take a few days to complete and your chat history is main thing that will not be transferred (unfortunately I did not find a solution for migrating the chat history). I tried both options to see if I was able to also transfer my chat history. Both options mentioned above worked absolutely fine for me.

After you migrated your emails, you can also migrate your contacts by exporting them as Google CSV from your old account and import them into your new account.

Once you have migrated your contacts you will need to invite your friends to Chat in order to use Google Chat on your Google Apps account.

That is it! You have migrated your email to your Google Apps Gmail account.

Migrating Google Calender

Just like Gmail, you will need to activate the Calendar service in your Google Apps control panel. Once you have done this, you have again two options:

1. Share your normal Google Calendars (on your normal Google account) with your new Google Apps account. Be sure to set the permissions to “Make changes to events” to enable edit rights for your Google Apps account.
2. First export your existing calendar events as CSV from your normal Google account, and then import these into your main calendar in your Google Apps account.

Of the two options described above, I went with the second option. Mainly because the second option has as major advantage that all your events are added into your main calendar. I found that maintaining calendar events and notification in the first option became very messy very quickly.

That is it! Let’s tackle the next service: Google Docs.

Migrating Your Documents

I love Google Docs! I don’t know why people still send around Word and Excel files (even if you make a spreadsheet, you can better share it with your friends/colleagues if it is in the cloud). Google Docs allows me to share the latest version with anyone without having to send around another file. Also, I can edit/access the documents in any modern browser and I don’t need to start up another program. I really love that too!

Of course I am using Google Docs extensively within Google (like most Googlers), and also in my private life. Allowing me to share plans for trips (in spreadsheets) with my partner or save a PDF file or writing a blog post and using the comment feature get feedback on it from friends (like this post) is extremely handy.

If you haven’t used it yet that much, I suggest you to also activate the Google Docs service in your Google Apps control panel. And start using it!

If you have been using it already, you probably want to move your files to your Google Apps account. In order to do this, also do activate the service and again you have two options:

1. Share the documents you would like to have in your Google Apps account with your new Google Apps account. Now you should be able to see them in the Document List of your Google Apps account. In case you want to move ownership, be sure to change the sharing rights with your Google Apps account to “Is Owner”.
2. Then you can remove the old Google account from the sharing and voila, your document has moved (including revision history) to your Google Apps account.
3. The second option you can explore is to download all the files from your normal Google account to your computer. Once you have done that, you can upload your files into your new Google Apps account (you may need to unzip the downloaded files first).

What used to be a problem for Google Apps account (versus normal Google accounts) was the limitation of space. Until recently you only had 1GB storage space in your Google Apps account for Google Docs and you were unable to purchase more storage space (unlike the normal Google account, where you could purchase more storage space). Luckily this is not an issue anymore.

Now that we have moved over our Gmail, Calendar and Docs, lets migrate our Google Reader.

Migrating Your Feeds

I also use Google Reader extensively. It allows me to keep my inbox empty and most importantly: the content comes to me (I don’t have to search for the latest update of a favorite blog). I guess that most of the readers of this blog are also using Google Reader so here is how your migrate your feeds.

First open Google Reader in your normal Google account. Then export your subscriptions to an OPML file. Now go to your Google Reader in your Google Apps account and import the OPML file you have just exported.

Important to keep in mind: Exporting and importing the OPML file will not migrate the read/unread statuses of the feed items in your Google Reader. This means that your Google Reader on your Google Apps account will have no idea which feed items in which feed you have already read in Google Reader on your normal Google account. As such, I suggest you quickly go through your Google Reader on your normal Google account and make sure you have read everything before exporting the OPML file. Then once you import the OPML file into your Google Reader in your Google account, mark everything (all feed items) as read and you are at the state where you left off on your normal Google account. Note that there are other ways around this, but I found this to be the easiest.

Now that we have also tackled Google Reader, lets have a look at Google Bookmarks.

Migrating Your Bookmarks

Most of us will have bookmarks stored in Google Chrome, and if you have synced Chrome with your account then you don’t have to worry about losing them. However I also found it come in handy to use Google Bookmarks to store my other bookmarks (the ones I don’t want to have in my browser drop down menu). Although it is made easy to export your bookmarks from Google Bookmarks, importing bookmarks into Google Bookmarks is not that easy (to say the least).

My solution so far has been as follows:

The first step is to go to Google Bookmarks on your normal Google account and click the “Export bookmarks” link in the left hand menu. This will trigger a download of your bookmarks in a HTML file.