How to Choose the Best Email Hosting Service for Your Business
As a small business owner, every aspect of your brand impacts how customers see you, even the email hosting service you use.
But with so many email providers out there, how do you choose the best one for your business? We explain the key things to look for when choosing a hosting service, including security, storage, price, and collaboration tools for remote teams.
Email Hosting for Small Businesses: What to Look for
The best email hosting service for you depends on the unique needs of your business. Here are some things to look for when choosing an email host.
1. Unique domain
Personal email addresses usually end with a generic domain, like @gmail.com, @outlook.com, etc. That’s fine for personal use, but when a business email address ends with a generic domain, it can look suspicious. Getting an email address with a unique domain (such as [email protected]) signals to customers that your business isn’t a scam. It makes it more likely that people will actually open your email.
A good professional email service will help you register a domain or transfer a domain you already have.
2. Key features included
Here are some features to look for when comparing business email providers:
- Calendar & contact integration from your existing email
- Additional email accounts for employees (if needed)
- Spam filter
- Mobile app support
- Ad-free
If you want to be able to read your personal and business emails, all in one place, some business email providers will let you forward your business emails to your preferred email platform.
3. Security
Even more so than your personal email, your business email needs to be secure. Secure email services use encryption to keep your data from being intercepted by hackers. Encryption turns your data into unreadable text, which can only be translated by an authorized user with a digital “key.”
The most common encryption technology is called SSL security. Make sure your email host provides an SSL Certificate or another form of encryption before you trust them with your data.
4. Storage space
The amount of storage space you need will depend on the amount of emails you send and whether you plan to send photos and videos or only plain text emails.
Small businesses that just need to send plain text emails to 50 clients or fewer probably only need around 250 MB of storage. But if you have hundreds or thousands of people on your distribution list, or you frequently send photos or videos, you might need anywhere from 5 GB to 30 GB of storage.
Keep in mind that if you run out of storage space, you’ll either need to delete old emails to make room or upgrade to a plan with higher storage.
5. Scalability
Your business may be a solo endeavor right now, or you might only have a couple of employees, but over time you might have more employees, more customers, and need a more robust email service.
Look for a plan with solid, affordable upgrade options, so you won’t need to switch to another email host when your business grows.
6. Reasonable price
There’s no reason to pay a high monthly fee for a business email service. You can get everything you need for $5 or $10 a month, perhaps a bit more if you need a lot of storage space or want a lot of advanced features.
Professional Email Starting at $3/mo
Email Hosting for Remote Teams
When your team is remote, it helps to have an email platform that lets you communicate and collaborate effectively. Try to find a hosting service that offers some or all of these collaboration tools:
- Shared calendar
- Video and audio calls
- Screen sharing
- Employee chat
- Shared document storage
- Collaborative documents & spreadsheets
Additionally, make sure the email provider you choose allows you to create multiple email accounts, so that everyone on your team has their own account and their own login. (This helps you avoid the confusion that can occur when multiple employees share the same account.)
Many email services (including ours) will let you create multiple email addresses all sharing your unique domain. For example, [email protected], [email protected], cathywilson@mybusinessnamehere.com.com, etc.
What to Avoid When Looking for an Email Provider
Data Mining
Most Big Name email providers mine your data to send you tailored ads and/or sell your information. If you don’t want a big tech company spying on your emails, read their privacy policy before you sign up.
Includes Ads
A good business email service should be ad-free. You’re already paying a subscription fee, so you shouldn’t have to put up with ads. Find out if an email service is ad-free before subscribing.
Subpar Customer Support
Read customer reviews or try calling the business to get a sense of the customer support they offer. If the email provider makes it impossible to get help from a real person, it probably isn’t worth using.
What Sets Northwest’s Professional Email Service Apart?
Here’s why we think our business email service is the best value on the market.
1. We don’t just provide email service. We help you create your business identity.
Why pay for a dozen services from a dozen companies when you can get everything you need at a great price from one company? When you sign up for our registered agent service or hire us to form your company, you get a complete Business Identity on Day One, including:
- Business email address
- Free domain for first year
- Business phone service
- Local business address
We also offer add-on services like DBA registration, trademark filing, and much more.
2. We take your privacy seriously.
At Northwest Registered Agent, Privacy by Default® is one of our core values. That’s why we never sell our clients’ information or use it for targeted advertising.
When you register a domain with us, we’ll list our business information in the Whois Database instead of yours. That way, you can keep your contact information out of the hands of marketing firms and scammers.
3. You get lifetime support from expert Corporate Guides.
You only need to read our reviews to see that we’re known for our exceptional customer service. Our friendly, knowledgeable Corporate Guides® are experts on every aspect of setting up and maintaining a business, and they’re here to help you every step of the way.
Just give us a call or send us an email, and you’ll be able to talk to a real person who is happy to answer all of your questions.
Email Hosting Service FAQ
Anyone who wants to maintain a professional image can benefit from having a business email address. This includes small businesses, LLCs, startups, freelancers, and other professionals who want to make a good impression.
No email host is 100% safe from hackers, but the safest hosts use encryption to keep your data out of the wrong hands. Encryption disguises your data so that the recipient needs an encryption “key” to decode it. This keeps hackers from intercepting your emails in transit.
Using a free Gmail account (or any other free email) for business is considered by many people to be unprofessional. When you use a free email account that ends with a generic domain (such as @gmail.com, @outlook.com, etc.), your customers are more likely to think your email is a scam, or at best that your business isn’t very well established.
In order to project a professional image, it helps to have an email address with a domain unique to your business (for example, @mybusinessnamehere.com).
The cost of email hosting varies according to the service and the plan you choose. A personal email address with a generic domain is usually free. But if you want a professional email address with your own unique domain, you’ll most likely need to pay a subscription fee. Professional email hosting typically ranges between $2 and $25 a month, depending on the service you use and the amount of features, email accounts, and storage you need.
In most cases, it’s easier to use an email hosting service than to self-host email on your own server. If you self-host your email, you’re responsible for maintenance, security, storage, and the electricity costs of running your server. That’s a lot of work that most people don’t want to deal with. Plus, large email providers often filter out emails from smaller, unknown servers, so you may have trouble making sure your emails are actually delivered.
A better solution for the average email user is to use a business email hosting service and register a unique domain. That way, your email address still belongs to you, and you can transfer it to another hosting service if you’re not happy with the one you have.
If you’re concerned about data privacy and security, choose a hosting service that doesn’t mine your data and uses encryption to protect you from hackers.