Why Self-hosted Emails are a Bad Idea

Where you choose to host your email is entirely up to you. Before you make a choice, here is our two cents on the subject. 

Free Solutions

Free solutions like @shaw.ca, @hotmail.com, and @gmail.com, are a good choice – you get reliable service from a constant well-known supplier, who will in all likelihood not change or disable their service for as long as you need it.

However, the down side is people consider these free services unprofessional. Think about it, if a potential customer has a stack of business cards between you and your competition and yours says “@hotmail.com” – depending on their disposition it could leave a bad impression.

A trick to masking that you’re using free email services is to add email forwarding to your domain. This allows you to advertise and receive your email as @yourdomain.com, but it sends to and is handled by your free service, i.e.: @hotmail.com. We consider this is a simple but messy solution as this again may cast a sense of unprofessionalism as the sender still receives an email back from you as your free @hotmail.com instead of the email they sent to. There’s no safe way to mask the forwarding while sending without getting caught in spam filters.

Hosting Solutions

Most website hosting companies offer “free” self hosted email any time you buy hosting for your website. This service, intended or not, loosely ties you to that host should you ever want to switch hosting providers or web agencies (who set up this hosted email on your behalf).

“Oh you want a new site and to go with a new company? Sure! and good luck dealing with your email!”

Speaking broadly: your email inbox can’t be exported from one hosting server to another, it usually doesn’t work that way. You may access your email online, or have your inbox accessed a mail application (like Outlook or Thunderbird). Either way the inbox is attached to the server, so this often leaves you with having to do a tedious manual migration – for every user. Migrating can include downloading,  backing up, or forwarding years of emails and attachments, importing them into new mailboxes or applications, setting up new incoming/outgoing servers, and linking the old inbox for use. Often after migrating your old inbox/emails will appear as a separate offline archive, or simply offline depending on methods and applications used.

Adding to the ball ‘n’ chain problems, self hosted email solutions fail at having a high-level spam filter, they’re not as up to date with the latest malicious prevention techniques as the professionals at Google or other A+ companies. Another often forgotten problem is that the terms and conditions, and the levels of security, and privacy associated with hosted emails are solely up to that host.

Using your website’s hosts email seems like a great idea when signing up for hosting. It’s technically free as there’s typically no additional cost with your web hosting provider, making it cheaper than Google Apps, and more professional than a free solution – but you’re getting what you’re paying for. Self-hosted emails make it very difficult to:

1. move hosting providers easily
2. change web developers / web agencies
3. migrate or grow your email user accounts

We never recommend hosted email. We spend a fair amount of time helping people get out of these traps and into a permanent solution.

Google Apps – Email

Saving the best for last. Google Apps For Work – Gmail is the best and only solution we participate in for hosting @yourdomain.com emails. The Google Apps Gmail is the exact same as having a @gmail.com, only you get your own custom @yourdomain.com email addresses.

We always recommend this as the best solution because:

1. Wether you have 1 or 100 employees, it’s the most flexible allowing you to make changes as needed, without being tied to anything.
2. You receive all the latest in spam filters and protection.
3. Being that it’s technically a Google account, it’s incredibly easy to set up natively on all of your devices.
4. When sending and receiving, Google’s emails are encrypted to ensure security.
5. Google is the king of email, constantly on top of innovation and protection.
6. The service also includes lots of other features for your business and employees.

Google Apps For Work costs $0.15 a day per user. Not too bad for, in our opinion, the worlds best email solution.

In conclusion

Take control of your email, don’t let hosting companies or agencies hold onto your pockets. Feel free to move and grow and not be tied down to a single provider or agency. Separate your email from your website. It is important to think long term when it comes to your business’s aspirations and how you email can help you get there.

If you would like more advice on email hosting or to learn more about Google Apps For Work, feel free to reach out to us at 778-471-5953.