Using an email with your company’s domain name when communicating with clients and colleagues makes you look much more
However, hosting a mailbox with your own domain requires you to pay a monthly or annual fee. Sometimes it can be quite overwhelming to find the right email hosting solution that can offer affordable pricing plans. To help you with your research, you should consider the following:
- Transparent pricing plans – Be a keen observer when comparing email hosting pricing plans. Read between the lines for all the promotional statements and remarks. Some email hosting companies will package a monthly rate at the lowest price possible, only to find out that you will be paying hidden charges in the following months. Find an email hosting service offering a per-user pricing plan to save you from these charges.
- Support third party applications – Find an email hosting service that supports common applications and/or third party protocols such as Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and other similar productivity and office applications that can be easily integrated, since most small businesses often need other office applications for project management and collaboration.
- Clean and user friendly interface – Avoid complex interface and navigation at all cost. Choose an email hosting service that has a systematic navigation and user-friendly settings for configuration. Most mailboxes include settings for custom signature, email forwarding, spam protection, and archiving. Choose a clean and ads-free mailbox for better navigation and browsing.
- Automatic anti-spamming feature and formidable security – The biggest nuisance of email management is the spam and unsolicited messages. The email hosting service must have formidable security, from SSL protection, automatic anti-virus scans to a three-layer spam protection.
- Server must have 99.9% uptime – To avoid interruption when communicating online with clients and colleagues. Just imagine if the email servers were always down. It would be difficult to keep up with unread emails from clients, keeping up to date with newsletter subscriptions, and reminders.
- Accessible anytime and anywhere – The email hosting service must support a seamless integration to smartphones and tablets. Choose an email hosting service that allows you to access your email, calendar and contacts and view attachments using your mobile devices. It should also support push notifications and view data in any POP or IMAP client.
- Manageable mailboxes in the control panel – Choose an email service provider that has a single control panel, allowing you to manage and maintain the mailboxes. You can add or delete a mailbox as you wish. It should also provide a step-by-step guide on how to configure DNS settings in your current server’s frontend. If you don’t have access or don’t know how to do it, you may contact the email service support.
The email hosting service must have a 24/7/365 support, whether live chat, email or phone, to assist you if you ever experience a technical problem.