June 3, 2004--Small businesses no longer have to rely on whatever email services they can get from the provider of their Internet dialup or high speed access service. Even the smallest businesses can now have the same level of service previously available only to large corporations, thanks to a new service from WebGusto, a Dallas-area Internet services company. "Picomail" is an email service with the ease of use of Hotmail or AOL's email, but with built-in features previously available only with in-house corporate email systems and support staff.

"Picomail allows businesses to handle email in a businesslike manner," says WebGusto founder Bill Sholar.

Each business gets its own domain name (such as example.com), and can set up as many accounts (such as joe@example.com, purchasing@example.com, etc.) as needed.

"If you are The Example Corp, doesn't it just make sense for all your email to go to addresses at example.com? Do you know of any business of any substance that doesn't use its own name, or something close, for its email addresses?" asks Sholar. "Every Picomail account comes with the domain name of your choice, as long as someone else hasn't already taken it."

Businesses can optionally elect to have an "email receptionist" who can review and redirect incoming email addressed to functional names such as Sales, Service, Personnel, and so forth, as well as email addressed to employees who are away from the office. Likely "junk" email ("SPAM") may be redirected to the email receptionist as well, so that only legitimate messages take up the attention of the other employees.

Sholar emphasizes the importance of allowing someone within the business to make decisions about redirecting or deleting suspected SPAM, citing research by Assurance Systems showing that, due to incorrect SPAM identification, 18-27% of legitimate business-related messages sent to addresses at several common free email services did not arrive in the recipients' inboxes. Picomail does not decide which email should be delivered and which should not. That is always the business owner's decision.

Computer viruses, a rapidly growing threat to every business, are identified, stripped from email and quarantined as they arrive at Picomail's servers, before the messages ever get delivered to their intended recipients. Outgoing email is also scanned, so that businesses sending email won't find themselves sending out computer viruses, if they get "infected" through some other means.

Picomail also provides a far higher level of security than small businesses have had in the past. Messages between employees don't float all around the Internet, through the dozens of other servers that external email traverses. Internal email never leaves the Picomail server.

Previously, this level of email service required an investment in staff and equipment that only made sense when the business handled several hundred thousand messages a day. Picomail has been designed for businesses sending and receiving a few dozen to a thousand or so messages a day.

Picomail is also available to families, with parental control features enabled for protecting children from offensive email.

The service costs $34.95 per year, which includes one domain name, and as many email accounts as needed. More information is available at www.picomail.com.

WebGusto is a web site hosting and web site design company located in Prosper, a northern suburb of Dallas. WebGusto is a member of the Frisco and Denton (TX) Chambers of Commerce.




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