Once I’ve met with a prospective client and we’ve agreed to move forward on their website project, there’s one question that inevitably comes up.
It doesn’t matter whether the client never had a website or is having a website redesign. The question is:
We need several email accounts with our domain name. Can we get email accounts with our hosting?
My answer is: yes, you can.
But that’s not what I recommend. Here’s why.
Keep Your Email Accounts Separate From Your Web Hosting
I always recommend my clients keep their email accounts and web hosting with separate vendors.
And the reason is:
When your web host goes down (and hosting does go down), you still have an active email address to continue to stay in touch with your clients (and explain why your site is down).
If you have email and web hosting at the same vendor and hosting goes down, you’re out of luck.
You won’t be able to use email to communicate with your clients.
The second reason I keep email and web hosting separate: email hosting often has more email features , as well as apps, available to you. You’ll also get more storage.
Getting email from a web host can mean less features and less storage, with a web-based email interface.
Email Host Recommendations
Now that I’ve convinced you (have I convinced you?) to keep email and web hosting separate, where can you get email hosting?
Currently, I have three email hosts I recommend to clients.
Yes, there are more hosts out there. But these are the ones that I’ve used and my fellow web designer colleagues have recommended to me.)
First recommendation is Zoho email hosting service, which offers a range of plans for businesses. It’s straightforward to set up and offers web, mobile, and desktop access.
My second recommendation is Google’s Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and G Suite), which offers not only email, but a calendar, document creation, and storage.
I used to recommend Workspace to all my clients, but some clients preferred to not use Google. So I looked for other alternatives.
The third option I recommend is Microsoft Office 365, which several of my inherited clients (clients whose sites and email were already set up when they contracted with me for web work) use.
Depending on what you’re looking for, you may want to consider free email services that don’t require phone verification.
Summary
As I’ve written previously about domain names and web hosting, you want to protect yourself. Keep control of your site and your email by keeping email hosting and web hosting separate.
For ease of use, and one billing, I recognize some people may prefer to keep both email and web hosting at the same vendor.
Recognize that it could cause issues when web hosting goes down.
Completely agree – separating the two is what I recommend too.
Good point about extra features. If a company focuses on doing one thing well, they can do it better than those who do everything.
Bookmarked for future reference.
Claire, I agree. Use a company that focuses on doing one thing well. The additional storage space is a big factor for many of my clients. One past client had email on their web hosting account. One of their employees never deleted messages. Since they were on a plan with limited storage space, they kept receiving alert notices about being “out of space.”
Great advice, I recommend Google or Outlook. Both are easy to set up. Never used zoho, but it’s a bit cheaper, may recommend that if someone has multiple accounts.
Thanks for the comment, Eric. I haven’t used Outlook for any clients, something I’ll need to look into. Zoho has been my email app of choice for the past year. It has no ads, whether you’re on a free account or a paid account. And their mobile apps are simple to use.
How long does Zoho take to set up? I’ve heard of it but not tried it out.
Claire, not very long. I think what took me the longest was the phone calls and instructions I sent to client on how to use Zoho on the web and getting the app.