September 21st, 2022
Nearly 14.5 billion - yes, billion - spam emails go out every day. Our inboxes work overtime filtering them out so we can get to the good and important stuff.
When you use a free email service or a sketchy hosting company, the odds are good your company emails might end up following all that spam off to where it won't be seen. You need a solid host using a reputable server to ensure clients get everything you send out.
But what is email hosting? How does it relate to your website and how does it work? Take a look at this short email hosting guide to learn more.
What is Email Hosting?
All your company email messages, files, and other data are stored on a server that is then connected to your internal network and the internet externally. You can certainly host email on your own server kept in your office, but you’d have to buy, configure, and keep up with it.
An email host rents space on its shared or dedicated mail servers to manage your incoming and outgoing emails. The host takes care of the technical bits of configuring the system so it can send and receive. Most services have simple dashboards to make it easy for you to set up email accounts for everyone in the office.
You might already have web hosting for your website or online store. Most web hosts include email hosting as part of the package or as an add-on service. You don’t have to have them in the same place, but it makes it more convenient to manage.
How It Works
With email hosting, your messages and files are stored on a server. When someone sends an email to your domain, it gets sent across the internet to your server.
The server is set up with protocols to help it determine what to do with the email. It can filter it to spam, re-route it to a different email address, or block it if the send is on a black list.
Most servers are set up with several layers of security. These include end-to-end encryption to obscure what’s in the email and two-factor authentication to block unauthorized access to the server or an email account.
Email Hosting Tips
As you consider this move, keep in mind these bits of email hosting advice.
Take advantage of online archiving if your host offers it. This gives you years of backups so you can still find an email that would otherwise be lost.
Make sure you can easily create multiple mailboxes and that you get enough accounts to support your business. In addition to one for each employee, you might consider one for website questions and another for payments. You should also make sure the mailbox size limit is big enough to handle all your email traffic.
Check for bundled options that give you web, domain, and email hosting all in one package. You can often get a better deal that way rather than buying each one separately.
Looking for an Email Host?
Running email through your custom domain makes it easy for people to see where your email came from and adds credibility. With email hosting, you can let someone else take care of the technical details needed to ensure you can reliably send and receive emails. Choose a service that can grow with you to ensure all new employees quickly get set up with company addresses.
Now that you know what email hosting is, check out our web hosting plans for small businesses. All plans come with unlimited email accounts included in the hosting setup.