Like web hosting, there are a variety of options for hosting your organization’s email accounts.
Your Hosting Company – in many cases, your web hosting plan will include x number of email accounts. This is a great option for smaller organizations, as your hosting company becomes a one-stop shop. But there are downsides. For example, i you ever need to change hosting servers, you’ll need to manually move all of your email accounts (and risk downtime or loss of archived emails).
Third-Party Services – You can also get email through a dedicated third-party service. This keeps your email in one place, regardless of your current web hosting needs. And email specialists can sometimes provide better services than a budget web host, greater uptime, and other supporting services. For example, we use Google Apps for Business, which provides our email, calendars, shared document storage and other services, for a low annual fee.
Internal Mail Server – Another option is to keep a physical mail server at your organization’s office or an offsite location. But servers can be expensive and require frequent attention and upkeep from a professional server admin, so this isn’t our recommended approach.
Action Item: Where is your organization’s email hosted? Find any relevant account information and record it along with your domain and hosting information.