E-mails have been an indispensable mode of communication for decades now. According to a recent study by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), 95% of the organizations still use e-mail as the primary mode of communication despite the advent of trendier tools such as social media.
Regardless of their industry and size, every organization needs a robust email and collaboration tool for exchanging business-critical data. These days, email communication is possible through both free and paid email service providers. While Gmail, Yahoo, and Rediffmail have free email communication services, several service providers offer paid email server hosting plans. Before we delve deeper, let us understand what email server hosting is.
Email server hosting is a service that hosts your e-mail on a leased server. This server handles your entire data for incoming as well as outgoing emails. Here, all your emails are sent directly through this leased server, so this service is superior to any free e-mail service.
Paid e-mail server hosting solutions are often sought by small-and-medium-sized organizations that receive heavy e-mail traffic or those who need a distinct domain name to distinguish their business. Paid email service providers offer a myriad of advanced features to facilitate a seamless exchange of information. These can include malware protection, spam filters, autoresponders, unlimited forwarders, and aliases, archiving and backup.
Now, when it comes to selecting the right email hosting solution for your business, you may get perplexed, and understandably so, because there are so many hosting services available in the marketplace. The following factors are crucial when selecting an email host:
1) Security and Compliance
In view of the rising threat of cybersecurity breaches, security should be of key consideration in selecting an email hosting services. The service provider should offer advanced tools to safeguard emails. Malware protection, spam protection, and data loss prevention capabilities need to be in place.
To make sure your email data gets backed up properly, choose a hosting service that has globally redundant servers, a team of dedicated professionals to monitor your servers round-the-clock and a well-documented disaster recovery plan.
The hosting service should also maintain certain security certifications and comply with regulations that apply to your area of operation.
2) Compatibility
The email host should offer enterprise-level syncing with web-based applications and devices. Tools that facilitate collaboration using global address lists, tasks, and shared calendars should be in place.
3) Flexibility
Your hosting service should offer the flexibility to select features you need and weed out the ones that you don’t. Choose a service provider that offers a variety of features and service levels. This way, you can begin with an affordable hosting plan while starting out and upgrade later when your business has grown, without requiring to switch your service provider.
4) Ease of Use
Your email hosting service should not only offer a near-complete control of your email environment but also provide assistance as needed. Robust customer support should be offered through a range of channels including live chat, e-mail, SMS, and phone.
Your plan should offer a user-friendly web-based interface that allows you to complete administrative tasks in a timely manner.
5) Availability
Since we live in an always-online world, even a few minutes of downtime can cost you to lose significant business. In fact, according to a report by Gartner, the average cost of downtime is $5600 per minute. And because email is an integral part of business communication, it is essential to have a hosting service that guarantees an uptime of at least 99.9%. Besides, you should be able to access your email environment on all kinds of mobile devices, regardless of their operating system.
6) Storage
Because you receive dozens of emails on a daily basis, you require an email service that allows you to sort and organize messages easily. Then, there are emails that you consider important and would like to keep. The solution is a hosting service that offers a proper archiving system and adequate storage space.
The email service provider should preferably allow you to keep all the data in one place and offer the option to automatically move older messages to the archive. Your host should guarantee access to your archived emails and safeguard data with automated back-up.
You might come across service providers who offer e-mail server hosting as a part of their web hosting package. While you may be tempted to buy such offers, it is recommended to keep web hosting separate from email server hosting. This is because, when you purchase email server hosting as an add-on, you may not get many features of your choice. Besides, your website and emails will be hosted on the same set of servers, so your emails will eat up the space meant for your website. This can hamper the smooth functioning of your website.
Still, have questions on email server hosting? If yes, please let us know in the comments below. We will be glad to answer your queries.