Finding Email Hosting companies
-
I have 2 domains with a total of 5 email accounts. I don’t maintain websites for my domains. They are just for emails. Light email traffic. I download all my email to my PC, so size of storage is not an issue. They need to support POP and SMTP protocals with encryption (TLS?).
Do I need web hosting if I don’t maintain any web sites? Or do I need it just for the email?
Does anyone know of any good email hosting companies at reasonable rates?
I am currently with TMDHosting.com. I have all kinds of problems with them. They sometimes bounce my emails to a total of 3 recieptiants – “exceeded 5 maximum”. They never explain how that can be the reason. At one point, they bounce certain email addressed to me to the system’s mailbox (which I didn’t know existed). The sender is on my white list. I have no idea how those emails can go to the system’s mailbox!! I was waiting for the response; and those responses “went into a black hole” – leading to minunderstandings.
Right now, the domain2 is an addon domain; and is generally treated as 2 domains for pricing purpose. To cut down on the cost, can I make the domains a subdomain of domain1? I was told I can forward domain2’s email to domain1. Does that involve complicated processes? [The only thing I know is changing the name servers when changing hosting company; and some elementary knowledge in using cPanel related to email setups.]
Any suggestions/help would be appreciated.
-
@phat200 You’re going to pay for email hosting anywhere from about $1 per user per month on up to $6 per user per month, or even more. If your web host includes email and the total price is lower, then just don’t use the web hosting.
Google Workspace is $6 per user per month and you can bring your own domain name.
– Z –
-
I have a similar situation, a domain with no website and a very small number of email accounts. I’ve been using Zoho mail for free to host my email for many years now. It’s not perfect but for free I can’t complain. They have a 5 GB storage limit, which I’ve run into, but if you download all your email that won’t be relevant.
At this point all I pay for is the domain itself, and my domain host points to Zoho for email. You definitely don’t need to pay for web hosting.
I’m not positive, but I think the plan I’m on is in the left blue box if you scroll down on this page: https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html
-
You should take a look at pobox.com I started using them after Godaddy eliminated free email. Their features are quite robust and you can use catch-all on both of your domains for $ 50 per year total.
-
Thanks to hbg1 and ghenke for your suggestions.
Questions for both of you:
-
If you have your domain, the mail servers will be mail.mydomain.com or something similar? (as oppose mail.hostname.com)
-
If I don’t maintain a web site, what name server would I be using? Do I use the name server of the email hosting company [for DNS purpose]? I see references to MX record within the DNS. [My terminology may not be correct.]
-
Since I have all my email stored on my PC, I don’t need to move any emails. But I do have to add all my email addresses/forwarders/filtering rules, etc. to their system. Is there an easy way to do it besides adding them manually? Do either of them use cPanel to do this. [I have a backup copy of my cPanel.] I see Zoho has a cPanel plugin. Does that transfer all email related configurations from my current hosting co. to Zoho? How about Pobox?
-
Technical support. I don’t see any phone support. Do I have to sign in and go through their portal to ask question? Or can I simply send an email to their support email address? And what are their hours? And response time?
-
Do they support TLS ports in sending/receiving mails?
-
Do they provide free SSL certificates? Or is that only applicable to websites?
-
Do you know their limit on the size of file attachments?
-
Are they overly aggressive with their spam filtering? – i.e. having many legitimate emails bounced. Or are their mail servers often blacklisted and their emails get rejected by the receiving servers?
Thanks in advance.
-
-
Hi, I’ve checked my settings and I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can, but I’m not an expert.
- The mail servers are zoho’s domain (like mail.zoho.com but it’s a different prefix).
- It looks like the name server is my domain host’s, not the email host. DNS is a different setting. The MX records in the DNS are pointing to zoho.
- If you are using Outlook or another program to download your email, I would think that the filters and address book would be stored in Outlook, and should still work. It’s possible you’d need to adjust the filters to look for something different, but I’m not sure. Do you have all that set up on the back end/current email host? I don’t use cPanel currently for anything, so I can’t really answer the rest. That may be something I don’t do on my account.
- I haven’t had to contact support much at all, so it’s hard to say. I did have an issue downloading to Outlook a few weeks ago. I emailed the support email address and got an answer within a day. (Turns out they have a limit of 50,000 emails in the mailbox, and at that point POP downloading doesn’t work.) That said, my expectations of heavy tech support for a free account are low.
- I’m not sure exactly what TLS is, but in my settings it uses “SSL/TLS”.
- SSL certificates would only be relevant for websites and not email hosting as far as I know.
- According to the sign-up page I linked to previously, they have a 25MB limit on attachments. I don’t usually have trouble with this limit.
- A few years ago I had some issues with a few of my emails being rejected for spam/blacklisting, but that hasn’t happened for a long time. In terms of my incoming emails, their spam filter seems to be pretty accurate. I have my account set up to deliver all emails, and the ones flagged as spam go into the spam folder. So I don’t miss any that could be false positives (if that’s the kind of thing you were asking about).
I moved to Zoho about 9 years ago when the company that had been hosting my domain and email for free (a former employer) informed me that they were going to start charging quite a bit to continue hosting my domain. It’s possible you might be happier with a service that has a higher level of customer support available. But for me, this has worked out well so far. Hopefully that will continue!
-
@phat200 You can get answers to your questions at https://www.pobox.help/hc/en-us
-
@hbg1 said in Finding Email Hosting companies:
Thank you for the response. A couple of followup questions:
Just curious. Do you have only one domain and one email/user account and use alias/forwarders for all other email address?
… snipped …
- If you are using Outlook or another program to download your email, I would think that the filters and address book would be stored in Outlook, and should still work. It’s possible you’d need to adjust the filters to look for something different, but I’m not sure. Do you have all that set up on the back end/current email host? I don’t use cPanel currently for anything, so I can’t really answer the rest. That may be something I don’t do on my account.
The filters I am referring to are domain-level filters – mostly the white list and black list. My filtering at the email-client level (e.g. Outlook) is just to sort the incoming emails into different folders.
… snipped …- … I have my account set up to deliver all emails, and the ones flagged as spam go into the spam folder. So I don’t miss any that could be false positives (if that’s the kind of thing you were asking about).
I am not quite sure what you mean by this. Do you download (pop3) just your Inbox emails and review your Spam emails on Zoho’s web site (using webmail)? If you download your Spam messages, can you tell me how?
Or are the spam also set to delivered to you Inbox. If so, how do Zoho notate the spam messages so that you can filter in Outlook?
… snipped …
Thanks again.
-
@phat200
I have one domain, and I think I set up two email accounts, but only really use one. I have a few aliases set up that I also am not using now.I haven’t ever used domain-level filters, so I can’t help with that, sorry.
These days I mostly use their webmail, although I also have Outlook set up to download via POP (and also separately via IMAP because it’s sometimes easier to use that when I’m trying to clean up my inbox). Outlook filters spam into the junk folder, and the webmail into a spam folder. Outlook still downloads the emails that the webmail puts into spam. Outlook has its own spam filter system, although it may be flagged in the email headers by zoho. I’m not sure about that. Outlook seems to filter more into the junk folder than zoho does on webmail, but it could be that I haven’t trained it as well.
Hope that helps a bit.
-
I’m not really good at this, but I know that my brother does something like this, I know for a fact that he sends e-mails. He has a small business and had to introduce this function for the convenience of his work. I can say that lately he is using a chat bot services that sends messages to all his customers, and he also automatically keeps a record of the client, or rather only takes the order when my brother can not answer in person. And then he contacts the person afterwards. I think it’s very convenient so don’t look only at the mailing list we are used to when there are much more technological solutions for these cases. I do not remember its name, but I can find out if you are interested.
-
@bob-black said in Finding Email Hosting companies:
I’m not really good at this, but I know that my brother does something like this, I know for a fact that he sends e-mails. He has a small business and had to introduce this function for the convenience of his work. I can say that lately he is using a chat bot that sends messages to all his customers, and he also automatically keeps a record of the client, or rather only takes the order when my brother can not answer in person. And then he contacts the person afterwards. I think it’s very convenient so don’t look only at the mailing list we are used to when there are much more technological solutions for these cases. I do not remember its name, but I can find out if you are interested.
Thanks, I have signed up for Zoho. They have most of the services you mentioned; but I am not running a biz; so I don’t need them. They do have 24/7 live support for paid subscription – including the $1/mo plan. PO Box’s email only support is just too slow for me.
-
When searching for email hosting companies, it is essential to consider factors like check email and verification. Look for providers that offer reliable email delivery, ensuring your messages reach recipients’ inboxes instead of getting flagged as spam. Robust verification systems that authenticate sender domains and implement measures like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols are crucial for maintaining email security and credibility. Additionally, check if the hosting service provides advanced features like mailing list management, allowing you to efficiently manage large-scale email distributions. Remember to assess the provider’s reputation, customer support, and pricing plans to ensure a seamless and secure email hosting experience for your business.