Email Hosting: Everything you need to know

Email hosting is an online hosting service that rents and operates email servers. Signing up for an email hosting service isn’t the same as signing up for a free email account like Gmail or Yahoo. While similar, email hosting provides a more premium product. Further, signing up for email hosting is not the same as signing up for web hosting – although you can often get both services from one provider.

Confused yet? We know, it can be tricky. Below, we’ll cover exactly what email hosting is, how it differs from and is linked to web hosting, and some details you may need to know.

What is Email Hosting?

Simply put, email hosting involves the use of specialized servers that manage email accounts and provide all the necessary tools and features for efficient email communication. These servers are designed to handle the specific demands of email traffic, ensuring reliable delivery and secure storage of emails.

Furthermore, email hosting services typically offer scalability, allowing businesses to easily adjust their email storage capacity as their needs evolve. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for growing companies that anticipate an increase in email volume over time. By choosing a reputable email hosting provider, businesses can streamline their communication processes and enhance overall productivity.

How does it work?

Email hosting works by providing servers that store and manage email accounts, allowing users to send, receive, and manage emails using their custom domain name.

Premium email hosting services offer more advanced solutions for your business communications. The email hosting providers will host your emails in a dedicated hosting environment.

Email authentication will be offered to avoid phishing scams and other cybercriminal-related activity to protect your business and its clients.

There is no need to find a different provider. Your email and web hosting can be the same hosting company as your web host.

What’s the difference between Web Hosting and Email Hosting?

All these plans and hosting types might sound confusing, especially when you’re trying to focus on your small business growth, but luckily we have the time to explain it all. The two most popular hosting types are web hosting and email hosting.

• Web Hosting: Think of web hosting as what enables your website to exist and be discoverable on the internet. This service stores your website and is responsible for maintaining its connection to the internet. Your web hosting service might also include an option to activate email hosting, but you need to tell your provider that you want to do that.
• Email Hosting: While it’s usually included with a web hosting plan, email hosting is a separate service that allows you to set up a custom email address and use it to send and receive emails. The email account name will match your website, for instance, [email protected]. Separate email hosting is what some might refer to as “professional email” because of the extra features it provides. Apart from the personalized domain name, you may get additional storage space, faster email servers, advanced spam filters, and mail rules, to name a few.

Why is using Email Hosting important for your business?

A personal email address ending in ‘@gmail.com’ or ‘@yahoo.com’ is fine for keeping in touch and paying your bills. When you set up a web presence for your business, however, you need something more serious — you need a business email. Ideally, it should be a professional email that uses your domain name–for example, [email protected].

Using a professional email address is vital, for several reasons:

• A professional email address adds credibility and lets your customers know that you are a legitimate business
• An email address using your domain name is unique and memorable
• A separate business email helps you stay organized and avoid mixing up your personal and business tasks
• A business email lets you easily activate emails for new employees and deactivate emails (and access!) for former employees

What are the benefits?

Professionalism

When customers see that you are using a custom domain in your email addresses, they know in an instant what brand you represent and whom exactly they plan to do business with. It evokes a feeling of trust and confidence in you.

Since you own and manage the domain, it will be difficult for anyone to misrepresent themselves and claim to belong to your organization.

Consider these scenarios. Any individual can use and register for a Gmail or Yahoo address as long as the username—with a mention of your company name—is still available. On the contrary, a user name preceding your business’ domain name will be unique to you or your employees.

The latter reflects the value of professionalism and your dedication to your organization.

Data Security and Protection

Having hosted emails for your business means you have complete control over how users behave when using their email addresses. As the company owner or manager, you can implement email usage regulations such as data localization. It enables email storage in specified locations on servers.

Additionally, you get increased security for your inboxes. This is a key feature of a hosted email. With the threat of breaches striking at any time and their occurrences drastically increasing, data protection is a priority you should understandably never overlook.

Multiple levels of encryption prevent your email correspondences from being intercepted or accessed by malicious parties aside from the intended recipient. This functionality is especially useful when you need to send sensitive information outside of your organization, for instance, to a customer.

After setting up the encryption, you can proceed to lay out extensive spam filters and anti-malware systems.

All these will give you peace of mind that you can safely send, receive, and open messages.

Dedicate Client Support

Communication in corporate organizations heavily relies on emails. Many of these emails include time-sensitive files and information like invoices and contracts which your business could not lose. Loss of invaluable data due to corrupted emails can severely impact your company. By utilizing the dedicated services of an email host, you will be equipped with the necessary tools or customer support to handle technical email concerns.

More Uptime

With email hosting, you are guaranteed near-perfect uptime. This is another crucial differentiating aspect between a standard free email service and a paid email hosting solution.

Uptime is vital for any thriving business in terms of customer service and internal communications. For a successful business to flourish, you will need a reliable and premium quality email host that ensures zero information losses or delivery delays.

App and Tool Integration

Choose an email host solution service that will allow you to integrate it with other tools and applications. An excellent email host offers a wealth of options to improve your workflow.

How to choose the right provider

If you’ve made it so far, then you’re probably convinced: maybe you do need an email hosting solution. So let’s go over a few factors to consider, to help you choose the right one for you:

• Size of your organization: the first thing to consider is the size of your organization, which will affect the number of email accounts you’ll need. Some providers offer plans that are tailored to small businesses, while others are designed for larger organizations.
• Email usage needs: then consider the number of emails you send and receive each day and the type of email features you need. This will determine the amount of storage space you require.
• Reliability and uptime: it’s important that you’re able to access your email whenever you need it. So look for a provider that offers reliable service and high uptime guarantees.
• Security: make sure that the provider you choose has robust security features in place to protect your data and prevent unauthorized access.
• Customer support: look for a provider that offers reliable and responsive customer support. This will ensure that you can quickly resolve any issues that may arise.
• Budget: Lastly, there’s – of course – budget. Email hosting plans can vary greatly in cost, so it’s important to choose a provider that fits within your budget.

Conclusion

Email hosting is a key component of modern business communication, offering customization, enhanced security, productivity, and reliability. By choosing the right provider and plan, businesses can use email hosting to streamline communication, build brand identity, and foster growth.