Compared to instant chat or voice-over-internet applications the email correspondence may look a bit different and outdated. Fact is email hosting is still very important, especially to companies who want to communicate their website or brand website to their customers.
Being more like the traditional “mail in the post” where after sending you to wait for an answer for a prolonged period of time, email service can also be somewhat complicated to set up for an average office employee.
Finally, email hosting can induce different types of issues for you, and you need to know how to overcome these hurdles, though I will admit, sometimes the best choice is to change email hosting provider.
Reasons to change email hosting provider
The Internet is overflowing with web hosting services that truly want to provide you with good email service, but it certainly does take more than good intentions to make an effective service. The main question that you have to answer to yourself is are you satisfied with your email hosting provider?
To know this you will have to analyze your experience with your current provider and make an assessment of the overall quality they provide.
Email issues caused by weak infrastructure or internet link
One of the main reasons why you may be dissatisfied with an email service provider is that their infrastructure is weak compared to the volume of business they hold, caused by their outdated data centers or weak internet backbone links.
Thing is, the experience with your email will only be as good as the quality of servers that power the email service, and even if it is an established provider with a well-developed website.
Now, keep in mind that even smartphones are powerful enough to open emails very fast, as long as the internet speed is good enough, meaning your email correspondence speed will largely depend on the email provider’s speed.
The email service is fundamentally a data storage service, where the service provider is storing your emails on their own servers, with a defined or unlimited email storage capacity.
Knowing this, we can conclude that a provider with faster storage is more likely to give you more satisfactory service, hence you should be looking for an email hosting provider with SSD storage that is significantly faster than the traditional hard drive counterpart.
Similarly, limited internet bandwidth can be an issue. If the email service provider has a rather limited bandwidth on their internet link it may become a bottleneck with peak traffic hours and important emails may be coming later than expected to their destination.
Following suit, such issues can be more profound with larger service providers that hold both website hosting and email hosting with the same data centers to cut back on expenses, hence they have a true handicap on their email service.
We can compare this situation with a building with many residents and only one door, where residents are being held up on the door as only one can pass through at a time.
The usual remedy that will alleviate this problem is to change your email provider to a more suitable one, meaning you will want to change your email hosting provider.
Email hosting customer service
Admittedly, many email hosting owners have never submitted a ticket to their hosting provider support service, as the service is functional and they are overall satisfied with it.
When the time comes, what you want is an email hosting provider that will be happy to provide you with assistance, and provide a satisfactory consumer experience.
The new slogan of many internet providers is “internet can’t stop” but the same can be said for email hosting, and you want to perform your business or individual email correspondence on a daily basis.
Adjusting to new trends in email hosting service
For many email hosting owners, keeping up with the newest technology trends is a must. We could say that it is not economically feasible to be using outdated tech and the same can be said about email hosting.
Knowing this we have to ask: does your email hosting provider still offer only SMTP access or did they also add IMAP features? We can conclude that if this is not true then it may be so that you are in need of changing your email hosting provider.
The process of changing your email hosting provider
The process of changing your email hosting provider depends on how you handle your emails:
- Emails stored online only (through IMAP), or
- Emails stored online with a local backup copy
Because of this, we will describe both procedures individually and with detailed instructions.
Changing your email hosting provider with online storage (IMAP)
First and foremost, you need to be aware that when moving to a new email hosting, your old emails will not be available so you need to move (migrate) them by yourself.
In order to do this move online, you will need to know the following information:
- Both new and old email servers must support the IMAP email protocol.
- You need to know the username and password for both old and new email accounts.
- You will need an email client that supports IMAP such as Thunderbird
The email data migration involves these steps:
- Create a new email account by using the same spelling and capitalization.
- When choosing the new mail account username and password practically you make it to be identical to the old email account.
- In your local email software (Thunderbird, or other) make the new account, as said for the same email address and again it will use the same password as the old one
- Make sure both of these are set as IMAP, though the incoming mail server will be different for each of these accounts. You should be using the server’s hostname for the new server and the IP address/hostname for the old server.
- Having both accounts online, open up the Inbox for the account that is connected to the old server.
- Select all the emails you wish to move, and copy them(for Windows users usually this is the Ctrl+C copy command.
- Then select the Inbox that is connected to the new email server (new account) and paste it into (Ctrl+V paste command).
- Note that the speed of this transfer is dependent on the server speed as well as your internet connection and if you will have to wait a bit for the emails to move and sync up.
- When the copy process is finished you should be able to find all of your emails in the new account.
Congratulations you have migrated your emails.
Changing your email hosting provider with a local backup copy
Next, we need to discuss moving your emails with a local backup, which is very similar to moving your emails to a different account with the exception that you will retain a copy in your Local Folders, which is a good way to keep an email Archive.
The email data migration involves these steps:
- Create a new email account by using the same spelling and capitalization.
- When choosing the new mail account username and password make it to be identical.
- In your local email software (Thunderbird, or other) make the new account, as said for the same email address and again it will use the same password as the old one.
- In your Local Folders on the left create a new Folder named Email Backup
- Having both accounts online, open up the Inbox for the account that is connected to the old server.
- Select (highlight) all the emails you wish to backup, and then right-click, choose: Copy-To > Local Folders > Email Backup
- Wait for the copy/download process to finish, while note that the speed of this transfer is dependent on the server speed as well as your internet connection and if you will have to wait a bit for the emails to move and sync up.
- When the copy process is finished go into the Email Backup folder.
- Again, highlight all the emails you wish to copy from backup to the new email account Inbox, right-click and choose: Copy-To > *new account* > Inbox
- Wait for the copy/upload process to finish.
And now you should be having both a local backup copy and an online Inbox full of your emails.
Tips and recommendations for choosing an email service provider
Just like with any kind of online service, there is no one size fits all, which is why we want to provide you with some recommendations and help you make a better choice with email service.
First and foremost, an average internet user will see an ad for email hosting and jump right into purchasing, but we want you to make an informed choice.
Because of this, we have to note a leaderboard for top rated web hosting and email hosting services that can be found with hosting reviews and it can be a very good resource of information.
The second thing you need to know is that many large hosting companies that have a high number of user accounts, and especially with email hosting, have been bought by the EIG (Endurance International Group) which is not good news for the average email hosting user.
You see, when a big company buys a smaller one they will integrate it into their systems, most often through the virtualization process, to cut expenses and have all of their different email hosting brands and outlets run under a singular platform that is overcrowded.
What this means is that they will have hundreds of thousands or even millions of user accounts running under one singular software platform to cut their expenses, and this usually leads to overall lower performance than what it used to be.
Specifically, BlueHost and HostGator are renowned hosting companies and many users have been loyal to them for years but since the EIG take over it seems the performance level and user satisfaction have diminished.
Considering all of this, we are more likely to recommend smaller email hosting providers that are well-established and have a long-running reputation such as Irist Hosting or Istanco, or if you are into superspeed services then take a look at A2 Hosting as an alternative.
A smaller email hosting provider with a well-developed infrastructure and a reliable software platform is all you need in the long run, because once set and working to your satisfaction, chances are you will stick to one for a long time.
Such companies hold a much smaller number of user accounts and value every customer, while big companies with millions of users see them like numbers in a quarterly earnings spreadsheet.
Conclusion
I am sure we have provided you with some valuable information regarding email hosting service overall, and you will now be able to make an informed decision to your benefit.
I would love to read some of your experiences and feedback about this topic so feel free to comment and discuss.
