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Choosing a Web Host: Email Issues

Web hosts vary wildly in the types of email services that they offer so this is an important aspect to look for when choosing the web host that’s right for you. To complicate things further, there are many email issues to consider when choosing a web host.

You should always start with the basics. Your web host should provide you with email accounts for each member of your company (e.g.: employee@domainname.com). You should also look for web hosts that provide catchall email accounts that will allow any name @domainname.com to end up at your email account. People are constantly misspelling names and this can save you from a lot of lost business.

What sort of email account should you look for? There are three basic types of email services. POP (Post Office Protocol) Email functions like a traditional inbox (think Outlook). You are provided with storage space on your host server for your mail and you use an email program to log in and access your email. However, you can only access the information from one computer. IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a slight upgrade. It is basically like POP but it allows you to access your email from several different computers (office, home, etc.). The third type is the most flexible. Web-based email allows you to access your email via a web browser. This method is convenient because you can access your email from any computer in the world. Get to know your needs and decide which service will work best for you.

Email Size Limits

Now that you have narrowed down your choice based on the email service provider, be aware of some limitations you may encounter. Almost every web host will put restrictions on the amount of space allocated to your email. Is email your business’ primary form of communication? Be aware of the amount of emails and attachments you plan on sending and receiving. Attachments are an important aspect because they take up a lot of space. Depending on the size restrictions, emails over a certain size that are sent to you will be returned to sender and if you’re lucky they will receive an error message saying that you didn’t get the email. But this isn’t guaranteed. There is no established method of dealing with undelivered messages so it depends on their provider. This is an easy way to loose track of important information. You may also find that you have to chop your files in half (if that is even possible) before you send them out. This is a completely different issue than your email storage space sizes so make sure you ask specifically, don’t just guesstimate based on the storage limit they quote you. You will find that the data allotment for each individual email is much smaller than the size of your email storage space. But, speaking of storage space, make sure that you choose a web host that allows you an even balance between bandwidth and storage space. Don’t pay for 400MB of bandwidth if your mailbox can only hold 2MB worth of information. Then you’ll be emptying out your mailbox three of four times a day in order to take advantage of it. Conversely, it doesn’t make sense to have 100MB of storage space in your account and only 20MB of bandwidth.

Outgoing Message Restrictions

Many web hosts also place restrictions on the number of outgoing messages you can send over a specified time period. Again, this varies from host to host and can be based hourly, daily, or even monthly. Why? They do it to make sure that they are not hosting customers that send out spam, which nobody likes. But, sometimes these limits are really restrictive so you want to make sure that you are aware of those limitations so that you are not hampered by them. Limits on outgoing emails are generally based on the number of outgoing emails. So, sending 10 emails to one person, or one email to ten people both amount to ten messages worth of outgoing email.

Incoming Message Restrictions

Most web hosts do not place restrictions on outgoing messages, but it does occur. Like outgoing messages, some hosts limit the number of emails that you are allowed to receive over a given period of time. So, if you are a member of any email discussion lists where you receive an email for every post and there are countless posts per day, steer clear of those that place these types of restrictions.

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