Email hosting means offering businesses email servers and storage space to house their email accounts. Email hosting is necessary if your small business wants to have a professional online presence. The reason for this is that email hosting allows you to create custom email addresses using your own domain name, which can also be your brand name.
So, what is email hosting, and which is the best option for small businesses? Continue reading to learn more about that.
What Is Email Hosting?
Email hosting is a service provided by specialised companies that manage and maintain email servers. These servers are responsible for sending, receiving, and storing email messages. The server is a space where you can send, receive, and store emails.
With email hosting, you can set up professional email addresses on your domain name. For example, someone who works for a company will have an address in the format of firstname@company.com.
Email-capable servers housed in data centres are managed by a communications provider. The supplier assists you in configuring your distinct accounts and domains. You are able to monitor and manage your system with an intuitive dashboard.
Shared and dedicated email hosting are your options. When your company is the only one utilising the server, it is known as dedicated hosting. The highest level of security and control can be achieved with this, but the costs of installation and upkeep are very high. Several organisations using the same servers are known as shared hosting. But if you deal with a trustworthy provider, shared hosting can be just as safe and dependable as dedicated hosting.
There are four types of email hosting servers: Exchange, POP3, IMAP, and ISP.
Customers are frequently provided with personal email addresses by ISPs (Internet Service Providers) on the ISP’s servers. Nevertheless, emails used for marketing campaigns cannot be sent using this format due to its numerous limitations and inability to handle large loads. You can read emails offline by using POP3 (Post Office Protocol), which downloads emails from the server to your device.
Why Do A Business Need Email Hosting
Businesses require email hosting for a number of reasons. Professionalism, security, cost-effectiveness, and collaborative tools are a few of the common reasons.
The professionalism and credibility it offers are among the primary reasons. Using your domain name for your business email address makes it look more official and gives your company more legitimacy. Compared to generic email addresses, it is more distinctive and memorable.
Keeping your personal and professional emails separate also helps you stay organised by preventing tasks from getting mixed up.
Additional security features offered by email hosting services include secure authentication, email rerouting, and email replication. They provide strong antivirus and spam control, which is essential for companies.
Collaboration tools like shared calendars, folders, address books, and task lists are included with a lot of email hosting services, and they can improve productivity and teamwork inside your company.
You also have more control over your email system when you use email hosting. Ensuring efficiency and security, it’s simple to activate emails for new hires and deactivate emails for departing ones. Since management, updates, and maintenance are handled by an outside party, using an external email hosting service can be more affordable. Your company can save time and money by doing this.
5 Top Choices of Email Hosting for Small Businesses
There are numerous options for email hosting on the market. However, in this list, we try to compile some of the best options for small businesses by considering several factors, such as the cost and features they offer.
Here are the top 5 email hosting options for small businesses, as recommended by the Cloudways blog.
1. Google Workspace
Overview
- Best for: Small businesses seeking email hosting combined with a productivity suite
- Pricing: $6 – $18/user/month (custom plans are also available)
Google Workspace is a suite of cloud-based applications designed to simplify tasks. It also allows you to create custom domains.
The thing about Google Workspace is that it is a complete package that includes many tools to increase productivity and improve communication. Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites, and Meet are some of the tools you’ll receive. It is one of the most popular email services, with over 1 billion active users.
2. Zoho Mail
Overview
- Best for: SMEs who need more business features besides email marketing.
- Pricing: $1 – 4/user/month
Zoho Mail is an alternative to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for business email. This service has many features for businesses. It has a SecurePass email feature that adds extra layers of security to your business messages, a 50GB limit per user, and the ability to attach large files of up to 1 GB. It also has several exciting business features, such as a file manager and an online meeting feature.
3. Rackspace Email Hosting
Overview
- Best for: Small and medium-sized businesses with limited budgets seeking professional email hosting.
- Pricing: $2.99 – 6.99/user/month
Rackspace offers a business-class email hosting service for small businesses. It is perfect for users who are looking for reliable email servers that can handle their email campaigns. Rackspace uses Outlook and the Rackspace email service for email hosting.
It provides easy setup and migration to the service, spam and virus protection, compatibility with MS-Office applications, 24/7 support, and up to 25GB of email boxes.
4. Neo
Overview
- Best for: Small and medium-sized businesses looking for email hosting with a website creation tool
- Pricing: $1.99 – 3.99/user/month
Neo is designed specifically for solopreneurs, freelancers, and small businesses, allowing them to build meaningful relationships with their customers, vendors, and partners. Neo includes a free co.site domain name, a simple one-page website creator, schedule send, email templates, follow-up reminders, and a priority inbox.
5. Microsoft 365
Quick Overview
- Best for: Companies that are most dependent on Microsoft productivity suite in general.
- Pricing: $69.99 – 99.99/user/month
Microsoft 365 has several key features that make it an excellent option for businesses. You get a wide range of features to help you with your daily business operations. You will also find it easy to use and understand. However, it costs slightly more than other services.
It provides real-time mailbox monitoring as well as continuous monitoring for online threats, and it works seamlessly across multiple platforms and devices. Microsoft 365 packages include email hosting, Skype, and the Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, Words, Power Point, and so on). They even provide video processing options with Clipchamp and 1 TB of cloud storage space.
How Do I Host a Business Email?
To host a business email, you can sign up for Google Workspace, Rackspace, or Microsoft 365. These services offer reliable email hosting solutions with various features to meet your business needs. Consider the cost, storage space, and additional tools provided before making a decision on which service to choose. Then, once you have selected a service, follow the instructions provided to set up your business email account and ccustomiseit to fit your brand.
Here’s how to set up email hosting for your small business:
- Choose a reputable email hosting provider like Google Workspace, Rackspace, or Microsoft 365.
- Sign up and create an account.
- Follow the provider’s DNS configuration instructions to link your domain.
- Your email hosting will be set up.
Conclusion
For small businesses looking to improve communication, project a professional image, and guarantee the security and dependability of their email services, email hosting is a necessary investment.
Businesses can improve their communication infrastructure, expedite processes, and foster trust with partners and clients by selecting the best email hosting provider. In today’s cutthroat business environment, adopting email hosting is a strategic move that can greatly aid small businesses in expanding and succeeding.
So, are you interested in setting up email hosting for your business?
Then you should check out Axle Networks’ Email Migration to Cloud Service.
We provide you with a secure migration process, whether to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Our service starts at $1 for migrating emails to Microsoft 365..