Having an email address is vital for a business, especially in the age of technology. However, when you own a small business, there is more to it than simply an email address.
What are some of the best great email hosting services for small business?
Small businesses need to investigate web clients, internet service providers, and email hosting services.
What is an email hosting service?
An email hosting service is known as an internet hosting service that operates email servers. Most email hosting service providers differ from web clients in that they offer premium services that don’t typically come with web clients, such as Gmail and Yahoo. Since they provide premium services to users, they also tend to come with a price tag.
What to look for in an email hosting service
When trying to determine the best email hosting service for your small business, there are a variety of factors that need to be considered. Read on to discover the elements we find most vital.
Custom domains
While many email hosting services provide users with standard email services, such as access to an email address, small businesses will benefit more from an email hosting service that provides them with custom domains.
This means that users can customize their email address to match their company website. These email addresses are more trusted amongst customers because they simply seem more professional than a standard @gmail.com address.
In fact, GoDaddy recently surveyed 1,000 US small business e-commerce customers and found that 23% of them are concerned about sharing their personal information with a brand that has a generic email account.
Source: Google
Security features
While free email clients tend to use a number of third-party services to supply different security features, many email hosting services have them directly built in. Look for security features such as:
- Email encryption
- 2 factor authentication (2FA)
- Spam filters
- Virus protection
Mailbox storage
Again, many free email clients offer at least some level of mailbox storage, but it isn’t very much, in most cases. Look for email hosting services that offer plenty of email storage space for archiving essential messages. A good standard that should be kept in mind is a minimum of 2 GB of email storage space.
Size limits on items sent
Small businesses will also want to keep in mind that many email hosting services offer a specific size limit on messages sent with attachments. You may also want to look for a service that provides a file sharing tool, which will allow you to send larger files.
Does your email hosting service really matter?
When first starting your small business, having an email hosting service may seem like one of those things that you can put off until later. However, as you grow, you’ll begin to wish you took care of this earlier.
Having an email hosting service can help set a small business up for success from the very beginning and can help head off any possible communication or data breach issues that are more likely to occur with standard email services.
Having an email hosting service really does matter when it comes to setting your small business up for success from the beginning.
2 Email hosting services to look into
After looking at hundreds of different email hosting services, we came across two that were worth noting.
SiteGround
Trusted by owners of an average of 2,000,000 domains, SiteGround prides itself on being a web hosting platform that offers a complete package to its customers.
Not only do they offer email hosting, but they also offer web hosting, making it a nice one-stop option for a small business looking for both.
- Email storage space: Varies between 2GB – 6GB
- Security features: Spam Assassin/ SpamExperts; Junk message detection/blocking
- Custom white/blacklist management
- Offers a free SSL certificate
- Daily backups at no charge
Source: SiteGround
iPage
iPage is another service that provides both website hosting and email hosting, making it another great option for small businesses.
While it doesn’t offer as much in the areas of sending limits and email storage, it does offer a budget-friendly service for a business just getting off the ground.
Options that users get with this service include:
- Mail forwarding/auto-responding
- Customizable spam filters
- Unlimited email address
- Email storage up to 500 MB
What now?
Once you’ve decided on an email hosting service for your small business, it’s time to start building your email marketing plan. Check out our guide on developing a foolproof email marketing strategy today.