01 Apr 09 Email Hosting: How, What and Why

If you are reading this blog, then you are exploring the wide, wide world of professional email hosting for your company.

You probably are already internet savvy enough to know that email hosting is an internet service that manages email through an electronic server. It is mostly used by small to medium businesses that use a custom email address that matches the company’s website domain name. For example, Joe Smith works for widgets.com and his email is joesmith@widgets.com.

There are a variety of options when choosing an email host; most individuals choose to use a free ISP email host, such as hotmail.com or gmail.com, and that works quite well. For a business, however, having your own business branded email is essential (regardless of the size of your company). One way to think about it is that in this electronic age, you should regard your email address as a company letterhead. If you are Joe Smith, do you want to advertise Yahoo! to your customers, or do you want to sell widgets?

Many web hosts provide email hosting services; just enter a Google search for email hosting, and you will come up with hundreds of web hosts wanting to sell you their email host service. What is a small business owner to do?

Let me share some tips that can help you get started. When shopping for an email host, keep in mind that a variety of options are available to create and manage your internal email addresses, such as spam and virus protection, secure authentication, and convenient webmail access, so that you can access your email when you’re not at your computer. Check with the provider to see which of these options they offer and at what cost. Decide whether you want to leave your emails on the server for the long term, or if you want to download your messages frequently from the server; you should do this before talking with a provider, because your choice will influence the type of service that they will recommend to you. When shopping, check the megabyte storage that each web host provides; some give more than others! Make sure your hosting package comes with secure POP (short for post office protocol) access, so that all the popular desktop email clients (like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Eudora) are supported. Most email applications use the POP protocol, although many can use IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). Before purchasing services, make sure you know which email clients and servers the web host supports!

In short, for small businesses, using the services of a professional email host is a good investment. Just do your research before you make a purchase.