Email Account Providers: How to Choose the Best Provider for Your Needs

What are the best email account providers for your needs?

There are essentially two types of email account providers:

• Accounts that give you your own email address, such as me (at) my company.com and usually involve the purchase of a domain name and/or a hosting fee.
• Accounts provided by web-based email account providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo, which give you an address such as me (at) yahoo.com. And they are usually free.

Key factors in choosing an account provider:

• Is it important to have a professional-sounding email address?
• How do you want to view and manage your emails?
• Need to access your email from multiple locations?
• Is it likely to change provider or address?
• Do you need a lot of storage space?
• What about security?

And now let’s look at the options for each of these factors so that you know what you need to find out from potential email account providers.

Need a professional-sounding email address?

NO: If you only need the email for personal use or are happy enough with an address like I am (at) gmail.com, I advise sticking with a free webmail email account provider.

Why? First of all, they are free! They usually give you a very large storage capacity (Gmail is 7.5 GB, Yahoo is unlimited, Hotmail is 5 GB) and, of course, you can access your account from any computer over the Internet. They also provide you with a free webmail email client. (To avoid confusion, I’ll refer to email clients that need to be installed on a particular computer, such as Outlook or Live Mail, as installed clients.)

YES – If you need a professional-sounding address, you can go with a hosting option from a third-party provider, or you can have your own server. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will usually host your email as well. Rates are generally based on a hosting package plus the space you use in your mailbox. Once you reach the package limit, you pay an additional fee per MB stored. (That’s why if you’ve ever worked at a big company, they keep sending you requests to clean up your email!)

Alternatively, you can use a free Gmail account as your server. This is particularly good for small businesses or home-based entrepreneurs. You can buy a domain name that comes with multiple email addresses for less than $10 per year. Check the prices of your favorite domain name provider. This way, you can forward your email address with a professional sound or POP to Gmail and use the free Gmail email client to manage your emails. You can set it up so that emails you send from Gmail appear to come from your business address.

How do you want to view and manage your emails?

Once again, there are big differences between using a webmail client and an installed client. To manage I(at)mycompany.com emails, most people install an email client on their computers. Many people use Outlook or Windows Live Mail simply because this is the program that comes bundled with their computer. You can also find free email programs that will do the job just as well, and can work on Linux, Windows, and Apple, so if you use different types of computers, you can have the same client on all of them.

This email client regularly downloads emails from the mailbox, allowing you to work on your emails offline. A great trick is to sync your webmail with an installed client so you can work online or offline and still receive your emails from any computer.

Need to access your email from multiple locations?

It’s rare for someone these days to only access their email from a computer. The standard setup is to download emails to a particular computer and view them through an installed program like Outlook or Live Mail etc. but you can also choose to leave the emails on the server. This means you’ll be able to view them from other computers when you’re on the road.

Most email account providers allow a webmail option so you can view any email that hasn’t been downloaded to your computer directly from your mailbox. Be sure to check with the email provider if webmail is part of the offer.

And, as mentioned above, you can sync your emails between webmail and an installed client so you can access your emails anywhere, from any computer with Internet access.

Is it likely to change direction?

Many Internet Service Providers provide you with a webmail address when you set up your Internet account. Usually it’s something like me(at)verizon.com or me(at)bigpond.com. From personal experience, I recommend avoiding these addresses because as soon as you move or change your Internet provider, you should change your email address. A webmail address or business address is much more portable, as it can be used with any provider.

Do you need a lot of storage space?

If you’re a small business or entrepreneur, you can probably avoid the cost of owning and managing your own server. Most email account providers offer a variety of plans for you to choose from, so you can start small and increase your storage over time. Tip: Beware of plans that are relatively cheap for small amounts of storage (many come with 1GB as standard) but then charge you a steep price per MB after that. Consider your needs over time, not just at the beginning.

Safety

unwanted mail it’s a big problem for many people, so a good spam filter is necessary. If you are using an installed client, you may need to purchase an additional spam filter. If you use Gmail to manage your emails, the included spam filter will take care of that for you.

Unauthorized access to your email. By downloading emails to your own server, you have more control over the access given to this email. Many companies do not allow employees to store their email on third party servers for this reason.

I hope I have given you something to think about and you are now better equipped to make a decision about which email account provider to use.