As with website hosting, using a company to host your emails (rent email servers) is usually cheaper, more reliable, and more secure, given that these companies hire experts to maintain the servers. Additionally, you also get a whole range of useful applications and tools when you use a professional Email Hosting company.
Email Hosting is a service where a server hosts all your emails. You can rent servers, like a hosting plan, or you can just buy servers and host all your emails from there. It’s important to note here that the server that hosts your emails and the client that you use to send and receive emails are two different entities altogether.
For example, let’s say you get an Email Hosting plan from ResellerClub. ResellerClub is the company that’s housing your emails on a server. However, you can use whatever client you want. So, you could send Gmail or Outlook mails from a ResellerClub server.
Why use a separate server for Email Hosting?
Most hosting plans, including Shared Hosting, come with in-built Email Hosting facilities.
However, there are a few reasons not to choose the default Email Hosting option. For starters, your email sending capability directly depends on the server. So, let’s say the hosting server crashes due to a resource crunch or any other reason. At this point, you won’t be able to email your customers informing them of the crash because your emails are hosted via the same server.
It doesn’t stop there. Data protection is crucial in this day and age. Having all your customer email information on the same server is a potential security threat. If your website is compromised, for whatever reason, all your emails can be stolen too. Also, when you use the default Email Hosting option that comes with your website hosting plan, every email eats into your overall storage.
With a separate email server, not only are you de-linking the reliability of your website and the emails, but you’re also doing a better job at protecting customer information, which is crucial to your success in the long term. You potentially have unlimited storage too.
Finally, Email Hosting comes with an array of features that can help streamline your business communication. These features could be native support for MS Exchange, messaging apps, video call apps, better sync across various devices, customizable calendars, apps to schedule meetings, and so much more.
This combination of security, reliability, and feature set makes Email Hosting a very attractive proposition.
Types of Email Hosting servers
There are two basic types of Email Hosting, let’s take a closer look at each one of them below:
- IMAP Email Hosting
IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. This is the type of Email Hosting that a lot of businesses usually use.
IMAP Email Hosting essentially allows you to decide what emails reach your computers. So, when you receive an email, it’s automatically stored on your server. However, it isn’t transferred to all the devices you’ve logged into.
You access the server, look at all the emails, and then decide which ones you want on all your computers. The advantage of IMAP is that you can save a lot of storage across your devices because not every email is immediately downloaded onto them.
- POP3
POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol 3, and this is the most common type of email server that you’ll find. ISPs usually offer POP3 along with their internet packages too.
Basically, with POP3, all the emails are downloaded onto the machine as soon as they are received. The advantage here is that you can access emails even when you aren’t connected to the internet.
There are disadvantages, too, of course. For starters, there’s no online sync with POP3, meaning that an email that’s downloaded on your laptop doesn’t show up on your smartphone. This essentially means that you cannot use POP3 if you want to access your emails from multiple devices.
SMTP
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, and it’s not really an Email Hosting type. But a lot of people seem to confuse it as an Email Hosting type. So, here’s a clarification:
SMTP is essentially an industry-standard protocol that’s used across the globe for sending emails. With SMTP protocol, you can send emails and forward them to other clients.
Basically, it is through SMTP that you can send emails from a Gmail address to an Outlook address and vice versa.
POP3 vs. IMAP — which is the right one for you?
IMAP is obviously the more popular one here because it allows you to access emails from different devices and have complete control over where emails land up. Also, IMAP is great for your overall storage because you can ensure that only the important emails make it to all your devices. Needless to say, all emails are stored on the server permanently.
POP3 has been popular for a long time, but the increased versatility of IMAP means that the shift has not only started but is going at full pace. In fact, most of the leading Email Hosting companies offer and advertise IMAP capabilities now.
So, if you’re getting an email server in this day and age, choosing between POP vs. IMAP, the latter makes the most sense.
Conclusion
Email Hosting is one of those aspects of hosting that people don’t pay a lot of attention to. But, with time, Email Hosting becomes crucial given the added reliability, features, and security that it brings to the table.
Of course, not all Email Hosting packages are created equal. So, when you’re looking for an Email Hosting solution, it pays to do your homework beforehand. The best Email Hosting companies spend on buying better equipment and then invest in hiring the best experts. They also use the best software so that their servers are better protected and more reliable.
This is important because if your email servers aren’t reliable, you’re losing one of the big advantages that Email Hosting has to offer. Also, if you choose the right Email Hosting company, you can expect an uptime that’s greater than 99.9%, and you’ll also get a lot of useful tools and applications that can make life quite easy.
You can check out Business Email Hosting plans from ResellerClub. Get customized email IDs, email synchronization with POP/IMAP, auto-responders, branded SSL for secured communication, 24×7 dedicated tech support, and a high uptime guarantee of 99.99%.
Get in touch with us today for more details.
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