As part of its Apple Business update, Apple is gunning for Google's enterprise email business with its own Apple Business Mail hosting service.
Apple Business includes an important element regarding communication. It's finally going to bring out business email services.
As part of the new Apple Business, coming April 14 and replacing Apple Business Essentials, it will allow companies to set up email accounts alongside tools for calendar management and directories. Up to 500 users can be set up per organization under Apple Business.
Custom domain names can be used with the service, either bought externally or directly through Apple.
The hosting element will use each account's free 5GB iCloud storage allocation, as usual for Apple. However, they can also upgrade the storage per user, going up to 2 terabytes per user, for a monthly fee.
A play for businesses
While there will be obvious support for Apple Mail, the email service won't be limited to just Apple's ecosystem. It will also work with any email client that supports IMAP, so Windows and Android users can also use the service.
Apple Business Mail, alongside new elements for calendars, directories, and device management, gives Apple a business ecosystem similar to collections like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 tools.
A key thing to remember here is that Apple is offering all of this for free, aside from any costs for domains or storage increases. Free is a big driver for enterprise, especially those stung by Google's gradual phasing out of its own free business tiers over the years.
