Are we saying we can not be trusted or that we are no good at email? Not at all but there are a couple of much better options for your business and we want to help you make sure as much of your business email as possible gets sent and received without issues.

For a while now we have been suggesting and recommending you all separate your email from your website. Just to be clear your email addresses would not change they would just be hosted on a separate server from your website. Here are the reasons why this is an excellent idea:

Using our free email server carries risks

As you know we offer all our clients free email addresses for use with any hosting account at 3001Web that is not going to change. Of course, we monitor our email service for security and it automatically detects bulk spam that might be being sent from automated programmes. But remember this is a basic, FREE complimentary service and has hundreds of sites sending out hundreds of emails every day from the same mail server, we can not possibly monitor every email that is sent.

All our clients that use this free email are using a single server with the same IP address to send their business email. Should anyone on our server get accused of sending spam (whether they are guilty or not) our mail server IP (address) could potentially get blacklisted by public spam databases. Of course, if that happens we will investigate, talk to the offender, fix any issues then apply to have the block removed. Please be aware that removing our IP from blacklists can take from one day to two weeks to achieve and it is something we have no control over. It all depends on how long the company blocking us takes to remove our IP address.

During that time through no fault of yours or ours, you may not be able to deliver email to certain strict providers like AOL, MSN, Live, Hotmail and others that happen to be using that spam database as part of their spam blocking methods. This could be highly inconvenient for your business.

Advantages of separating your email from your site

Redundancy

Right now if you are using the free email we offer with your hosting, your email and your website are sitting on the same server. Should the server go down for any reason or should we need to shut the server down for scheduled maintenance then your email is also out of action. For that period of time, your contact with your clients is non-existent. Not a great situation.

On the other hand, if your email is hosted on a separate server if your site is ever offline your email is not affected and vice versa, either way, your clients can still contact you.

Deliverability

Again we are not belittling ourselves here, we are professional web hosts and WordPress experts we are not email gurus. Yes, we offer a basic email service but there are professionals out there who do a much better job with email and we want you to have the best.

They can set up email accounts with all the necessary protocols and verifications to maximise the successful delivery of your emails to your clients’ inboxes, help you avoid the dreaded spam folders, or worse, being blocked by blacklists and having your emails returned to you as spam. They monitor their IP reputations pro-actively instead of reactively which again reduces the possibility of the mail server getting blacklisted in the first place.

If your business relies on email for even part of your income then I am not going to tell you what you want to hear just what you need to hear… you should have professional email! The costs of pro email are ridiculously cheap (less than a single cup of coffee per month) it really is a no brainer when you consider the disruption email issues can cause your business and income.

Storage is Cheaper

Any of you who deal with lots of emails know you now need to store them for data protection and legal purposes. This can end up requiring a lot of file storage space.

If you are hosting your email with us then you are using your valuable more expensive web space to store email. Website storage has always been more expensive than email storage.

Here’s why. Email servers do not have to be anywhere near as powerful as Website servers so they are cheaper to build and as a result storage space on them is usually half the price. If you were to ask us for an extra 10GB of space to store email we would have to charge you £6 a month for that. For £3 a month you can get a massive 25GB of email storage with a professional email host.

Two choices to improve your email solution

Option 1: Smarter Mail (Highly recommended)

Smarter Mail is our professional email suite hosted on a separate server dedicated to email and run by email experts.

For just £3 per month (Paid yearly) you can have up to 25 pro email accounts @yourdomain.com with a massive 25GB of storage space to share between them. Note the accounts are per domain if you run more than one site you will need an account for each site.

It does not stop there, Smarter mail is more than just email it is a whole suite of business tools similar to Microsoft Exchange but without all the extra addon fees and at a fraction of the cost. You can see full details on Smarter Mail here (opens in a new tab)

SPECIAL OFFER
For the next 7 days (Offer expires Feb 21st 2021) any client who chooses to migrate to Smarter Mail (Don’t worry we will do all the migrating for you and there are no extra setup fees) we will discount this even further to just £2.50 a month (£30 a year) Less than a cup of coffee a month to secure your email solution with a truly professional service. It really is a no brainer.

To order at this discounted price simply open a support ticket to ask us to move you over. Once you pay the invoice we will have it all done in a few hours. Yes, we will migrate all your current email too.

Option 2: Get a free email account from an email company for your business.

EG: yourbusiness@hotmail.com or Yourbusiness@gmail.com

This is not ideal as it is not as professional as using your own domain name for emails, also if you currently have email addresses that use your own domain it would involve letting all your clients know your email address has changed.

However, it is free once set up we can edit all your website forms or your shopping cart to use the new email address for our usual site editing rates. Simply open a support ticket to ask us to do the work for you.

Note your free email host would have to allow SMTP connections for this to work well, Gmail do and a few others, we will check that for you and advise as needed.

A final thought and a bit of a warning

Those of you who have known me for a long time know how I work. I rarely promote services, certainly not services that I do not believe in, have not used myself or that will not add a real tangible benefit for your business.

All our email here at 3001web is operated on the Smarter Mail server. We love it and as yet have never had any email issues since we switched. I also continuously strive to get you all the most value for your hard-earned cash.

The spam databases out there that are used by Hotmail, AOL and other free providers are getting more and more aggressive making basic free email servers like ours harder to run and less effective at getting email delivered.

There is one company called UCEPROTECT who block whole ranges of server IP addresses even if they are not guilty of sending spam. This is insane and has negatively affected hundreds of thousands of legitimate businesses. They even blocked the IP addresses of thousands of Amazon web servers and one of the webs leading cybersecurity companies TrendMicro.

In English, that is like someone who lives 20 streets away from you committing a crime and every person in your district being given a criminal record. It is VERY VERY silly.

Professional email helps bypass nonsense like this.

That’s it for now
Have a great day
Gary McHugh
Support
3001Web