Small business teams that struggle with keeping up with all the internal email communication involved in running daily operations may be happy to learn about a new tool that aims to curtail those emails.
Topicbox Group Email Discussion Tool
Topicbox is meant for teams that utilize a lot of group email chains but who want a better way to organize those chains. Email hosting service FastMail is the company behind Topicbox.
FastMail COO Helen Horstmann-Allen said in an email interview with Small Business Trends, “Instead of CCing a list of people (which has its own list of headaches!), Topicbox gives each team, project, client or event its own group email address. Everyone in the group can choose their own preferences as to how or when they receive messages sent to the group — immediately, in a once-a-day wrap-up, or just leave it archived on the web to browse or search later. Individual senders don’t have to make sure that all the appropriate people see their messages.”
Of course, there are already plenty of other options for team communication outside of email, including apps like Slack and Basecamp. But the Topicbox group email discussion tool differentiates itself because users can still access the full functionality of the tool right in their email accounts, rather than having to sign up for yet another platform. This can be especially useful for teams that already use a lot of email for outside communications or those with worldwide teams that can’t really benefit from the real-time features of those communication apps.
That was the case for the team at FastMail. Horstmann-Allen says, “Because our team is located in both Australia and the US, we know how easily key information can be lost in chat. And because so many people on staff are programmers, they tell us all the time about the cost of distractions to their productivity. Topicbox was a chance for us to both scratch our own itch, and support the many, many organizations out there for whom email is already a critical part of their workflow, but they wish there was a better way.”
The team at FastMail launched Topicbox this year after doing a lot of its own testing in-house. And now it’s available for everyone to use. You can sign up online and get started with a free one-month trial. Then it’s $10 a month for up to ten users, and $3 for each additional users above that.
Image: Topicbox