As critical as email is to most companies, it is important to remember that a company's mail servers are a part of the company's infrastructure, and are not usually directly related to the products or services that the company offers to its customers.

To be successful, it is important for a company to focus as many of its resources as possible on the business itself, and its core competencies. In any business, a portion of the company's financial and human resources are invested in establishing and maintaining the company's underlying infrastructure. In most cases, this infrastructure is necessary for doing business, but does not directly produce revenue. In essence, the infrastructure is a necessary expense. The bottom line is that if a company can minimize the costs of doing business and maximize the focus of its resources on its core competency, then the company will be more profitable and successful. As such, it makes sense to examine infrastructure related expenses, and see if they can be reduced through outsourcing. Often times, an outsourcing company can provide a better service than what can be provided in house, but at a lower cost, and with less complexity. This not only reduces costs, but it also frees up staff to focus on the company's business objectives.

Of all of the components that make up a company's infrastructure, perhaps none makes more sense to outsource than the company's email solution. Although the reasons behind this choice are mostly financial, businesses find the ability to shift the responsibility of operations as well as the responsibility of complying with various federal regulations more to their benefit.

Through outsourcing your mailboxes to a Mail Hosting company not only allows you to avoid the initial start up costs of deploying an Exchange Server organization, the ongoing costs are usually less as well. The reason why this is possible is because Mail Hosting companies typically divide server resources among multiple clients. This means that several companies are sharing the expense of the hardware, software, as well as monitoring and maintenance costs, rather than your company having to cover the entire costs.

Other benefits include:

  • Reliability – hosting companies have the resources to have a fully redundant and clustered environment
  • Disaster recovery – hosting companies are more likely to have a significant back ups set up on a regular basis, so if disaster strikes data can be restored quickly and efficiently
  • Regulations – regarding the security, management, and retention of email. Complying with these regulations is as tedious as it is expensive, with a hosting company able to do it for you!

An outsourced email hosting company provides professional email addresses to entrepreneurs, small business owners, and individuals with personal websites. By utilizing the services of such a domain email hosting business, the user can present a professional image to prospective customers or website visitors. A name@ananova.com address presents a much more positive image than even the most popular free providers or even a well-known internet service provider's name. When an entrepreneur or small business owner makes the decision to establish an online presence, the first step is to select the perfect domain name. The best choice will be reflective of the business, easy for customers to remember, and, hopefully, available for registration.

If a professional image is desired, the new website owner will want to look at the many companies that provide outsourced email hosting and select one that provides needed services at a reasonable price. These companies set up the emailing program so that the website owner has an address that ends with the domain name. Putting this address on business cards and company letterhead will give an established aura to even the newest business venture and help provide customer confidence. Almost all domain email hosting companies will tout their spam filter capabilities. These businesses recognize how much productivity is wasted when individuals have to sort through offensive and unsolicited inbox messages. This kind of protection is an important service for the hosting companies to provide to their clientele. When choosing a host, the prudent website owner will take care to read through the marketing and promotional material very carefully and not to take anything for granted.