| Hosted Email vs Your Own Server |
We strongly recommend our clients to use hosted email solutions in preference to having an email server located in your office.
Hosted email is where you pay a company £x per month for each mailbox and the company provide a full email service. You simply enter your username and password into Outlook or Webmail and you're all set.
The advantages of hosted email over having your own server are:
1. Hosted email is reliable.
If you have your own email server in the office then you are responsible for keeping it online. Internet connection problems, hardware problems, software problems and domain problems all mean that your server is at risk of going down. If your office server goes down then you could lose vital emails.
A hosted solution will typically host millions of mailboxes and your email supplier's first business aim is to ensure a reliable service for it's customers. Because these companies are experts in providing email you benefit from a tried and tested solution. Typically they will have hundreds of servers, all backed up every day, in fire/storm/flood protected buildings with military grade security.
2. Hosted email is good value
If you have an email server in your office you will need to buy and maintain the computer, add frequent updates, ensure it's online as much as possible, backup regularly and much more. When you look at the costs over time Hosted email provides excellent value for money.
Also if you have your own server and it goes down you could lose a lot of income if you are not receiving valuable emails.
3. Hosted email has no spam
Your mailboxes are run on a platform with a dedicated team of experts constantly developing the anti-spam and anti-virus rules. We have been using this platform for 3 years and no longer receive any spam. You can login to your webmail and view your Spam Folder to see how effective the anti-spam is.
If you run your own server then you need to add a system for filtering spam. Because your platform is only for a few mailboxes the anti-spam will not be as effective.
4. Hosted email works with your domain name
After your hosted email is setup then you will have no problems with domain names, IP addresses, mail servers, SPF, domain keys, and other domain name related issues.
If you run your own server then you will need to setup all these systems and ensure they are working 100% to ensure that you can send and receive emails reliably.
There are lots of other good reasons to go for hosted email but these give you a good start. If you'd like to talk through your email requirements just drop us an email to support@thetoolkit.co.uk and we'll be delighted to help.
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