Establishing An Email Service

Today one of the most effective means of business communication is email.  In fact, it is very difficult to exist as a business with out it.

When it comes to establishing email service for your business there are several ways you can go about doing so.

- In-house:  You can setup and run your own mail servers.  This is an expensive option and requires a great deal of technical skills to setup and manage. 

- Dedicated Hosting:  Have a third party run your mail service on a dedicated server.  This is where the mail server is dedicated to your service only and is not shared with others.  This is ideal if you have a large staff that require quick access to emails with large storage capacity for attachments.  This option is the most expensive one.

- Shared Hosting:  Have a third party run your mail service on a shared server. This option is ideal if you have a small staff and don't require a great deal of storage space and bandwidth.  This is the least expensive option and ideal for startup businesses.

In House

In order to establish this service in-house you need the following:

- Domain Name Server (DNS)

- Email Server

- Information Technology Technician

- Email Service Software such as, Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, Groupewise, etc.

Shared & Dedicated Hosting

You can obtain dedicated hosting service from Domain Name Service providers and other third party service providers.  These service providers not only host your email, but also your website for a small monthly fee. They provide hosted as well as shared hosting service.  Cost can start as low as $3.99 per month.  Many of these service providers will give you 5-10 free email accounts before charging you.  They include:

- 1&1
- Bluehost
- Fat Cow
- Godaddy
- HostGator
- HostPapa
- Ipage
- IX Webhosting
- Inmotion Hosting
- Just Host
 

See a list of domain name service providers

Must Do

In order for your mail service to work you first have to register your domain name with a Domain Name Service Provider

Your email will be based on your domain.  For example, if your domain name is "greatart.com" then your email address will be "yourname@greatart.com".