One of the very important questions that companies should ask themselves is whether they should pay for hosted email services or not. Email is such an important mode of communication in the world of today that it is almost impossible to avoid using it in your business. Email is used by large companies and individuals both in order to communicate in real time. With services such as Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo! Mail becoming ever popular in the market, making an account is very simple. It doesn’t take long at all, and you can start using your email in as little as ten minutes.
However, using free accounts such as Gmail and others might be extremely common, but it does not come without its associated risks. First of all, Gmail is liable to shut down accounts with no prior notification, and for business use, this can be terrible. It has been known to happen, and people have suffered from it. The reason for this is because when we are using a free service, we aren’t really customers; we are only using it because of the ads that are put up on the sites, hence we can’t expect maximum customer support. Here are some common advantages of free email services:
– Obviously, you don’t have to pay to access your email, which is great!
– The experience isn’t all that dissimilar and for an individual, paying for email might be a foolish idea, especially if your usage is limited.
– Free email provides great functionality; you can set spam filters, sort mail in different folders, etc.
– Email can be synced to be received directly on your mobile phone.
However, even though free email looks like a great option for individuals, companies and business oriented professionals will be much more suited towards going for a paid email option like hosted Zimbra. Paid email services provide a variety of benefits that you can’t get from standard email services, such as:
– Advertisements are not included in paid email boxes. You can sift through your email without having to worry about the different ads that constantly pop up over the mailbox.
– No robots as well. Robots are pretty irritating, because they crawl through your personal stuff and analyze your search history, etc. in order to tailor the ads according to your interests. Since there are no ads, there are no robots.
– Emails are continuously backed up. In case of a server crash, you are likely to lose a lot of data from your gmail account. Paid email hosting providers make sure that all of your data is backed up simultaneously to prevent loss.
– Most paid email services come with built in spam blocking technology that is a lot more advanced than conventional free email services. With the help of spam blocking technology, you will be able to block unwanted email with as minimal hassle as possible.
Hence, it is evident that if you are a business professional, getting paid email services is a much viable option than relying on free ones.