Probably the first thing that you do when you get online is setup your Email Service. Most users will have a free account from their connection provider Cable DSL Dialup account but when you are developing for business or high level hobby sites how do you choose a service that will meet your needs?
The first place to look is with your Hosting company. Most hosting plans offer unlimited email accounts and storage that equals the size of your storage space. This is probably the best option for most businesses since you can add and manage accounts at your will and they will be branded to your domain name.
Another source for email hosting is your Domain Name Reseller. They may offer the service free with your domain or they may sell you a variety of plans just for email.
Dedicated Email Hosting
Many businesses or even individuals that want a domain name but lack the need for a website will choose a dedicated email service. The cost can be anywhere from $2 a month upto $20 or more depending on the features.
The only benefit of having a dedicated email hosting account over a standard one that you deploy through your website hosting is that you may be offered lesser restrictions on the amount of mail that you can send. Most hosting account email services have limits on the number of emails you can send per day and hour. This makes newsletters and announcement services practically impossible for large sites with many members.
If you have a large list of users you may want to offload your announcement emails to a dedicated service. Most hosting companies provide this service along with their other accounts but there are also dedicated email companies out there that will mass distribute your news letter to thousands or even millions of users.
Free Email Services
Using a free email service can be a good thing for many reasons and because it is one of the largest and full featured free services GMail is one you want to look at.
Now you probably already have a GMail account if you are like most people to manage your personal non important email but one thing you should look into is GMails ability to act as your Domain Name email service.
Gmails Paid service for your domain email can provide all the tools that you need to manage your business needs and the same tools you are useto but check their quotas closely.
You may also want to use GMail as a temporary backup or for email forwarding. If you have hosted email you can have your domain email forwarded to your free mail account so you can consolidate all your mail.
There are many Options
When you choose your final Email Plan remember that you are not tied into any service as long as you can manage your Domain Name and where your visitors send the mail.
You may choose to have your domain email forwarded to a Gmail Hotmail or another account for your viewing but you can make updates to your MX email records and accounts on your hosting or domain parking site to manage your mail to meet your needs.
Backup Plans
Remember always have a backup plan in place and once you have gone through all the work to look at every offering out there for domain names, email and website hosting you should keep that information and update it continuously.
Backup your accounts and settings and always have a new home ready so you can move in a moments notice and not have your business down for days or weeks costing you more money.
