Shared mail servers are sturdy beasts and they are generally quite reliable. You can access and download your mail from shared servers using popular e-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Eudora using Post Office Protocol (POP). So they are sometimes called POP or POP3 servers. Most are equipped with anti-virus and anti-spam software and they do a decent enough job of filtering out viruses and spam. But you must remember that ultimately they are freebies. They don’t have any redundancy built in. If e-mail is not a business critical application for you and you check your messages just a couple of times a day, you will find these servers quite satisfactory. But once in a while these servers do get hiccups which may make your mail inaccessible for several hours or even days until technicians can correct the problem and restore all your mail.
If you can’t tolerate advertisements or down time, you should consider a paid (also called “custom domain”) e-mail server. The set-up of these servers is not much different from that of the free servers you get with web hosting. The money simply buys you more redundancy and reliability. The servers will have better anti-virus and anti-spam software, and the service provider will have emergency procedures in place that will enable them to restore your service with minimum interruption. The service typically costs a couple of dollars a month per e-mail account. The service is worth the cost if e-mail is mission critical to your business.
If you decide that a paid service is right for you, you may want to consider an IMAP server. IMAP servers offer several advantages over POP3 servers but they cost much more. You can think of IMAP servers as a cross between webmail services and POP3 servers, plus something more. Like webmail services, they let you retain your mail on the server and classify it in several folders. Like POP3 servers, they let you download your mail to your machine so that you can access it offline. POP3 is a simple protocol and it is suitable for you if you typically access your e-mail from one machine. I must clarify that POP3 servers don’t force you to download all your mail. You can choose to retain your mail on the server and also download a copy to the client, but there is no synchronization between the folders on the server and the folders on the client. If you delete a message from the client, it does not automatically go away from the server. IMAP servers, on the other hand, allow you to synchronize the mail folders in your mail client with the folders on the server. They also allow you to attach various status flags to your messages. IMAP servers are a good choice if you check your mail from multiple machines. If you have a desktop and a laptop, for example, the folders on both your machines will remain synchronized with the folders on the server.
Although one of the preceding alternatives is likely to suit your needs, it is quite possible that you are looking for something more. I, for example, use Microsoft Outlook as a collaboration and messaging tool and not just as an old-fashioned e-mail client. I have added on Small Business Contact Manager (SBCM) to Outlook which lets me access all my client information at the click of a button. SBCM connects to Microsoft Small Business Accounting (SBA), which gives me access to accounts payable and accounts receivable information right inside Outlook. SBA adds “back up accounting data” as a task to Outlook and sends me an e-mail if I forget to do the backup. I use an Outlook add-on from Salesforce.com to synchronize the tasks and messages in my Salesforce.com account with their Outlook counterparts. I share my calendar and address book with my co-workers so that we don’t have to maintain separate individual copies. When I am at client sites, I use Outlook Web Access (OWA) to access my mail just like webmail, except that my folders always remain synchronized. Finally, I am on the road often and I use my Blackberry for sending and reading my e-mail messages. It goes without saying that I want my Blackberry to synchronize with my e-mail server without having to leave my desktop running all the time.
These requirements are not trivial. Typically you will need an advanced messaging platform like Microsoft Exchange, which only big companies can afford. Fortunately, Microsoft Exchange is also available in a shared hosted environment, just like POP3 and IMAP servers. Hosting service providers use a single physical server to host many shared exchange servers under a special licensing arrangement with Microsoft. You end up paying between ten and twenty dollars per mailbox per month depending on the options you choose. I have been using a shared Exchange server for five years. For fifteen dollars a month, my messaging infrastructure beats that of many of my clients who spend thousands of dollars every month on their Exchange servers. If you are looking for a state-of-the art messaging platform and are willing to spend between ten and twenty dollars a month for each mailbox, shared Exchange server is a fantastic option.
Of course, you could also host your own mail server…. But unless you want to give up whatever it is that you do and become a hosting service provider, you should not give it another thought.
Pages: 1 2
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
