The benefits of email hosting for businesses and solo entrepreneurs are undeniable. With an email host, you can have a custom domain name that matches your company, along with more advanced email features than free options like Gmail or Yahoo.

Using an email host also gives you far more storage than free accounts. Midsize and large businesses will likely outgrow low storage limits quickly and need a provider to scale with them as they grow — premium email hosting plans can easily accommodate this growth.

Pros and Cons of Email Hosting

Pros:

• A professional custom email address
• Better security features than free providers
• Better collaboration tools
• Integration with third-party apps

Cons:

• Cost
• Account maintenance/management

The only downsides are that these features come at a cost. And, of course, you’ll have to spend some time managing your account, which may come with a learning curve.

Perhaps surprisingly, web hosting and email hosting operate somewhat similarly:

Web servers manage the data transfers between IP addresses and domain names on the basis of DNS routing standards, while email servers use the same information to manage email message communications.

Like I mentioned earlier, email hosting is often included as a free component of web hosting plans.

Email-only hosting plans support single, multiple, or unlimited email addresses on an email server without any web server functionality.

On these plans, you’ll typically find limitations for bandwidth and storage for each email account or on the monthly totals for all email traffic.

Unlimited hosting plans with web server and email functionality range from $1 to $5 per month with budget hosts, while email-only hosting plans are available from $4 or less per inbox at some brands.

Microsoft Office users should expect to pay more for managed email services based on Microsoft Exchange online. The server, originally developed for large corporate customers, provides tons of tools for collaboration, productivity, and instant messaging.