6 Reasons Why Your Email Should Not Be Hosted With Your Website
As a web designer, I’ve been hosting websites for my clients for about 10 years now. I like being able to provide a service to my customer where I have a bit of control over the server configuration and I am not reliant on someone’s poor customer service or lack of features and specifications.
It seems as though in the past 2 or 3 years, hosting a company’s website and email together has become quite a challenge. As the company grows, employees are added, vendors are contracted, and email becomes ever more important and ever-increasing.
It’s not that the structure of email has changed or the amount of email has increased; it’s that the technology surrounding it has changed. We are seeing email being used more and more often, especially in business. As the demand for and use of business-grade email increases, user expectations are also rising.
Our reliance on email is not changing, at least in the near future. Did you know?
- As of 2019, there are 3.9 billion email accounts, Statistica
- Consumers check their business email 209 times per day and personal 143 per day, 2019 Adobe Email Usage Study
- 50% of emails are opened on mobile devices, Campaign Monitor
Here are the top 6 reasons why you should separate your email and website:
- It’s the ‘All Eggs In One Basket’ syndrome. As you wouldn’t do with your financial investments, it’s best not to do this with your email. As you grow, your email will be part of your daily routine, if it’s not already. Your email could also be affected if something happens with your web server. Splitting your email onto its server can spare the pain of having no email for hours.
- Today’s mobile technology. It used to be okay to use a POP3 email account with your web hosting. POP3 is a one-way technology. We were used to having a single computer, and all of our emails were sent to that computer. With mobile technology like mobile phones, notebooks, and iPads, we access our email from many different platforms. Having your email synced using systems like Exchange or Gmail Apps can help your workflow as you can sync your emails across different technologies.
- 24/7 Reliability. For email, it is so crucial that your email work 24/7. It can cost leads and money if your email goes down for more than 3 or 4 hours. Support can be more specific and helpful when you host your email with a company focused on your email. They work solely to keep your email server working instead of ensuring your website and email are working.
- Web Hosts for Websites. Sometimes a web host is a great host for a website, offering reliability and speed, but their email service leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes email service can be delayed. Since most folks are using a shared web hosting plan where you share your server and IP address with sometimes hundreds of others, you risk your IP getting blocked and flagged as spam because another person on your server might have gotten hacked and is sending spam mail unwittingly. That is tough to fix.
- Transitioning. If you need to change web hosts, having your email separate can help that transition. If your website is constantly down, slow, or needs upgrading, moving your website isn’t as hard. The hardest part about switching web hosting companies is switching your emails. You have to make sure there is either nothing on the servers and downloaded them all or a way to back up the accounts. Then consider the pain of possibly having to import the emails.
- More Features. Hosting your email outside your web hosting account typically gives you a lot of extra space (sometimes up to 50GB), automated backups, shared calendars, and file storage. It depends on your email server company.
Email Hosting Recommendations
MS Office 365: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/pc/compare-office-365-for-business-plans-FX104339483.aspx
Google Apps: https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/
Hi
Very nice article.
For me, another reason has been the need to split ,on the same email domain, different mail accounts in term of features.
For some emails the need was to be able to garantee a minimum of daily emails (I choose via this link https://docs.mailpoet.com/article/49-lists-of-hosts-and-their-sending-limits ) for other was the ability to customize the spam filters.
Cheers
Somebody had suggested I look into Microsoft or Google to change my (not so hot) email provider. Your article sealed it for me. If google (whom I dont like but I dislike emails not arriving even more) can promise a smooth transition, they can thank you.
Thank you for your article. I’m Treasurer for a nonprofit. We email newsletters monthly to about 550 members through our Hostgator server. We’ve used Hostgator since 2019 to host the website (not up yet) and our email. Unfortunately, Hostgator was unable to email our newsletters to our membership for the past 3 weeks (1 – 21 Aug 2022). The problem remains unresolved with Hostgator. We contacted support multiple times. We were promised that the issue had been “escalated.” The reason given by Hostgator was that they had moved “something” to a new server and there seemed to be an issue with some kind of spam problem. We have never had a spam problem before. There is no advertising in our newsletters. They contain news for a bunch of retirees, transfer announcements, and obituaries. Regardless, they haven’t resolved our problem. So, today, on 21 Aug 2022, our newsletter person set up an alternate account with Gmail and delivered 550 newsletter emails in just a few minutes. We had ZERO/NADA problems with Gmail. Our newsletters were delivered (I got mine). I can’t remember having such poor service from other providers. I think it is past time for a change and we can take our nonprofit $$ elsewhere. Thank you again for your article.
Hi, Michael.
I am sorry you had an experience like that. These larger hosting company are really on there to host a site for very cheap and therefore support is lacking.
My recommendation is to use a service like Mailchimp or Constant Contact to send your newsletters. I think with 550 emails, you should be able to get a free account.
Good luck!
Nice article but, you forgot to mention one thing which is very important. Hosting company can read all of your emails, created on a hosting company. They normally don’t have 24 hours access but, sooner you call them for a tech issue, after verification, they will have access to all of your emails! So, be very careful!
Very good point. I would also say that pretty much any company that hosts your emails has access to your emails.