How does one set up company emails?
It’s a crucial thing for small businesses, but many business owners don’t know how to set one up and there’s no one to turn to for advice. It doesn’t help that the internet doesn’t have much information either.
So they just take whatever that’s convenient, and more often than not, they’re overpaying for stuff that they don’t even need.
Sometimes, they go the cheap (well, free) route and use gmail, but that brings about a whole different set of problems (lack of control, spam, unprofessional image, etc, you get the idea).
Best Email Hosting
Verdict
Today, we’re going to bring you through some of the best email providers out there, the pros and cons, and show you some options for you to consider as well.
But before we go there, we need to talk about why you should get an email address in your domain name.
A professional email address shows people that you mean business. As a matter of fact, they expect it. People are too polite to say anything, but go around flaunting your Gmail address and most of the time, they won’t take you or your business seriously.
When your business’s name is reflected in your email address, it helps remind your customers that your business exists, and it’s legit. Actually, this works for everything. Seeing your business’s name anywhere at all really helps with branding.
Trust is a rare commodity these days. With all the horror stories regarding scams going on, we’re not surprised. A professional email address tells people that you operate an established business.
Spammers usually use free email services to send out their spam & malware, so emails that you send from free email service might go straight to your customer’s spam folder. A professional email address is absolutely critical if you want to ensure that your emails reach your clients.
First things first, you’ll need a domain name. It acts as an address for your email storage (Domain and email storage are two separate services, more on that later).
So head on over to GoDaddy or NameCheap to purchase your domain name. Make sure to give it some thought! You don’t want a domain name as unfortunate as the one Pen Island Pens has for themselves.
Once you’ve purchased your domain name, you’ll need to pick an email hosting provider so your email has a physical storage location (yes, we know it’s called “electronic mail”, but it still consists of data that needs to be stored on a physical disk somewhere).
Depending on your budget, you’ll have 2 options.
Premium email service comes with their own storage space too, which helps with reliability (if you exceed your allocated storage space while hosting your email with your web host, your website AND your email might go down, and that’s something you never want happening).
When you’re done purchasing your email service, you’ll need to point your domain name to your hosting company / update your mx record to the email provider.
How we go about doing that differs depending on the type of service provider you’ve picked. A reputable email service provider should have a good support or comprehensive knowledge base to help with setting up your email.
You’ll also need to go ahead and create your email address, i.e. [email protected] in your email hosting’s system. Again, check your service provider’s knowledge base to set this up. If you’re using SiteGround, here’s a little tutorial to show you how it’s done.
There are 2 ways to access your email:
Now each email provider has a different configuration for email clients. Here’s how you can set up your email according to SiteGround. If you’re using other providers, don’t fret – they should have clear step by step tutorials on creating and setting up your email for your mail client!
There are a few things you’ll need to keep in mind that’ll help you decide on an email service provider.
If you do, you might as well opt for a good web host that provides email hosting as well.
This directly correlates to how many staff you have. If you have 50 staff, but only 5 key people need email, then you won’t need to worry too much about space. If all 50 of your staff needs email, then it’s best to choose a host that can provide enough storage for all everyone!
Some email hosting providers might charge you on the amount of space used, some charge you per user. Make sure you go with a plan that is best suited for your needs!
If you’re a photographer or advertising agency, your visuals will probably be a sizeable amount, which will quickly eat up your web hosting storage space. Attachment size and storage space limitations might be an issue for you.
You want to make sure that your emails actually reach your customers, and not automatically sorted into the spam folder. You’ll need a dedicated IP for that.
You might want an email service that comes with extra security measures. Check out the anti-virus and anti-spam software your email hosting uses.
While it’s really tempting to go for the cheapest or free option, you may not want to do that because you’re putting your business on the line. You’ll want to spring for an email service that has a history of being reliable. Consider whether or not they have backup services!
Customer support for an email service provider functions pretty much like a couple’s therapist. When there’s a communication breakdown between you and your customers (in this case, if your emails aren’t going through) you’ll want a support team that is efficient and skilled enough to fix whatever’s broken.
Now that we’ve gotten the whys and whos out of the way, let’s take a look at what we feel is the best value-for-money email service provider out there.
We’ll be splitting this into two portions, because there’s the premium list where you pay extra for email service, and then there’s the value-for-money list, where you can get email service from your web hosting. They’re both good with different perks, so let’s get to it!
Note
Prices shown are based on a 12-month subscription with dedicated IP address fee included.
20GB total
50MB
$95.88
SiteGround is a fantastic web hosting company that’s perfect for anyone with a slightly bigger budget, and a taste for premium features. We’ve experienced first-hand how reliable their shared hosting services are! Check out our full review of SiteGround over here.
SiteGround does not limit the amount of email accounts you can create, and you’re given 20GB of space for storage. However, the max quota per email is capped at 4GB. This isn’t a lot, considering the email storage is shared with the web hosting storage of only 20GB. If you have more than 4 users, you might want to get more storage space (Additional 5GB of space will cost you an extra $10 a month ). You’re able to attach files up to 50MB.
Available at an extra $30 per year.
Their email security is basic but effective, with SpamAssassin and SpamExpert to help weed out unwanted emails.
SiteGround provides daily email backups, and their award-winning reliability makes them perfect for small businesses that uses email purely for communication and has no intention of mass mailing their customer base.
Their superb support team is always available to assist you, 24/7.
This is according to SiteGround’s GrowBig plan, which costs only $9.99 per month. If you need extra resources and scalability, you can give their cloud hosting option a shot!
Unlimited
50MB
$124.68
InMotion Hosting seems to provide us with a lot of unlimited resources, but nothing is truly unlimited and we get down to the nitty gritty here.
On paper, InMotion Launch plan allows unlimited users, disk space and bandwidth for both web hosting and email storage, so that’s really good! You can attach files up to maximum 50MB per email.
However, there’s always a clause to claims such as these (no one can really provide true unlimited resources). In this case, as long as your storage doesn’t cause any CPU and RAM issues, InMotion won’t really care how much space you take up for your emails.
If you do, you’ll probably have to upgrade your account.
Available at an extra $48 per year.
In terms of security, what they’ve got is pretty rudimentary. Shared SSL on the server which sends and receives email over a secure SSL port, as expected with email services that comes with web hosting.
With a 99% uptime guarantee, you know that Inmotion is reliable. However, due to the nature of shared hosting services, if another user on the same server uses too much resources, it may affect the overall performance of your website and email.
From our experience with InMotion, their support is always available to help you 24/7. They’re pretty skilled and friendly too, willing to hold your hand through every little issue you may have with them.
InMotion’s web hosting plans starts from $7.99 (50% off exclusively for Bitcatcha reader) $3.99 per month, and it’s honestly worth looking into!
Unlimited
50MB
$106.80
As a web host, A2 Hosting is ranked as one of our top 5 choices, which means they’re pretty damn good.
Their entry-level web hosting plan has a limit on user email address (25 users per account, $3.95 per month) but their Swift plan ($4.90 per month) allows unlimited users.
A2 doesn’t limit the storage space for your email or web hosting files, but it sn’t infinite – as long as your usage doesn’t impact other users in the same server, it’ll be fine.
You’re allowed 50MB attachments per email, so it’s great if you need to send large files.
Available at an extra $4 a month (which comes up to $48 per year).
They’ve got a standard security going on (firewall protection) but there is no spam protection programs. Actually, it’s available – Barracuda advanced spam filtering, but it comes as an add-on which means you’ve gotta pay extra for it.
With 99% uptime guarantee, you can depend on A2 to be pretty reliable, but as with most shared web hosting services, you’re at the mercy of unscrupulous users – if someone else within the same server uses up too much resources, you might be affected.
Support-wise, A2 is good, but their live chat can be a tad bit slow – we waited close to 20 minutes to get a response.
A pretty solid, reliable web host and email service provider in our books! Their plans start from $3.95 per month, but we recommend the Swift plan at $4.90 per month for its extra benefits! More on A2 here.
50GB per user
150MB
$240
Ladies, this is the dream. The creme de la creme. Reserved only for royalty and people of supreme importance (not really, we just like to dramatize our facts).
In addition to serving all your email needs, you’ll also get to enjoy the full range of Microsoft Office (we’re talking Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, you get the idea), synced across your phones and computers for easy access.
Setting up is slightly more complicated than the rest of the options listed here, (lack of live chat doesn’t really help) but tutorials can be found online, and we guarantee that the payoff is worth it.
With Office 365 Business Premium, you are able to enjoy up to 50GB of email storage space. If you are using Outlook as your email client, you’ll be able to attach files up to 150MB.
You don’t have to pay extra! Office 365 Business email already comes with dedicated IP.
You’ll enjoy protection of the highest calibre with Microsoft’s built in security programs which will help protect your business from unsafe links or attachments, and controls to protect your data on mobile devices.
As a premium email service, reliability is one of Office 365’s key selling points. They do not share hosting space with other users like shared hosting services, so you won’t have to worry about other users overloading the servers.They’ve also got continuous backup that’s accessible anytime, from anywhere.
This part left us a little surprised – they don’t have a live chat dedicated for Office 365 Business.
The only way to contact them is via phone…and even then, it’s not a 24/7 service. It’s a bit of a disappointment, seeing as this is supposed to be a premium service.
All things considered, Office 365 Business is something you’d want for your business if you can afford to spring for it. You won’t just get email hosting, you’ll enjoy enterprise grade calendering that syncs with your emails.
You’ll also enjoy access to Microsoft office apps, all for just $20 per month per user.
What more can you ask for (besides the inclusion of live chat, that is)? Find out more here.
Warning
As Office 365 Business Premium is an enterprise grade email service, it requires extra technical skill to set up. Expect a slight learning curve during set up, especially since there isn’t a dedicated support team.
25GB per user
50MB
$24
Rackspace is a pretty awesome premium web hosting and email hosting service. As a matter of fact, they’re actually pretty decent as a standalone email host!
Rackspace’s Basic plans gives you 25GB mailboxes per user, and up to 50MB attachments.
No need to pay anything extra, Rackspace Email service already comes with dedicated IP!
They use a premium filtering and scanning software to keep inboxes clean from spam, and will scan your links for malware.
You don’t share any servers with other users when you use Rackspace, hence you won’t have to worry about your email going down due to server abuse by other users. They’ve also got a 100% uptime guarantee (what?! 100%?!?), so there’s literally no need to worry about the service going down.
Archiving is available, but only with the “add archiving” plan.
From our experience, the support team is helpful and knowledgeable, and most importantly they are available 24/7/365.
Rackspace’s basic email plan starts from $2 per month per user, but you’ll just get the bare necessities with that. You’ll want to go with the Plus plan ($3.50 per month per user) or the Add Archiving plan (6.50 per month per user) for the full benefits.
More about Rackspace here.
Anyone that says email isn’t important to your business is either lying to you, or has the business acumen of a drunken donkey. In this day and age, It is absolutely essential to get a professional looking email address so that your business will be taken seriously.
A cheap or even free email service might be tempting but it’s not the wisest of choices you’ll be making, seeing that free or cheap email services usually have poor spam filters and doesn’t instil trust in your customers.
Consider the reliability of the service, how many people in your company actually needs an email address, the usual average size of your attachments and security of the service before deciding on one.
We hope that with this guide, you’ll find it easy to get and set up your business email. If you have any further queries, feel free to contact any one of us in Bitcatcha!
