Archives - August, 2010



12 Aug 10

Email hosting is a growing industry. While there are a number of different businesses that offer complete exchange hosting solutions, off site email hosting is seen as another step in redundancy. Best of all, email hosting costs just a fraction of traditional full hosting package bills. Email is seen as less data intensive as well as easier to manage due to less user troubleshooting being required.

Email hosts still need to be verified before they are used by any type of business. Most reputable email hosts will allow for a trial account to be created so that any fears can be put to rest. SMTP download speed, account settings, HTTP headers and test emails can be sent to ensure that the account will meet your needs. Email hosting can be a difficult business to succeed in. Excellent customer support is rare to find. Companies that provide it often do not have an excellent quality product. Finding a combination of both an excellent quality product and superb customer support is not impossible.

Email hosting is all about redundancy. Hosts need to have redundant systems in place to ensure that you continue to receive email even if your main server down. This could be due to a power outage or a hardware problem. Typically, another server in another data center will pick up the slack. However, hosts who want to save money and do not want to pay for the extra cost will try to skimp. Talk with your email host to ensure that at least double redundancy is in place for your email hosting solution.

SMTP lag time is a big problem among web hosts. Having your email download to your computer is important to some individuals. Depending upon whether or not it is important to your email hosting solution, you should check the SMTP download time on multiple machines. Most of the time you will not encounter a problem, should you notice one, contact the support at your email host.

Each email hosting account should cost no more than three dollars per month. This price allows a host to provide excellent quality support and a first class product. The email hosting company should not offer “unlimited” disk space or “no size restriction” attachments. They are simply not going to be able to back this up should they be faced with a situation of abuse. It is always better to deal with an email hosting company that sets definite limits rather than a company that oversells what it is able to provide. It shows that the company actually respects their customers as well as is honest about their product.

Email hosting can be one of the most difficult web products to select for your business. Email is so vital to so many different functions of a business. Whether it is communication with a client or receipt of an invoice, email powers almost everything. Check out the many specialized email hosting providers before making a final decision on who hosts your email.







11 Aug 10

Email archiving is extremely important to business as well as personal users. Email backups are another method of saving emails beyond and above saving them in an inbox. Users do not need to keep an email in their inbox once they have saved it in email archiving. They simply need to hit the archive button or send it to the archive folder. Once the file is sent to that area, they do not need to worry about it.

That is, until they need it. There may be a question about an older order or someone may be confused about a detail of a meeting. They can consult the older email archiving feature. That way they will be ready to go and not have to contact the other person again. Email archiving increase productivity by over 50% among individuals who use it within their web mail or desktop email clients. Email archiving is quite similar to search through your email. A user is typically able to pull up an email by entering the email address, subject line or keywords that they are looking for. The more details they know, the better luck they will typically have with accessing the email.

Email archiving is a relatively new feature to be added to many web mail programs as well as desktop clients. Google Mail commonly known as Gmail is infamous for its archive button. Google is also the king of search and their email archiving product is extremely good. Businesses who are interested in using it can sign up under the Google Apps for Business program. This program gives each business user an email address under the corporate domain name as well as access to Google Docs and Calendar. Email archiving on Google Apps for Business can save a business time from having to contact customers to ask for clarification as well as time searching for an old email conversation.

Email archiving also makes it easy for bad people to access your email. You need to ensure that you have a strong password. Criminals who are smart can search for “credit card password” or “bank statement” and find which bank you bank with. They also can reset these passwords and delete these emails from your account. This takes a matter of minutes, thanks to the email archiving software. However, with a secure password this will never become a problem for you.

Have a to do list that needs to be updated? Well, check your recent client requests with client archiving. Need to see which unread messages have been sent to the archive? No problem! Email archiving software does not have to be difficult to use either. Even older users or younger users who have never used it before understand the basics of how to use the software. Best of all, users are able to quickly consult emails and then get back to the task at hand. Secretaries for email at some major companies have already been eliminated. Interns are able to search for keywords through email archiving software, solving the problem of an onslaught of email.