When getting started with a website or new business, there is a lot of different bits and pieces you have to set up. You will need a quality hosting provider for your website, and many low cost hosts include bundled website and email hosting. While this can sound like an easy and low cost option, there are some really important reasons to rethink using the same provider for these services, which can be separate.
What draws business owners to bundled website and email hosting
It’s easy to see at first glance why bundled website and email hosting packages are appealing. With many of different providers for the many services you need to run your business, it makes sense to try and consolidate and reduce these to make the admin easier, and save on operating expenses. Business owners are always busy, and it seems like a good idea to keep things simple and organised and minimise the number of providers you’re utilising, but there are many reasons why this isn’t a great idea.
The hidden pitfalls of cheap shared email hosting
Most email hosting that comes bundled with website hosting is cheap, and low quality compared to some of the other options that are available. Here are some of the key issues that can come up with cheap email hosting.
- Poor deliverability: If you’re using shared email hosting, deliverability issues are more common, meaning your emails don’t get delivered consistently, often without you even knowing there is a problem. This is due to how shared hosting works, the actions of an unrelated website on the same shared hosting address can mean your emails get blocked or end up in spam.
- Limited storage: Most shared email hosting has small mailbox sizes or limitations, meaning that you’re constantly running out of space, can’t send or receive large attachments or keep the emails you want to hold onto for record keeping purposes.
- Lack of advanced features: Email hosting that is bundled with website hosting is usually low quality, and lacks some important features that can help make your business more efficient, like collaboration features, integrations with calendars and lots more.
- Security vulnerabilities: Shared hosting can be more susceptible to security issues, which can affect your email.
- Performance issues: Another big downside of bundled email and website hosting is that your website and emails are hosted on the same server. If your website is having issues or problems, it can affect your emails; and vice versa. This can mean downtime for these services, or even just the chance that they are slowing each other down.
Email is still one of the most critical communication and collaboration tools used by businesses, so it’s important that you have a reliable and quality email hosting provider that isn’t likely to run into these problems that are more frequent from cheap email hosting. So what are the options
Best email hosting options for Australian businesses
Instead of setting for subpar, low quality bundled email hosting, I would recommend using a good quality professional email hosting that is a better option in terms of deliverability, reliability and features to help your business run more efficiently.
Here are the main reasons you should consider a separate, high quality email hosting provider:
- Improved deliverability, better email hosting means dedicated email sending servers that mean your emails make where they should.
- Advanced spam filtering and security, so you get less junk, spam and malicious emails
- Collaboration tools for working with your staff or others, like shared calendars, file sharing and document editing
- Mobile apps to make it easier to work on the go
- Quality support – Help when you need it, usually 24/7 via phone, live chat or email
- Professional appearance – your emails will still be branded with your domain
While professional email hosting comes at a cost, and it will always be more than using a bundled email hosting – the value you get far outweighs the issues that could come from cheap bundled website and email hosting which could lead to you losing time or business.
Making sense? Let’s look at some of the big quality and recommended email hosting providers and what they offer.
Google email hosting (Google Workspace)
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) have their own productivity suite which includes professional email hosting that can utilise your existing business domain name. This includes the business versions of the popular tools you might already be familiar with like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs etc.
Workspace makes collaborating with your team easy, with shared calendar, documents and all Meet for video calls. While these tools are available for free, to use them for your business linked to your business domain name you need to be on a Google Workspace plan, which is billed per user. You don’t just get the same free version of these tools, you get more storage, additional features, enhanced security and the tools to administer your Workspace account.
Google Workspace is what I use at Presstwood Design, and I highly recommend it for anyone, especially people who are already familiar with the Google ecosystem as it will be familiar and easy.
Microsoft email hosting (Office365)
If you’re more familiar with Microsoft suite of products like Outlook, OneDrive, Microsoft Word etc, then Office365 is a great choice for your professional email hosting. Office365 offers a comprehensive range of tools for businesses and organisations, which includes email hosting (again linked to your domain), cloud storage, and of course the popular office apps you’ve used before like Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
Office365 is also great for collaboration and working with others, and includes Teams for chat and video calls. With a strong focus on security and integration with lots of different apps and services, Office365 is a great option, especially if you’re already familiar with the Microsoft suite of apps.
Zoho email hosting
Another newer and less well known option worth considering here is Zoho, which includes lots of the same features as both Google Workspace and Office365, but can sometimes be a lower cost option based on your business requirements. While definitely a bit newer and not quite as large and established as Workspace or Office365, Zoho could be a good option, especially if you’re not overly invested in either the Microsoft of Google ecosystems.
Separate domain email hosting
The options explored so far all are full productivity suites, and include a lot more than just email hosting. In most cases, these features are beneficial and useful for growing businesses, but what if you just want email hosting at your business domain name, and nothing else?
Good news, you can do exactly that and still keep your email hosting completely separate from your website hosting, and avoid the issues that can come when these are bundled. These will be lower cost than a full suite of apps, and are a lot better quality than shared email providers.
Here are some of the well respected both Australian and global domain email hosting providers to consider:
- VentraIP Australian Email Hosting
- DreamHost Email Hosting
- ProtonMail for Business
- Rackspace Email Hosting
What should you choose?
Which option you choose really depends on your business – the size, how you work and most important what tools and features will integrate easiest into your business. For lots of organisations, I find they are already deeply invested in a either the Google of Microsoft ecosystem, so if that is the case that platform is a natural choice.
If you’re fairly neutral, then review the available options and trial the one that sounds the best to make sure it’s the right fit for your business.
Why you should avoid bundled website and email hosting
Email really is one of the most important tools for your business – like a quality website, it can be central to everything you do as a business. With that in mind, it’s so important that it works reliably, and without security, deliverability or performance issues.
That’s why I would always recommend that businesses avoid bundled website and email hosting, while attractive at first it is ultimately something that can negatively impact your business, losing you time and potentially even customers.
How to move to a separate email hosting provider
If you’re just getting started, then getting set up with one of the separate email providers on this page should be relatively easy. Most services will help guide you through the set up process, and have support available if you get stuck.
It can however still be technical and it involves making changes to your domain and DNS records. If you’re at all in doubt, or just want a professional to manage – it’s best to reach out to an IT company who can help you set up your account and get you all set up. I will often recommend to businesses to find a local IT company that specialised in the platform they prefer, this way they can get in-person support which can sometimes be required, especially if setting up multiple devices and staff members with access to the new email hosting.
This is especially true if you’re coming from an existing shared email account or another provider, because you’ll need to migrate your existing email accounts to the new provider.
