Amazon’s got mail: The Web giant has launched a cloud-based business email service that will go up against Google Apps for Work.
Dubbed Amazon WorkMail, the secure, managed client allows users to send and receive messages, manage contacts, share calendars, and book resources using familiar email applications.
WorkMail eliminates the need to purchase and license email servers. Email is instead hosted in the cloud, via Amazon.
WorkMail is compatible with Microsoft Outlook, and lets customers integrate existing corporate directories, choose encryption keys, select saved data locations, and pay only for the mailboxes they create.
“Customers have repeatedly asked us for a business email and calendaring service that is more cost-effective and simpler to manage than their on-premises solution [and] more secure than the cloud-based offerings available today,” Peter De Santis, Amazon Web Services’ vice president of computer services, said in a statement.
In addition to integrated security and privacy controls, WorkMail offers Microsoft Active Directory compatibility and access from any device—desktop browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE) and any mobile device that supports the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol (iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, Fire Phone, Android, Windows Phone).
Users can also share and collaborate on documents using Amazon WorkDocs from within the email client.
“We built Amazon WorkMail to address these requests and to help businesses achieve agility and cost savings by letting AWS manage the non-differentiated heavy lifting involved in corporate email and calendaring,” De Santis said.
Interested businesses can sign up online for a free 30-day trial for up to 25 users. Still in preview mode, WorkMail costs $4 per user, per month—including 50GB of storage for each person. Bundle the email service with Amazon WorkDocs for $6 per user, per month, with 200GB of document storage.
Google’s corporate email offering dates back to 2006. Firms that sign up for the search giant’s email service can then access their corporate email via the familiar Gmail interface.
