Google Workspace, set up for a small team.
Accounts, email routing, calendars, shared drives and permissions, done once at the start so you're not unpicking it later when somebody joins or leaves.
I'm in Bridgend, working with small businesses across South Wales and remotely UK-wide.
Why it's worth doing deliberately
Workspace is easy to sign up for and easy to get quietly wrong. The usual version is one person creates it, everything ends up owned by their account, shared addresses forward to a personal inbox, permissions are whatever the defaults were. It works until somebody leaves.
Doing it deliberately takes a bit longer at the start and saves the awkward conversation later, when the files somebody needs belong to an account you've just turned off.
The parts that matter
These are the ones that cause trouble when they're left at the defaults.
Accounts and email
Addresses on your own domain rather than a gmail.com one, routed so mail goes where it should. That includes the shared ones, info@ and accounts@, which need to reach more than one person.
Calendars and shared drives
Files that belong to the business rather than one person's personal account, and calendars people can see. This is the bit that saves arguments when somebody leaves.
Permissions
Who sees what, who can share outside the company, who has admin. Left at the defaults this ends up either far too open or annoying enough that people work around it.
Then I show you how to run it
Adding and removing people is the thing you'll do most often, so I'll walk you through it before I finish rather than leave you with an admin console and good luck.
Workspace on its own doesn't decide whether your mail reaches people. If your quotes and invoices have been landing in spam, that's a separate problem on your domain, worth sorting at the same time.
Questions people ask first
Do I actually need Workspace, or is free Gmail fine?
If it's just you and you're happy on a gmail.com address, free Gmail is fine and I'll say so. Once you want addresses on your own domain, shared files that don't belong to one person, or more than a couple of people, Workspace starts making sense.
Will this stop my email going to spam?
Not on its own. Workspace gives you the pieces to switch on, but the records that decide whether you get delivered sit on your domain and still need doing. That's a separate job and it's covered on the email deliverability page.
Can I add someone to the team myself afterwards?
Yes, and I'll show you how before I finish. Adding and removing people is the thing you'll do most often, it shouldn't need a phone call to me every time somebody joins.
What happens to the files when somebody leaves?
If the setup's right, nothing dramatic. The work sits in shared drives owned by the business, so you turn off their account and carry on. If it all lives in personal drives, this is the moment it hurts.
Tell me who needs an account.
How many of you there are and what you're on now is enough to start with. If free Gmail would do the job I'll tell you that instead. I aim to reply within a working day.