Are there any alternatives? If so, what are they?
When looking for a good quality email solution, most people will have heard of Gmail (Google Workspace/G-Suite) and Outlook (Office 365). These are by far and away the largest providers of email services to the business world and both have very high levels of service and great features.
That being said, not everyone needs all the features that come with these services, and considering the cost involved, it can sometimes simply be out of reach for small business to commit so much to an email service, when all they really need is the ability to send and receive.
There are a number of alternatives to using these big names such as:
- Zoho Mail
- Zimbra Mail
- Proton Encrypted Mail
- Fastmail
There are also services via website hosting providers such as GoDaddy and others.
It’s difficult to say if any email provider is better than the other though, and it quite often it comes down to personal taste and what people are used to. Personally, I prefer the functionality of Gmail over other options, not only because we’re a reseller but more so due to the powerful webmail interface, blisteringly fast search, and excellent apps available for various mobile platforms.
That being said, we have customers using Office 365 with no complaints either and the Outlook email client for mobile devices is actually pretty good these days.
If you’re not sure what email provider to use, it all boils down to the features you think you’ll need. Do you want the ability to collaborate on documents online and schedule video calls between team members? Then G-Suite or Office 365 might be the way to go.
If you’re only looking for a simple email solution, then it’s often easiest to just use the one that is available through your website hosting provider. However, if you think you’ll be using email a lot in the future, then it might pay to choose a paid service up-front.
The main reason for this advice is that once you’re locked into an email hosting solution it can be tricky to break away for a number of reasons. While migrating the settings required to change email providers is quite simple, migrating the actual emails and contacts, etc can be more challenging if not impossible in some cases.
So choose wisely, and if in doubt, reach out and have a chat with the team here at Host Local. We’ve been around the block a few times with email migrations and leveraging our experience early on might help your business in the future.
Host Local offers customers the choice of email hosting.
Host Local is a Google Partner and offers Google Workspace/G-Suite to customers. While Google Workspace/G-Suite allows businesses to create their own business email addresses and leverage the power of the Gmail platform, it also includes access to other incredible features the come along with G-suite such as Google Drive, Google Doc, Google Sheets and many more advanced online tools.
Host Local also offers a free basic email service which is managed by the Host Local team for customers who really just want simple email.
The Host Local basic email is freely available to any customer who is hosting their website with Host Local.