If you add all of the costs together it is much more economical to host your email with your web hosting company. If you wanted to host email your self first you would have to purchase a server which will run you about $3,000. Then you will need to purchase Microsoft Exchange Server for about $500. Then you will need to pay a contractor to install your Windows operating system and Microsoft Exchange. Then you will have to pay someone to setup your Microsoft Exchange server with your domain name, both of those installation can run you about $100 an hour for about 5 hours so another $500. Then you will have to purchase a better service provider for your Internet with a static IP address. When you add up all of cost in hosting your own mail server it will run you close to $4,000 up front host and about $50 a month for your Internet provider.

So when you are looking to host your email with your web hosting company there are a few things you want to look for when deciding.

POP3 and IMAP are two things you want to make sure that your web hosting company should be able to do. With this functionality you will be able to use email clients like Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird.

Webmail is a feature that allows users to log in and check their email from anywhere they have an Internet connection. If you are a business with quite a few employees this is an essential feature to allow all of your employees to access their email from their office or from home.

Catch-All Email is an email address that will get every email that is sent to any email address with your domain after the @ sign and doesn't already have an email address created. Does that make sense? Well lets say you have create mwalton@mikenetpc.com, jake@mikenetpc.com, and jill@mikenetpc.com. Now someone wants to send an email to jill@mikenetpc.com but misspells the email address and writes in jull@mikenetpc.com. That is not a defined email address but with a catch all email I will still receive it into a specified account and not miss a possibly important email.

If you business depends on quick communication to customers through email then you want to make sure you have Mailing Lists and Auto responder. Mailing lists are list of email address that you keep and continue to add to of your customers. This email list will be used to send your customers promotional sales, or discounted items, or anything you might want to send to them. Auto responder is a feature that will automatically respond to an email that is sent. If I create an email address support@mikenetpc.com I want my customers to know that I received their email and will get back to them as soon as possible. The Auto responder is attached to an email address and whenever an email is sent to that address it automatically sends a predetermined response. This really makes your customers feel like you are responding to them quickly and they know you received their email.

So as you can see the pros severely out weight the cons when it comes to having your email hosted with your web site. Plus there are many things that you should look for when selecting the right email hosting for you. You want to select the right hosting that will grow with you and your business. I hope this article was informative to you and helps you choose the right web and email hosting.