What is Email Hosting and Why It is Important for Small Business
Emails are still one of the most used methods to market products and communicate with customers. Last year almost 43% of businesses claimed email as the best option for communication. But it is not an unchecked platform, and emailing in bulk with the same message can land your emails in junk or spam folders.
Online stores, banks, order confirmation, verification, and other similar processes all use emails. Business companies understand the importance of sending emails timely because any delay can cause customers to worry. This blog will describe in detail some of the best and most scalable third-party email hosting software for SMBs (small, medium businesses).
Email Hosting and Its Purpose:
Most massive eCommerce corporations have remote servers to manage and maintain their emails, but since small businesses can’t afford such expensive equipment, the other best option is Email Hosting service.
So, what is email hosting?
In simple words, it’s a service that supports an email server. If your business possesses a domain, you can sign up for this service; it will ensure your emails are sent on time and manage and maintain traffic across all your email accounts.
Today, several companies provide email hosting services, e.g., Google, Rackspace, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Websites with different web hosting services have started providing email hosting as an additional service along with their usual solutions such as shared, dedicated, or cloud hosting.
Kinds of Email Hosting:
There are several kinds of email hosting services available; each comes with its set of pros and cons; read through to figure out which is the most suitable for your business.
Third-Party Email Hosting:
This type of service is relatively costlier than a shared web hosting service, but it makes up for it by having more facilities. Third-party email service is scalable, easy to use, and lends remarkable support, which is why this service is the first choice of many businesses. You have to pay for this service separately, unlike in a web hosting service.
Shared Web Hosting with Email Solution:
Such a type of email service is available with shared web hosting, which limits its functions to some extent; thus, it cannot be used to send or receive emails of any kind.
Self-Hosting Email Service:
Can I host my own email server? The answer is yes! Such a service is called Self-Hosting Email Service; it is very secure and durable; however, it requires a technical understanding to be used appropriately. Self-hosting email service is cost-effective, and you can use it to send, receive and manage your emails.
Need for a separate server to host email:
As understood by technical professionals, email hosting is very different from web hosting; both in nature and resource requirement. Thus, hosting them on the same server is not suggested as they may develop a competition over resources which might make the application lag. In case of a disaster, if the server goes down, businesses’ are unable to even contact the sellers as their email system also goes out.
Thus, acquiring an email hosting server should not be considered an extra investment; it is a necessary one. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the business’s server providers have the exact grip on troubleshooting email hosting as they have on web hosting.
Comparison between Email Protocols (IMAP vs. POP3 vs. SMTP)
There are primarily three email sending protocols, namely: IMAP, POP3, SMTP. All of them work differently.
What is an IMAP (Internet Access Message Protocol) account?
This type of protocol cannot be used to send emails; however, it receives and retrieves emails, manages and stores them on the server for you.
What is a POP3 email account?
Unlike IMAP, POP3 can both receive and send emails. It downloads the emails from the server and stores them on the computer, and deletes the server file. They have the same functionality, although IMAP stores the email file on the server and syncs it across all devices.
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol):
This type of server allows businesses to send or forward emails across different platforms (e.g., Microsoft Outlook to Google Gmail). It is the industry’s standard protocol system to manage emails. Email transmission has become very scalable because of it.
Which is better: POP3 or IMAP?
Mostly the answer depends upon your needs. But if you are a standard business, it would be preferable to use IMAP as it keeps the emails on server and they remain usable, however POP3 downloads emails to your computer which makes them unusable for any future need.
Set up Email Hosting through Cloudways:
Cloudways provides email hosting along with a management add-on. Through this businesses’ can get their own email inboxes as it covers everything needed to have an email server; this service is supported by Rackspace email hosting solution. This service is active and available at all times of the day. It even allows businesses’ to have both IMAP and SMTP protocols.
Google’s Gmail SMTP add-on allows businesses’ to send 99 emails each day through automatic SMTP delivery. It is a completely hassle-free process that even allows consumers to possess several email accounts like:
- Mailgun Account
- Mandrill Account
- AuthSMTP Account
- Custom SMTPs
Using both Cloudways email hosting, we get:
- 24/7 Support
- Privacy
- Secure Environment
- Efficient installation
- Confirmed Uptime
- Disaster Recovery
Which Email Hosting is the best in 2021?
Scroll down to view the list of the most on-demand and massive email hosting sites for small businesses:
Sepiahost Email Hosting:
Sepiahost provides business class service to SMBs. It is a reliable and secure email hosting system perfect for businesses looking for a service to handle their advert campaigns. It employs Outlook and Rackspace for email service, although the prices of both vary.
Sepiahost provides users the opportunity to keep their inboxes junk and spam-free. It also complies with CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), both of which prevent Sepiahost from selling data.
Sepiahost gives users:
- All year round chat service
- In-built support system
- Ticketing System
- 25GB data storage
It is a cost-efficient service that starts with $5 a month for 10 mailboxes.
Office 365 Outlook:
For Microsoft users, Microsoft Office Suite 365 should be the best available choice. Office 365 service provides a range of necessary tools such as: Outlook, Excel, and Word. To avail it, businesses must have a private business domain which is offered by this service along with 50GB space.
An Office 365 Business Premium for email hosting account is also offered. Businesses opting for Office 365 Outlook version, which costs $100 per year, will get:
- Outlook
- PowerPoint
- Word
- OneNote
- Excel
- Access
- Publisher (computers only) applications to optimize productivity.
- 1TB OneDrive cloud storage to store data.
G Suite Gmail:
G Suite is a modernized, seamless, and powerful version of Gmail. It is very popular with almost a billion users around the globe. It is composed of Google’s cloud-based protocols that makes working efficient. It also includes other Google applications like:
- Drive
- Slides
- Docs
- Hangout
- Sites
It allows pairing with other third-party solutions without costing any further charges. It is not a free service, and the prices range from a minimum of $6 per month to $25 for the enterprise version. GSuite users get 30GB of storage space shared across all Google apps; however, Enterprise version consumers get 1TB storage space.
Mailgun:
It is a non-marketing SMTP email provider tool curated fundamentally for software developers. It allows cloud users to send emails in bulk hassle-free and also causes a massive increase in engagements.
Mailgun is used to send, receive or track emails; it is a mail API. It uses secure servers to maintain privacy. Moreover, it features an innovative efficiency prediction tool that provides the estimated time it might take for the file to reach the recipient.
It should be noted that this is not a free service; the lowest plan (Flex tier) offers 90 days of free emails. After the free trial, charges would be applied according to the numbers of emails sent; standard charges are $0.8 for every 1,000 emails sent after the free trial.
Zoho Mail:
With this service, users have a choice of obtaining free or paid service from Zoho Mail. The free version has some basic features, such as providing a web-based customer to send and receive emails. A business account cannot set up the free version, and neither do consumers get a custom domain service.
However, with a paid version, a custom domain for emails can be easily set up. It also allows POP3/IMAP/email relaying service. Zoho Mail is cost-efficient, and its cheaper version starts at $12 per month with 5GB space; costlier plans provide 30GB storage for each user and other features like docs, sites, or sheets. This service offers almost the same features as G Suite or Microsoft Office 365 business email and can be used as an alternative for either.
SendGrid:
With an estimate of 1 trillion emails sent and 45k paid customers, this is another recommended option of cloud-based SMTP sellers, which handles all technical issues and lets users send their emails without creating or maintaining email servers for them. SendGrid is a very trustworthy and reliable option. Moreover, it has in-built reputation tracking and real-time data analytics in it.
FastMail:
It is recommended to those looking for a premium service that costs about the same as any other basic email service provider. It is one of the oldest email providers in the industry. FastMail supports IMAP and PGP, however it does not provide end-to-end encryption thus, and is not as secure as its counterparts.
Although, what FastMail does offer is two-factor authentication and junk filtering to keep emails safe. It is only available as a paid version, and pricing starts from $3 per month; there are several tiers to choose from.
MXRoute:
MXRoute is a hassle-free, easy-to-use email hosting service made for small businesses; it is cheap, costs up to $60 per year, or just $5 per month for managing an unlimited number of email addresses and domains. MXRoute offers a 50 GB server.
Moreover, it comes with IMAP, SMTP, and POP3 services for seamless accessibility and has an in-built system to filter out spam emails. For each email created, MXRoute offers access to NextCloud, which in turn offers applications like file storage, contact management, and project management solutions.
Amazon SES (Simple Email Service):
It is a budget-friendly and very flexible email service that is known to be scalable too as per business demands. Amazon has always employed cloud-based services thus;, SES integrated faster than expected in their business.
It has a reputation dashboard that permits businesses to track the performance of their email campaigns and to increase spam feedback to optimize the efficiency of their emails. It also contains built-in security options, like SPF (Sender Policy Framework) or the DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) that verifies emails on either end.
PostMark:
Another email service provider that is popular among developers is PostMark. It doesn’t support bulk advert email transmission; thus, its focus lies primarily on transactional emails. PostMark has built a good name for itself over time. A business may get a dedicated IP address if they wish to.
This hassle-free email service provider provides protocols for efficiency and email tracking. PostMark costs $10 per month, which is relatively high priced when compared to other service providers of the same niche. PostMark gives 10,000 emails for $10 a month. The pricing depends upon the number of emails being sent, sometimes rising to an unbelievable $1,200 for 5 million emails sent in a month.
Conclusion:
Emails are a necessary part of today’s marketing technique. Businesses who wish to scale themselves are recommended to invest in a good email hosting service. Not only does this make managing work easier, but it also increases their business audience.