The proper implementation of email hosting for business today can be challenging. However, before employing any email hosting companies or establishing your own email domain hosting program, you need to understand the basics of the process. Either hosting solutions have their merits, it will depend on the technology resources of the company to determine which is better for you. If you decide to use an email hosting provider, understanding the basics of email hosting is imperative.

Your company can use email hosting reviews for service comparison purposes. However, if the decision maker doesn't understand the content of the reviews, then the usefulness of the reviews is irrelevant. Therefore, before your business makes the decision on an email hosting provider, there are few thing to consider, such as:

1. Review the available tutorials on email hosting basics.

2. Use email hosting reviews to better understand the services available.

3. Know how to choose an email domain hosting name.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Examine the process of email hosting

While most companies will handle the procedure of setting up the email hosting, there are details that you need to know before you choose a provider. One primary issue is the security of the email provider. Your business sensitive emails will reside on a server outside of the company's primary control. If you know how the email hosting provider sets up the account, then you can better address security concerns and lessen the amount of spam email received.

I recommend: Use the tutorial on BusinesSense to better understand email hosting basics. Examine the discussion on email hosting at Greatmail.

Contrast the companies that provide hosted business email

Each company that offers business email hosting has their own strengths and weaknesses. The right one for your company will depend on the current business situation. For smaller companies the price of email hosting may be the prime decision factor. Conversely, if your business emails sensitive documents, the security of the hosted email is of primary concern.

I recommend: Examine the top email hosting providers at Hosting-Review.com. Use the email hosting selection guide at ONE/Northwest to understand the process of choosing a company.

Understand the selection of a hosted corporate email domain

If your company already has a website host, then corporate email hosting may not be necessary. Most companies offer an add-on service to host email services that your company can use if it has a website host. If this isn't the case, you have two options. Use the hosting company's domain name for your company email or register a customized domain name. For instance, if you choose Yahoo to host the business emails, then it will look like this: yourname@yahoo.com or the customized version of yourname@yourbusiness.com.

I recommend: Register your customized domain name at Domain Direct, which also offers a hosting service. You can also choose a customized domain name at Network Solutions.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Whatever method or company you use for email hosting, be certain to have adequate virus protection on all company computers. Through the Internet, your computers will connect to the servers of the email hosting providers and sometimes an email can get through the providers system with a virus in the attachment.

The Utopian promise of the paperless office brought along an ironic result: instead of shuffling papers, we now shuffle email messages. Stemming the tide of electronic interruptions can be daunting, especially as wireless "all in one" products emerge that allow 24/7 access to the office.

The benefits of learning to manage email messages include:

1. Increased productivity – the less "stuff" you have to shift around, the more time you have to concentrate on accomplishing key goals.
2. More efficiency – the more organized your email system, the faster you can find necessary items.
3. Stress reduction – never underestimate the relationship between stress management and productivity.
4. Skill building – learning to efficiently and intelligently manage one facet of your work bleeds over to other areas, such as voice mail and paper filing.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Use a reliable service provider and streamline email accounts

No matter how great a system you develop, it's useless if frequent outages prevent email access. Find a reliable internet service provider (ISP) with consistent tech support and streamline email addresses and monitoring.

I recommend: Consult ISP Rank, a directory that lets users find and compare ISPs. MailCOPA by InterVations offers software that locates and centralizes multiple email addresses into a single interface.

Choose the right software or interface for your business

Email can be managed in ways ranging form simple Web-based inboxes to bundled software featuring calendar, time tracking, and messaging capabilities. What you use depends a lot on the nature of your business and your email load.

I recommend: Smaller enterprises will appreciate the free Web-based email at Yahoo! Mail (with business email upgrades), Google's Gmail, or Mozilla's Thunderbird. Microsoft offers web-based Office Outlook Live for an annual fee. Larger companies with multiple computers will benefit from bundled software like Microsoft Outlook via the Microsoft Office Small Business Edition or Qualcomm's Eudora.

Develop a system for managing and responding to messages

Get to know your software or Web-based interface and take advantage of its features. Use email filtering and folder systems to file messages by client or project. Make sure you back up email messages regularly in the likely event of a system crash.

I recommend: Productivity blog 43folders offers systematic and action-oriented tips on managing email messages. Peruse the message boards at EmailDiscussions.com to see how others address common issues. Computer retailer CompUSA offers training courses, including one for Microsoft Outlook, and online training sites abound, like UniversalClass.com, which offers a course on Eudora software.

Decide if you need to archive email and, if so, develop a system

Recent court cases have made email archiving mandatory for some regulated industries.

I recommend: Iron Mountain is one of the best-known companies to offer this service.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Email management does little good if you're vulnerable to computer viruses sent through attachments. Make sure your servers and computers are well-protected.
• •  Be sure to quickly scan the contents of your spam/junk folder before emptying to ensure that important messages didn't land there accidentally.
• •  Avoid the temptation to be too casual in email correspondence. Save the smiley faces and abbreviations for personal notes.
• •  To avoid attracting spam, never use your business address to make purchases; create a separate 'junk' address for this purpose.]
• •  Calendar weekly time to discard or archive what you no longer need.
• •  Throw off the yoke of instant gratification by turning off email notification and responding on your own timeline.
• •  Strengthen that pinkie by learning when to use that delete key.

Every business is looking to reduce costs and finding the best pricing for email hosting is one way to do this. The cost savings will depend on the size of your company and how often it uses the email hosting service. For those businesses looking to obtain the service for the first time, a primer on email hosting basics may be necessary. However, pricing is certainly a concern for any company new to the industry.

The items that affect the pricing of email domain hosting are sign-up costs, monthly rate and storage. There are some email hosting providers that advertise free service, but they aren't as secure and don't offer the best customer service. While there are merits to the free sites, most businesses will benefit more from the email hosting companies that charge due to the aforementioned reasons. Before you choose an email hosting service, there are a few things to consider, such as:

1. Determine the primary cost factors in choosing email hosting providers.

2. Compare the pricing structure of all the business email hosting providers you consider.

3. Calculate the actual cost of email hosting services.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Rank the cost factors for the hosted corporate email services

Just like any other pricing decision, your company will have their own priorities when it comes to email hosting services. For instance, a small business doesn't need large amounts of server space to host and archive a large amount of emails. Conversely, a larger company will not only require more server space but also more addresses and bandwidth. Therefore, ranking these issues is very important regarding pricing and costs of email hosting.

I recommend: Examine the email hosting service for small business tutorial at WebHostingReviews4U.com when prioritizing your email hosting needs. Check out Loftmail from Bizintegrators to see what typical business and corporate email hosting costs and what it includes.

Use email hosting reviews to compare the pricing of the various companies

Probably the most effective way to find the best pricing of email hosting providers is to compare each side-by-side. Hosting reviews allow you to make an informed pricing decision quickly and easily.

I recommend: Use the email hosting comparison at HostIndex.com to view the top pricing structures. Subscribe to the Web Hosting Industry Review magazine to get the latest and greatest pricing information.

Compute the cost of each email hosting service

To be sure, you can afford the email hosting service, you need to determine a few things. First, how many email addresses will you need? Second, how many emails will the employees send each day on average? Finally, will the company need additional email and server space in the near future? After you determine these issues, you can then determine if the service is cost effective.

I recommend: Utilize the business calculator applications at Bplans.com to determine the costs of impact of email hosting in your overall budget. Input the email hosting numbers into the application available at Neomailbox.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Prior to entering into a contract with an email service provider, be sure to read the entire document and ask any questions as necessary. Some hosting companies attempt to hide fees in the fine print.

When it comes to email hosting, key terms such as server or protocol naturally appear. Email is a very useful form of communication. Don't let fear of spam or viruses keep you from making the most of email hosting, just learn how to deal with these threats. When considering email hosting, you will need to understand email protocols. A basic understanding of protocols will help you know how to pick the best email host.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Spam

Spam is email that you did not solicit. Companies usually send it as a bulk marketing tool. Many email hosts and email clients have spam filters that attempt to filter out this unwanted mail before it reaches the inbox.

I recommend: Find a complete definition of spam at Spamhaus.

Computer virus

A computer virus is a file that can download itself to your computer and do harmful things, from corrupting a single file to wiping out your entire hard drive. A common way viruses spread is via email. The best way to protect yourself is not to click on files attached to emails unless you're sure you know what they are and from whom they came.

I recommend: McAfee, makers of well-known antivirus software, offers alerts on current viruses and provides resources to help you learn more about them.

Email client

An email client, also sometimes called email software, is a program that runs on your computer's hard drive and lets you download, read and send email.

I recommend: Check out an alphabetical list of definitions related to email, including email client, at Everyone.net.

SMTP

SMTP stands for simple mail transfer protocol. It sends mails between email servers.

I recommend: Read an extensive definition of SMTP, including a bit of history, at The Linux Information Project.

POP3

POP stands for post office protocol, and the three refers to the most recent version. Most email clients use this to download email from the email server, and you can use it with or without SMTP, depending on the server. When setting up your email client, you probably need the address of the POP3 server associated with your email host.

I recommend: Find an explanation of what POP3 is and why you need to know about it at Internet.com, a division of WebMediaBrands.

IMAP

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol, and it's a newer and somewhat more sophisticated method than POP3. If you're not sure which protocol you need to use, your email host can tell you.

I recommend: Get information about IMAP at SearchExchange.com, a division of TechTarget.