We rarely think about email anymore because it has become so common. However, there are many choices to make when it comes to business mailing. You could choose to go with free email provider such as Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo, host your own email server or use a professional email hosting service for your custom domain. Web hosting provides you with space on a server for website files and data, while email hosting provides the ability to send/receive as well as store emails.



Free email service

You can sign up for a mailbox such as yourname@gmail.com or yourbusiness@yahoo.com in just a few minutes and it does not require any additional setup. This may look easy to begin with. However, free email service does not go a long way when it comes to doing business. Free email service does not provide professional appearance nor functionality and clients will be discouraged from using your products or services as a result. For example, free email service may not allow you to use your own custom domain name nor provide features such as auto-responses, forwarding, signatures etc.

Host your own email server

Hosting your own email server on-premise or in your own data center/cloud space may be complicated to get started. However, it does come with its perks. You can choose what server and platform to host your mail service on and increase space and capacity as you see fit based on your budget. You have more control over spam filter and virus scan and obviously, you are the only one having access to your mail data which provides more privacy.

As mentioned above, hosting yourself means you are responsible for solving any problems that come along the way, including but not limited to, uptime and availability, email deliverability, backups and technical complexity. You are basically on your own when things go wrong.

Also if you choose to host your mail server on a residential network, the ISP would be blocking port 25 for which you would need email store/forward service and SMTP outbound relay service. This means an additional layer of forwarding on your original system.

Use a professional hosting service

Professional email hosting such as Dynu's full service email takes the burden of anti-virus and anti-spam, availability, deliverability, maintenance, and backup off your hands. You benefit from the email infrastructure provided by a professional company but you may run into limitations including but not limited to the number of accounts and storage space. Thus, it is important that you choose a service provider that meets your needs. For each domain name, Dynu's full service includes 100 email accounts, 50Gb of storage space and also provides webmail access apart from regular POP3/IMAP and SMTP access.

All these email options work in one way or the other with varying characteristics, you can make a choice once you have considered your specific needs. Whether you choose to host your own mail server or have someone host it for you, it is good to have separate domain names for business communication and promotional emails such as sales and newsletters.