What Are the Best Email Solutions for Small Businesses?

Given the rapid rise in popularity of social media and instant messaging in recent years, a lot of people have claimed that email is doomed to go the way of the dodo. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Email remains the preferred way for consumers to keep in touch with one another, and it’s also the medium of choice in B2B communications.

As such, email continues to be a mission-critical application for businesses of any type and size, which is why it’s important to have the best email solution that fits your needs and goals. Here are some of the most important considerations when evaluating a business email provider:

Hosted vs. In-House Email

There’s no such thing as free business email, at least if you want your organization to communicate in a professional manner. That means consumer email services, like Gmail and Hotmail, are out. However, that doesn’t mean you have to spend a fortune on a professional email address with all the inbox features that smaller businesses typically need. For example, attaching an email address to your own domain name doesn’t have to cost more than $10 per year per user.

For larger businesses that are heavily reliant on email, the most important decision is choosing between hosted and in-house email. With an in-house solution, you’ll need your own email server, which also means you’ll be responsible for maintenance and upgrades. Barring but the largest companies, in-house email generally doesn’t make any financial sense.

Most organizations will be better off opting for a hosted email solution, which is similar to the sort of email services that consumers use. This means your email is hosted in the cloud, which also means you don’t need to maintain your own email server. A hosted email provider also offers practically limitless scalability by allowing you to add more users and email addresses as and when you need them.

Available Server Space

For most small businesses, server space shouldn’t present a major concern. Even consumer-grade email accounts come with many gigabytes of storage space, but you’ll want to ensure that your email infrastructure is scalable with demand. Most small businesses start out with a shared hosting provider, such as Google or Microsoft, which is generally more than adequate in most cases. However, this also means that your emails, contacts and other data will be stored on servers with other tenants, which may present a problem when it comes to compliance and security.

If your company is rapidly growing, or is subject to very specific compliance and security requirements, you may want to consider moving to dedicated hosting, which means you’ll have your own dedicated server, and you won’t be sharing your computing resources with other customers. Of course, this can be expensive, so it’s generally not the best option for smaller companies.

Workforce Mobility

The modern workforce is far more mobile than ever before thanks to the unprecedented rise of mobile computing. To take advantage of the new found mobility, it’s imperative that you choose an email solution that’s fully compatible with your employees’ mobile devices. However, it’s not just email you need to think about – you also need a fully integrated and mobile-ready solution that incorporates other closely related applications, such as calendars and document sharing. Finally, you’ll also want to ensure that the email platform you choose is regularly upgraded to accommodate new mobile technology.

It’s clear that email isn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future. That’s why it’s time to realize the benefits of a business-class email platform that increases efficiency and improves your bottom line. If you’re ready to get started with hosted email tailored to the needs of your organization, talk to SpectrumWise today.

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