Best Email Provider for Two People

[logokster]

Hi,
My sister in law and I are wedding photographers in business together. I use a Mac with Windows installed and she uses a PC. We are having a lot of trouble determining the best email provider to utilize. We have email accounts through yahoo and gmail. We want one email address/account so we can see when each other has responded to an email and track everything together so things do not get confusing. The yahoo account is no good because everytime we send an email it goes to the recipients spam folder and yahoo technicians say that is our problem not theirs. Gmail is no good because the filing system through them is no good. We prefer an Outlook style archive where you can create folders to file.

What do you recommend?

We would love to use Outlook but do not have a server to put the .pst file. Thank you for your help. That is the only way I know how to use a .pst file.

Alanna

 

[mediaguru]

Sorry you haven't received any replies on this until now; your question might have been responded to more quickly in one of the help forums.

PST files are for locally-stored Outlook data on a Windows computer and cannot be shared for multiple users. Based on what you have described, any e-mail service that uses Internet Message Access Protocol or IMAP might work best for you, instead. IMAP allows an email application such as Outlook, Entourage, or Mail.app connect to your mail account and use folders for organization. IMAP leaves all messages and related data on the email server, so multiple users can access the account from different computers and see the same information. The downside to this approach is that you will probably need a constant Internet connection.

There are many paid IMAP mail services, including Apple's own .mac service (soon to be MobileMe). Almost all Web hosting services also offer IMAP email accounts. Gmail actually offers IMAP on its accounts, and it is free. When using an email client such as Mail.app or Outlook, Gmail will actually work much like other email accounts you are used to using (Folders you set up in Outlook, for example, will translate into message "labels" when using the Gmail website).