Spark announced it has begun trials of a new email service, Spark Business Mail, with around 40 customers today and will officially launch the new email platform for small-to-medium businesses on 5 October.

Spark Business Mail is a high-quality, cloud-based email platform hosted in New Zealand, which will give small businesses a big step up when it comes to security and mailbox capacity.

Customers using the company’s existing business email platform Officemail will be upgraded to Spark Business Mail over a period of ten weeks from October through to early December before the Officemail platform is closed at the end of the year.

Head of Business Marketing Richard Sandford says there is a lot of data to show SMEs have far greater impact on the New Zealand economy when they leverage digital technologies.

“A high-quality, high capacity and secure email system is fundamental for our SME customers as they begin to do more and more online. Spark has partnered with New Zealand owned and operated company SMX to deliver this for our customers.

“Spark Business Mail uses a business grade security system which means it’s as secure as email platforms used by major commercial organisations. It also gives customers significantly more storage and allows them to host their data locally –something that’s vital for businesses who require their records to be kept in New Zealand.

“Most Spark customers who upgrade to the new email service will see their email storage increase by around 400 percent, while the price of their service will stay the same,” said Mr Sandford.

The company will begin contacting existing Officemail customers by post this week to let them know when they can expect to be upgraded to Spark Business Mail, and what they need to do to prepare for the upgrade.

Most customers will need to make a few simple updates to their email settings across all the devices (for example, smartphones, tablets or laptops) they use to access their emails.

The small amount of customers who don’t host their domain name with Spark will need to contact their domain name provider to update their records, as well as making the same simple updates to their email settings.