Look Out, Outlook: Amazon Launches Workplace Email Service WorkMail costs $4 per user per month, and allows users to send and receive emails, organize contacts and share calendars.
By Laura Entis
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Amazon may be best known for its delivery service (and more recently, drones and perhaps even its lineup of original series), but it's looking to add another feature to its extensive resume: The Jeff Bezos-helmed company has launched a service for work email, a move that directly challenges corporate-email king Microsoft.
Called Amazon WorkMail, the cloud-based service works with email clients (such as Microsoft Outlook and Mac OS X), which means businesses won't have to install a new one, and allows users to send and receive secure emails, manage contacts and share calendars. It can also be integrated with employees' mobile devices.
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"Customers have repeatedly asked us for a business email and calendaring service that is more cost-effective and simpler to manage than their on-premises solution… we built Amazon WorkMail to address these requests," Peter De Santis, vice president of AWS Compute Services, said in a press release.
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Amazon WorkMail costs $4 per user per month and includes 50 GB of mailbox storage for each user, a price point comparable to Google Apps for Work and Microsoft's Office 365 service. The service is also available for a 30-day free trial for up to 25 users.
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