Last week we started a little weekly series about tools you could use to run literally every facet of your business (see 4 Free Microsoft Office Replacements). Our focus is on the free or very low cost options.

This week, I want to touch on one that most of us will probably want to dismiss immediately. It’s the email client. I encourage you not to stop right here. Take a quick read through the options below. If nothing else, it will give you something to measure your current solution by. Who knows, maybe you’ll find a solid alternative you didn’t even know existed.

Here are 4 applications that can help you manage your Email efficiently, two of them completely free:

1. Gmail

If you haven’t heard of Gmail, then you probably haven’t heard of a little company named Google either. If you haven’t tried Gmail, you’re simply missing out. Gmail is my absolute #1 choice for an email client and I would replace my business email servers with hosted Gmail services if we didn’t also offer hosted email to clients. Google has done a fantastic job with Gmail from day 1. The interface is quick, easy to navigate, there’s plenty of online storage for all but the sloppiest email pack rats, and their spam filtering is crazy good. So far, I’ve yet to have a problem with Gmail. It also integrates nicely with the other offerings they have on the table like Calendar, Docs, etc. Of course it’s all free to boot!

If you need or want your own domain name, no problem. Gmail has a business service offering that allows you to take advantage of all the cool features including the spam filtering, only with mail directed to your own domain name. The cost is $50 per year per user. A very affordable solution for all that Gmail has to offer.

One more thing that is worth mentioning about Gmail. Although a lot of it’s power comes in it being an online application, you have several options for taking your mail offline. I’ve been using an application called Mailplane for a couple of years now that gives me a desktop application to manage all of my Gmail accounts. Mailplane also has an option for using Google Gears to transfer your mail to your local system to read, write and interact with while you’re offline. The best of both worlds in many senses.

Cost: Free

Read More Here: Gmail.

2. Thunderbird

Mozilla’s Thunderbird has been around for quite some time and seems to have mostly taken up residence with the geekier users. Most likely due to it’s ties to Mozilla in general. Regardless, Thunderbird is a great email client. It’s desktop based, so you lose some of the Internet vagabond lifestyle by being tied to a single PC, but even that has a workaround. Before I get into it though, some of the things I like about Thunderbird are that it’s quick and peppy, has a very clean interface, and is cross platform. Today you can use it on a PC, tomorrow a Mac and the next day a Linux desktop. It allows for data to be easily transferred between PCs of different flavors which is very handy.

The interface feels very much like Outlook Express, so it’s likely familiar to most of you. It has some great built in spam filtering and offers fairly robust search features and email tagging to help you stay on top of your email organization.

One of the things I like most about Thunderbird, though, is it’s portability potential. Although not ultra hot today, a few years ago several companies released software that would enhance USB thumb drives allowing you to take your data and applications with you wherever you went. All you needed to use your portable “system” was a host PC you could plug your USB thumb drive in to. U3 was one of the most popular ones and is still around, but not going gangbusters like they were. Thunderbird released a version of their email client that would run on the U3 device giving you the ability to carry one of the most important productivity tools with you wherever you went. The best part is, once plugged in, the email application functioned as if you were sitting in front of your own personal system. It was a beautiful setup.

That alone boosted Thunderbird in my book. I like their forward-thinking.

Cost: Free

Read More Here: Thunderbird.

3.BlueTie

BlueTie is one I stumbled across about a year ago and have been intrigued with ever since. It’s business class email with collaboration services including calendaring and contact management. I haven’t personally used BlueTie, but have heard good things about it and the demo looks like they’ve got a solid platform. I suspect that if you were part of a team, BlueTie would offer some great features that would help you be more productive as a team. Things like instant messaging, shared calendaring, etc., built into the interface, would be handy (similar to Gmail).

BlueTie includes anti-spam and anti-virus protection, plus they also offer a private label option giving you control over the branding and design of your inbox. The service starts at $4.99 per month per user. That’s definitely on the higher side, but not crazy expensive if you can utilize some of the team collaboration features.

Cost: $4.99/mo per user

Read More Here: BlueTie.

4. Rackspace Email

I debated about including this one, but I’ve been using it for the last 6 months on a project for a client and have really liked it. Rackspace is a big dedicated server hosting company with data centers all over the world. They’ve recently started offering services based on their rock solid hosting platform. One of these services is Rackspace Email. It’s very inexpensive and has some killer features to it.

The interface, like the rest, is very speedy and clean. It probably feels the most like Outlook of any of the products here. I’ve mostly used the online webmail version with mail forwarding to another address I specified for local archiving purposes. One of the great things about Rackspace Email is the options you have for how you access their system. You can use the webmail version, have mail downloaded to your desktop client or access email on the go through their mobile device support.

Also included in the product is top-of-the-line spam and virus filtering. Theirs is one of the only ones to rival Gmail’s spam filtering in my opinion. All of Rackspace’s service and product offerings are also backed by their Fanatical Support. I have yet to need support on the mail offering, but I’ve heard excellent things about it. In the world of hosting, support is usually the make or break thing that separates hosting providers.

Cost: $1.00/mo per user

Read More Here: Rackspace Email.

I could go on with other options, but the ones above should give you enough of a range to find something worth using. To be honest, I don’t know why anyone would not use Gmail. I simply love it. If a desktop client is more to your liking, buy a Mac and use the free Mail client included with the Mac OS. Another winner in my book.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t include products like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Mail.com, or one of the millions of other email accounts out there, it’s because I don’t really like them. Yahoo Mail, for instance, absolutely SUCKS for inbound delivery. Yahoo has got to be one of the worst for message delivery from outside ISPs I’ve ever seen. Second only to perhaps Comcast. And I’ve been on both ends of that problem as the delivering mail server as well as the message recipient. Anyway, I don’t think they’re worth wasting your time on.

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