Email Hosting

What is Email Hosting?

We often hear about web hosting as a way to get your business online and out into the public domain of the internet. Granted, this is an essential step, but it leaves an important question unanswered: how will you manage your business communications? There are many free options out there, and they’re great for private use, but when it comes to business email, there’s really only one solution, and that’s email hosting. Email hosting is easy to get set up. It’s usually an optional service that comes with your website, and you can activate it when you create your site or later. Alternatively, you can use separate providers for web hosting and email hosting.

Benefits of Email Hosting

Why would you want to choose a hosting solution for your email when there are so many free email providers out there? There are several answers to that question. The first and most significant benefit of email hosting is the email domain naming conventions that you can use. You can have email addresses that fit your business name. For example, if you run an online flower delivery business, an email like bob@bobsflowershop.com would look much more professional than bobsflowershop@yahoo.com. Another benefit of email hosting is security. Email hosting can be more secure than free email services. The large providers like Google and Yahoo, while offering relatively secure services, present a more attractive target to hackers simply because of their size. Using an email hosting provider also gives you more control over the service you’re getting. As a paying customer, you will have direct access to the support staff of your email hosting company, so you’ll be able to contact them if you have any technical or security issues.

Email Hosting Options

Now that we’ve defined email hosting and discussed some of its benefits, we need to go over some options you should look for when choosing a service.
If your email hosting provider offers any of the following options, you should consider taking advantage of them.
Online archiving: Access to online email archives gives you a historical record of all your business communications. Some services offer 5 to 10 years of backups that you can access directly via a login portal.
Multiple mailboxes: If you have a growing business, you’ll need the ability to create mailboxes on the fly. Make sure that your email host gives you all the mailboxes you need to support your operations.

People commonly use separate mailboxes to categorizing emails based on business functions—you can have an admin mailbox for website and service queries, a billing mailbox for payments and accounts, an info mailbox for general communications, and a bulk mailer address for advertising and campaigns.
Bundle deals: If you find a service provider that offers web, domain, and email hosting in one package, you can sometimes get better pricing than if you purchased each service separately.
Mailbox storage: Find out what your mailbox size limits are. A mailbox for a typical business needs to be able to store large files and huge quantities of mail, so make sure that your mailbox storage is appropriate for your needs.
Room to grow: You never know exactly how much email storage or how many mailboxes you’ll need with an online business. Having multiple email addresses can streamline your business operations and improve its image, but the email accounts will add up quickly. Large email attachments will fill up your allotted storage space faster than you may anticipate. It’s important to choose an email hosting provider that will be able to meet your needs as your business grows.