Online Hosted Email: Your Small Business Email Solution

Congratulations, you've taken on the economy and have actually moved out of the small office and into bigger digs because you need to hire more people. But now that you have more than a handful of folks working with you, you need to seriously consider getting a good business email application, especially since your sales people are running appointments so often. But you don't know the first thing about running an email server, and you're not quite to the point where you want to hire IT staff.

But not to worry, the options are numerous as to the various business email applications you can use to provide the tools you need to be productive and succeed. The benefits are many, and for the up and coming business, more cost effective than getting an in house server. While it is beyond the scope of this article to list even most possible hosted email providers, guidelines and benefits will be explained.

First off, an online email hosting service requires no hardware to implement and launch; everything is done from a web based platform. The current desktop and laptop computers you're currently using will be more than enough. This alone can translate into a money saver, as no capital has to be used to acquire an email server, and no one has to be paid or spend time maintaining a server.

Secondly, no email software is required, even though most business emails will still interface with them if you choose to use them. To take Outlook as an example, hosted email will interface with Outlook, and any info regarding emails, contacts, calendar, and tasks that is in Outlook will transfer over to the server, and vice versa. This way, if you forgot to put in that important business lunch in Outlook back at the office, but it was put into your email hosting service, you will still get the reminder.

Third, hosted email is fully web based, so you and all your employees can access your emails from anyplace there is online access. In the office, across town, across the country, or while on business in Europe, you will never be out of touch. But this access doesn't stop with you or your employees; customers, contractors, and telecommuting workers can enjoy the same access. This can really score points with your customers, as they can view communications and documents related to their project as they are completed.

Now that all sounds fine and dandy for when your people are in front of a computer, but your sales force is out running appointments. They may still access all their appointments and emails via their mobile phones.

Look for hosted email with global servers, with full redundancy. This insures that users will enjoy 99.9%+ uptime, and should a natural or man-made incident knock one out of commission, there are still several all across the globe that can be accessed. Also make sure they provide some form of security, with constantly updated anti-virus and anti-spam software, and IT support is just a phone call away, no matter what time or day of the week is always a huge plus.

Going with email hosting services can certainly benefit the small or up and coming business owner with its ease of use and savings of money over having to maintain your own email server. Such advantages can even put the small guy on par with giant corporations in their ability to communicate with employees, suppliers, contractors, and clients. Ultimately the choice to go with having your own or having hosted email lies with the business principals and online business email can provide a solution either way. But hosted email does offer benefits that even having you own business email server can't touch.