AWS has grown to be the leading cloud provider and has a lot of services that one can use for different purposes. Their main objective is always to provide products that assist companies and ease the burden involved in managing the aforesaid product. For example email system. It is expensive to build your own email system from managing the servers, security a lot is truly involved.

For a startup, you need a domain, AWS provides Route 53 that you can register your domain or use other providers. From a domain, you need a company email for example I register at www.example.com it will be great for my business to handle communication using @example.com. That's the question I would love to answer today.

But before I answer let me answer one myth that with cloud your billing will always be up. This is not true. AWS products are billed least and can be quite helpful to a startup.

With Amazon WorkMail, there are no upfront fees, no required minimum commitments, and no long-term contracts.

Amazon WorkMail costs $4.00 per user per month and includes 50 GB of mailbox storage for each user. You can get started with a 30-day free trial for up to 25 users.

If a user is created after the first of a month, then the monthly fee for that mailbox will be adjusted on a pro-rata basis from the first day it was active to the end of that month. If a user is terminated or deleted before the end of a month, then the monthly fee for that user will still apply through the end of the month.

This is great most people will challenge this, that some companies offer unlimited. My answer is always simple why do you need unlimited and you are a startup. You need to keep your cost as low as possible.

So with this brief explanation let's go through how to start with AWS WorkMail. What do you need through this tutorial

1. AWS Account
2. Domain

Go to this link and create a free account on AWS https://aws.amazon.com/free

If you don't have a domain go to Route53 after signup and create one.

STEPS

A. Go to AWS WorkMail Dashboard and click create an organization

B. There will be so many options to choose from. If you don't have a domain don't worry we can choose the option free test domain and try it out. If you have a domain from an external provider choose an external domain. Register new domain from Route53

C. Once selected if you choose external or route53 you will be provided with all the values you will need to add in your DNS section. For a domain in Route53, there will be an option to configure automatically. Your DNS will be updated for you.

D. Once done you can go ahead and add users. You use groups to group your emails according to your organization's department.

That's how simple it is!

Few steps and you up and running so the
The next question how do I log in to my email through the web or email?

A. Web Application
This is simple just go to Organization settings

Then click Web Application you will be redirected to the login page

B. Mobile Phone
There are so many ways of connecting with clients let me give you a simple one. You can use any app you are currently using to link up your email. Microsoft Outlook, Gmail App, Yahoo App, etc.

How do you go about it:

1. In Gmail App go to settings same as outlook App
2. Select Add Mail Account
3. Select where the option of Exchange and Office 365
4. Input the email you want to add
5. For Gmail click setup manually (shown at the bottom) / For outlook click the continue button at the bottom then the option to set up manually will come, then click Exchange. The information you need is:
   • Email address
   • Password
   • Username (provide your email address)
   • Server (mobile.mail.us-east-1.awsapps.com) // NOTE ensure you choose us-east or us-west depending on which location you created your organization.
   • Submit
   • That's it now your email will be added to the outlook or Gmail app

How simple to have your email system up and running in less than 5 min. Imagine building the whole system how long will it take you and what will be the cost. I hope this is helpful concerning AWS WorkMail.