"Google Apps Standard Edition makes it easy for your club, family, sports team or group to communicate and collaborate online - and it's free."

I often see business cards for smaller companies or side businesses that provide an e-mail address from a free service (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc).  With Google's offering of Google Apps, I hereby declare this to be no longer acceptable.

Anyone familiar with Gmail most likely agrees that it's a great service.  Google Apps offers the same e-mail, calendar, and Google Docs services for your own domain names.  Best of all, the Standard Edition is free!  No high costs for Windows & Exchange Servers and Client Access Licenses, nor horrible webmail clients offered by most web hosting packages.  The free Standard Edition allows 50 user accounts for your domain and offers over 7GB per mailbox.  The integrated Google Docs lets you open, edit, save and share Word & Excel documents online allowing easy anytime, anywhere access being in the cloud.

Those looking for more advanced and business-oriented features may consider paying for the Premier Edition.  At $50 per user, it's quite a step up from being free, but it's a consideration for larger companies spending thousands per year on hardware, software, and IT support and maintenance.  Some of the highlights include unlimited users and 25GB per mailbox.

Click here to check out the Standard/Premier comparison chart.

Google Apps is a dream for mobile users.  There's contact & calendar sync and push email support for iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry (requires BES for push) devices. Check out Google Apps for Mobile info here.