Josh Sjogren Email is an essential piece of any business. Invoices, client feedback, leads, and internal communications are just some of the purposes for business email. With email playing such a significant role, why does it tend to be hosted on a platform that isn’t designed for email?
It’s like using an ice cream scoop instead of a ladle for soup; it might work, but there is a more effective tool.
Similarly, using your hosting control panel for email is not the best tool for the job. While it might get the job done, it lacks key features that are required for running a business. Features such as:
- Shared calendars
- Chat via webmail
- Advanced SPAM filtering
- 100% uptime
An email client with these features will go a long way in creating efficient workflows and keeping your data secure.
Our support team has gathered the top reasons why email should be separate from your web/application server. Remember, these are folks that work with control panel email every day, which makes them experts at hosting and email services.
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1. Your Hosting Control Panel Email Uses Server Resources
Hosting email on your server will use server resources (drive space, CPU I/O, RAM, etc.). If you have email going through your server by each of your users, this will reduce the performance of your server, especially if you send a lot of emails.
If you have 25 employees and you want them to have 5GB of disk space for email, you will be utilizing 125GB on your server for email alone. With that number in mind, it will be cheaper to have a business email solution than upgrade your hard drive to accommodate for this. Also, if your server is experiencing high loads, email is the lowest priority to receive resources.
To give a big picture explanation, it is easier to think of server configuration as a whole. The server environment is built to run applications, databases, and requests at an optimal level. They are not designed out of the box with email in mind. Email is deprioritized against these other requests, and if resource competition becomes heavy, email will suffer.
2. Using Email Forwarding As a Workaround is a Short-Term Solution
Software used by control panels for email lacks functionality essential to running a business. If a customer is used to Gmail or Yahoo, they will be very very disappointed in the lack of features, performance, and overall appearance of control panel email. Customers will sometimes forward their email to their Gmail to get around this. If you are forwarding the email to your Gmail and you are allowing Gmail to filter your mail, this could cause issues down the road with a blacklisted IP from SPAM.
3. Server Downtime Will Cause Email Downtime
Problems with your web server will cause issues with email. Downtime is one of the issues that could affect email, along with any updates, patches, hardware upgrades, and reboots. Email is a central way to communicate with customers for every business, and email that is down, even for 1-2 hours, could cause devastating effects to your business. This could come in the form of missed invoices, missed customer leads, unread client feedback, and critical company communication that cannot be sent.
4. Issues With Blacklisted IPs or Blocked Emails
If SPAM is an issue for you, and you receive too much at once, it will start to block your mail server. Bounced emails from Gmail will go back to your web server, and your web server will try to send it back to the original sender. This action is then saved, queued and re-tried, causing load on the server. Eventually, this will cause your IP to be blacklisted, which is not a good scenario for anyone. Avoid this with a business email solution.
Another useful feature of more advanced email products have processes to handle SPAM including “Blocked email.” This is a feature that identifies messages from disreputable sources including spam cannon services. They can assist with blocking IP blocks as well as attachment types known for exploiting end users (your employees).
5. Your Hosting Control Panel Email Lacks Security from Malicious Installations and SPAM
Security – If your web server is compromised, your email could be as well. Liquid Web’s Premium Business Email comes standard with 4 Layers of SPAM filtering, which is far more than any control panel email offers.
Filtering email is an essential feature for blocking malicious installations. For instance, if an email is determined to have a malicious link or file and email is routed to the SPAM folders, a user would have to intentionally move it to the inbox for any links or files to be clicked or downloaded, providing another layer of protection.
6. Your Hosting Control Panel Email Lacks Essential Business Features
Premium Business Email from Liquid Web offers calendars, contacts, and chat. These are features that clients will be expecting since they are familiar with Gmail or Yahoo, and are all essential to running a business successfully.
These feature-rich additions become important from a productivity standpoint, giving employees access to their mail and one another from separate devices. Having the ability to communicate through a mobile webmail client with a colleague makes communication much more accessible. The increasing need for rapid communication has shaped the evolution of these features.
Premium Business Email from Liquid Web is the Solution
With these six reasons in mind, Liquid Web offers Premium Business Email. Premium Business Email is a complete solution that thriving businesses need. It offers the ability to reduce space across a server for email services, often reducing overall costs associated with high priced drives as well as alleviating the additional burden email places on server resources (RAM, I/O, etc.)
It is also important to note this stymies cross-contamination with the server and email services. For instance, something that causes a server failure will not also adversely affect a primary communication tool for the business, especially something as important as business email. This applies to both security threats to a server as well as simple hardware failure.
Adding in the features associated with our email product (which are comparable to more expensive commercial solutions) and Premium Business Email becomes a cost-effective, low maintenance option that eliminates server competition, reduces the likelihood of compromise, and adds in additional communication tools as discussed above.