Unlike traditional brick-and-mortar mailing systems, the communications you receive through email hosting providers can stay there indefinitely. Then when emails are directed to you through Mail Exchange (MX Record) instructions on the web, they’re stored on the server, ready to be accessed whenever you need. When you sign up for email hosting, the hosting provider tucks a portion of their server space away with your name on it. This should come as no surprise, since their ad-based email is convenient, easily recognizable - and free. With nearly 2 billion users, Gmail is the most popular email hosting provider on the planet. Basically, you were “hosting your own email.” Now, in the days of multiple devices and massive amounts of spam, email hosting is basically letting a mail server elsewhere send, store & receive your email.Ĭhances are, you’re already using email hosting. In the Hotmail days, it was called webmail because most everyone read email locally on an email client rather than reading it on a web server (remember Thunderbird and Outlook?). box, you’ll pay for email hosting based on how much storage you need, as well as any additional protections that are offered.
What Is Email Hosting?Įmail hosting is like renting a post office box: It gives you a storage space and an address for people to send communications to. I’ll share everything I know about email hosting with you here, and by the time you’re finished reading, you’ll know whether it’s the right move for you. And really, it’s not as hard to set up as you might imagine.
So when you’re ready to take your website out of the sandbox and build it into a fully fledged business, study up! Because email hosting is the next step towards a professional presence online.
Don’t get me wrong: Most casual email users won’t need to switch from their free Gmail / Outlook / Yahoo! / iCloud plans.īut once you’re finding success with an online business presence (or just various personal reasons), upgrading to better email hosting will make your daily duties faster, easier, private, and more secure. If you have big plans for your little side project, you’ll eventually need email hosting.