Most customers prefer a branded business email, as opposed to a personal sounding one, when they are trying to contact a place of business. After all, a business email instills brand recognition, establishes trust, and seems more professional.
Having a business email also ensures that the right people within your organization are fielding customer questions and concerns, and that your business is receiving the most exposure possible.
Luckily, so you think, most web hosting providers give their customers a free email account with their hosting services that can be used as a business email. And while this is definitely better than using your old email from when you were young (think [email protected]), there are some drawbacks to using your hosting provider’s email account for business purposes.
Today we are going to share with your some of the problems you might encounter if you choose to use your web host’s email, rather than separate your business email account and use a third-party provider instead.
1. Migration of Email is a Pain
Even if your new hosting provider provides free site migrations, there is a good chance that email account transfers will cost extra, or that you could experience some serious email downtime during the transfer, neither of which are good for business.
Not to mention, if your old hosting provider gave you an email account and you used it, you will now need to change that email with your new hosting provider. Talk about a branding nightmare.
In the case of a site migration, it’s a good idea to at least know your separate business email is up and running to field any concerns exiting or potential customers may have while your website is under construction.
2. Speaking of Downtime
Not only will your email have the same downtime as your website during the move between hosting providers, if your email account is connected to your host, anytime your host experiences downtime you will lose access to both your website and email.
This is a double whammy in the online world that should be avoided to save as much business as possible. By having a separate email account on a separate server than your website, you will at least be able to stay in touch with those trying to visit your site or reach out to you while your site gets back up and running.
3. Spam Blacklisting
If you use a shared server for your hosting needs, and someone’s email is caught sending out spam and gets shut down, blocked, or blacklisted, there’s a good chance your email account will get wrapped up in that too because it’s a part of the same server.
That’s because there are Internet Service Providers out there dedicated to shutting down and blacklisting the IP addresses of servers sending out lot of spam. If your email is a part of that server that is being blacklisted, you and your business may have to take the fall until the situation is remedied.
That also means your emails will start to bounce, and you may not even know it.
Unfortunately, a problem like this can take days to fix and can do a lot of harm to your business. And while you can sometimes purchase an independent IP address from your hosting provider, keep in mind that IP address used to belong to another server at one time.
There is no telling what kind of activity has been flagged on that server by the Internet Service Providers until your emails start to bounce and you have a blacklist issue on your hands.
The best way to prevent any of this from happening is by enlisting in a separate email account that is dedicated to protecting you from being spammed, blocked, or blacklisted.
4. Poor Performance
Web hosts have a lot to handle at once. They have to maintain servers and databases, handle thousands of simultaneous web requests at once, and make sure that people’s website data is safe and secure.
To say your email account has the potential to get lost in the mix in an understatement. The last thing you want is your host’s servers to affect the performance of your emails when it comes to speed and delivery. However, as it is often found within shared hosting plans, this is exactly what happens.
Don’t sacrifice your success because your host can’t tend to your email account 100 percent all the time. Instead, use a separate, third-party email service that can.
5. Lack of Features
Chances are your hosting email account is a basic platform for sending and receiving emails. And while this may work form some people, if you run large business and rely heavily on email communication, you are probably going to want a bigger feature set than your web host can provide.
Investing in a third-party email provider will give you the chance to shop around for the features you need to run your business the best way possible.
6. No Email Support
Many hosting providers provide every little support when it comes to email accounts. Instead, these accounts are looked at as side features that customers have to handle on their own.
This makes things more difficult any time you run into a problem, no matter how minor it is. And, to makes matters worse, if you aren’t paying for your email account, it is very unlikely your hosting provider will make your email issues a priority over other, host related ones.
Third-Party Email Provider Recommendations
It’s wouldn’t be fair to tell you that you should use a third-party email provider separate from your hosting plan and not give you any ideas which ones to use.
That’s why we have a list of some of the best email hosting providers on the market today to get you started:
In the end, it is important to be aware of the risks that come with relying on your web host’s email account for your business matters.
With so much riding on the fact that you need to stay in contact with your customers at all times, sometimes separating your business email from your web host, though it costs a little extra upfront, ends up saving you tons financially and mentally in the long run.
If you ever find yourself in a situation where your website has been hacked, bringing down your server resources, and your business emails as well, get in touch with us and see how we can help remedy the problem and prevent any future occurrences
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