Relying on Free Services for Business

[Will]

What's your view and experience with using free services as part of your business?

Would you put any dependence upon them?

For example, would you have your email address printed onto your business cards and stationery if it were provided by a free service such as HoTMail or Google Mail?

[michael]

It's an interesting one Will, I mean there is a natural caution when dealing with businesses who use a free email address at first as you want to be sure of their credibility. The problem being that if your using a free email address have you got a website, i.e everyones got a website!

Theres no getting away from however the fact that some free email services like googlemail provide a great service with loads of webspace to store your emails...

[Will]

Even the mighty Google has its share of problems (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/26/personalized_homepage_malfunction/).

I'd agree that there's a potential credibility issue. After all, what are potential customers going to think when they learn a company is using the same email service that their 12-year old son uses to chat to his friends about football?

Do you think the same thing applies to other free services? Vistaprint (http://www.vistaprint.co.uk), for example?

One of the main concerns I have with free services is the lack of accountability i.e. if something goes wrong (or even just changes) with a free service that you're using then there's often little incentive for the service provider to put things right. You're getting a free service so that doesn't give you the right to complain does it?

Sure, there's voting with your feet, but if you've already had a full stationery pack printed then that free service doesn't look quite so good value any more.

[michael]

Yeah i agree thats why have full disaster recovery with our free service. No ones ever had to use it but its there as a back up and to show our on going commitment to the customer.
Part of the problem is how most apparantly free services are paid for....

Re email providers there are loads of webmailed based providers, such as uk2, where you can get an email address and customise your out going emails enabling your customers to reply to something@whatever.co.uk if you have bought the domanin name for a couple of quid but havent had a site built yet etc....

[Will]

I find contingency measures are always a good selling point, at least to those who appreciate that things can and do go wrong with any system.

I once used a free fax number provided by eFax.com; a well-known provider. All was fine until their suppliers forced a number reallocation!

Nothing was broken and normal service wasn't affected, but my free fax number was now different to what was on my stationery.

As Yoda would say,

Not impressed, was I.

[michael]

Yeah I can imagine! Thats why we do the full call reports and complete disaster recovery. Even if they never use them (and we work hard to make sure they won't need to!) it's proven to be a really positive assurance to the customer that if anything did go wrong we've got it covered, also at no extra cost.
It breeds peace of mind in a world were it's hard to believe that things can really be free without there being a price to pay in the form of relaibility or service levels etc...