At Hostfind we can help you find the best email hosting services. Whatever the type of email service you require you can compare some of the best providers in the UK. So whether you require just a basic email account for yourself or a few employees or a more complex solution you can compare providers to find the service best suited to you and your business. Although most web hosting services will provide you with email hosting it is often recommended that hosting your emails on a separate plan allows you to keep communication going in the event there is downtime with your web hosting service.
As the name implies, email hosting is a service that allows the user to store send and receive emails. Depending on the provider you choose, email hosting services will enable you to create your email (your.name@yourbrandname.co.uk), provide spam and virus protection. Even allow synchronisation across multiple devices.
Unlike free email services like Yahoo or Gmail, an email hosting service model is based on premium subscriptions, instead of being advertisement based.
Most web hosting services will come with an email as standard, allowing you to set up and run basic email services. For individuals and small businesses who send very few emails, this is often more than sufficient.
However, as businesses grow, often your email needs increase as well. This is where hosted email services come into play. The email that comes with web hosting plans will often have limitations. These limitations can be the number of emails sent per hour or restrictions on attachment sizes. You may find that your emails often get blocked or undelivered due to other bad users on the server. You may also find that some of the more desired features will not be available or will come at a premium.
Another thing to consider as well is; If your website goes down, so do your emails. Not great when you have emails from customers asking why they cannot access your website (this can be particularly true of eCommerce websites).
In comparison, a premium email hosting is based on a dedicated server that has much higher protection against viruses and spam, since these are hosted using a professional cluster or cloud service, running a single service type, providing you with the highest levels of security.
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Does Email Hosting Need to Be With My Web Hosting Provider?
You don’t need to have your emails with the same company as your web hosting provider if you choose not to.
What Are The Benefits of Hosted Email?
There can be several benefits from opting for a hosted email service. The benefits will depend on your needs; however, some of the common advantages will include:
Improved Service: The service quality and features provided by a hosting email service tend to be better.
Enhanced Security: A regular email hosting account is stored on the same server as the website, but these offer no extra features or security.
Lower Costs: Small to medium-sized businesses may often find a hosted email solution cheaper than costly in-house servers.
Hopefully, you have a greater understanding of some the befits of email hosting.
Next, we will take a look at the different types of email hosting services available.
Which Email Hosting Solution is Best for Me?
Every business is different, so understanding and choosing the type of email hosting that is best suited to your needs, and the needs of your business will save you both time and money.
We will start by taking a look at the most straightforward and cheapest email hosting type out there.
Professional (POP / IMAP) Email Hosting
For this article, when we refer to professional email hosting, we are talking about (POP / IMAP) email hosting. Providers will have various names (basic, starter etc). These all refer to the same type of service.
Professional email hosting provides you with an email address that matches your name or brand, e.g. hello@yourbrandname.co.uk emails are accessed via a WebMail, application or through your email client.
Who is Professional Email Hosting Best Suited To?
You may be considering this type of email hosting if you are a small business or individual who wants a professional email address but doesn’t need all the features, complexity or costs that comes with other types of email hosting.
If you only need an email account or want to keep your emails separate from your web hosting, then this is probably the best solution for you.
Hosted Exchange Email Hosting
Hosted Microsoft Exchange combines the worlds best-known email solution with Cloud Hosting. Unlike in-house solutions, hosted Exchange takes away much of cost and complexities that come with running and maintaining an Exchange server.
Who is Hosted Exchange Best For?
The biggest draw to Exchange hosting is its collaborative features. Being able to share inboxes, calendars, schedule meetings, and sync this across multiple devices will be a huge benefit to most businesses.
Business customers will see the most significant benefits of Microsoft Exchange email hosting.
Other Email Hosting Options
The way we work has changed drastically in recent years. With remote working, hot desks and accessing files on the go are more crucial than ever.
Companies such as Microsoft and Google now offer services such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Zoho, which can be incorporated with your email hosting in one monthly fee. Compared to separate licence fees and email packages. You can make significant savings.
Microsoft Office 365 – Email Hosting
You may already use many Microsoft products in your day to day operations. Office 365 incorporates all the popular Microsoft packages (Word, Excel, Outlook, Excel and Powerpoint) with powerful email hosting for your domain.
Google Workspace (G-Suite as it was known) allows you and your team access to the range of modern office software that Google offers. Google Workspace is proving increasingly popular as it provides users with a familiar interface to access emails via Gmail (using your domain name), Google Calander, Hangouts plus a wide range of other Google products.
Deciding whether to choose Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace one to opt for will undoubtedly be down to personal preference. Microsoft certainly holds the cards when it comes to business users. 365 offers familiar software and training that is readily available.
Smaller teams and individuals may prefer the cost advantages of Google Workspace and the ease of streamlining everything to an Android device.
Whatever the option you choose, it will depend significantly on your circumstances.
What Is The Difference Between Exchange, POP3, & IMAP?
When you’re using a hosting email service, there are three different types of accounts that you’ll generally see Exchange, POP3, & IMAP. These are email connection protocols that determine how your email account operates. Knowing how each protocol works and what features it has can prove very beneficial in choosing the right protocol that suits your needs.
POP3 Email Hosting
POP3 downloads email from the mail server and stores it on your machine. It gives you a chance to read your email when you aren’t on the web, yet a few or the greater part of the email downloaded may never again be accessible on the server. This can deliver some confounding outcomes, particularly on the off chance that you check your email from different machines. For instance, email you downloaded on your mobile device (or sent from your mobile device) may not be visible on your PC.
IMAP Email Hosting
IMAP allows you to access your email from wherever you are, from any machine. When you read an email message utilising IMAP, you aren’t really downloading or saving away it on your computer; instead, you’re reading it from the email server. Accordingly, you can check your email from various devices from any place on the planet: your telephone, a computer, a friend’s computer.
IMAP account messages are only downloaded when you tap on them, and any files or attachments aren’t downloaded along with the message. With IMAP, you can check your emails faster and more efficiently than POP3.
Exchange
The last kind of email in this rundown is the most complex due to its technical details. Exchange is referred to as MAPI, or “Informing Application Programming Interface”. Microsoft created Exchange.
While the technical details behind Exchange and IMAP are rather intricate, the basics are the same. MAPI is a connection for applications and email customers to connect with Microsoft Exchange servers and is equipped for IMAP style storing of emails, contacts, timetables, and different features, all tied into email clients and services accessible from your device.
