One of the numerous services that a Hosting Server Colocation company currently offers is 3rd party email hosting.

Email capabilities may be the most important aspect of any company. Like everything else this option has its pros and cons. Depending on the size of your company and its widget or service, you need to inform yourself whether acquiring this service is the right choice for you.

"In order for email to be directed to a third party mail server, the domain name needs to have specific settings that point the Email portion of the domain traffic to the alternative third party server while pointing the website records to the website." (www.gutensite.com)

Do not confuse 3rd party email hosting with online e-mail services. The latter "provide you with free e-mail in exchange for advertising. These services make you sign up for each account separately and you cannot use your own domain name. This is not the best choice for a business because you are not working under a branded domain and there is advertising linked to your e-mail, but there are some micro-organizations that go this route." (www.allbusiness.com)

Advantages

You do not need Hosting Server Colocation companies to tell you the results of not having reliable email capacities in your business - in a nutshell, no one can communicate within the office, with clients and, worse yet, with potential clients.

One of the advantages to signing up for 3rd party email hosting for small and medium sized companies include not having to pay for the expensive software and personnel to manage it. "E-mail hosting providers offer premium e-mail services on custom platforms. For a fee they will configure your e-mail, give your company its own domain name, and provide you with a large number of accounts." (www.allbusiness.com)

Another advantage is that the cost of the service, on a monthly basis, is minimal and which includes the incorporation of expensive software such as virus as well as spam protection.

Disadvantages

If you are into micro-managing Hosting Server Colocation providers will not recommend 3rd party email hosting. The main disadvantage of this service is that you lose control of your email capabilities to include the security of such. Even though these Hosting Server Colocation companies have the highest degree of security, we all know "stuff happens".

Advantages

One of the advantages that Hosting Server Colocation providers that offer you 3rd party email hostingwill not be able to you is total control of your email capabilities. If for x, y or z reasons your email goes down overnight, you will not have to wait until the company offering you the service repairs it.

Another advantage is that "since you are not paying for storage, you can make e-mail accounts as large as you want, add accounts easily, or host multiple domains." (www.allbusiness.com)

With regard to spam and virus protection, the other side of the coin is that you get to decide and chose which software you will be using.

Disadvantages

The most obvious and largest disadvantage to opting for an in house email provider versus going with a Hosting Server Colocation company, is money. Not only will you have to incur in the expense of purchasing the latest software will be coming out of your pocket, but you will also have to pay the salary of the IT person to monitor and upgrade such on a regular basis.

Another disadvantage is that "you are also left with the responsibility of backing up the e-mail and making sure that you store the backed-up data in a separate, safe location." (www.allbusiness.com)

Normally, a Hosting Server Colocation provider should give you options as to what type of connection you want for your email service.

POP

Advantage

"A POP connection will cause your computer's mail program to download all your email, from the mail server and store the messages and the attachments on your computer. This is useful if you want to access your mail and attachments when you are not connected to the internet, or if you do not want to pay for extra storage space on the server." (www.gutensite.com)

Disadvantage

"It is important that you also make sure your advanced settings delete the mail off the server after you download it. If you do not do this, your server will eventually become full of messages and attachments and your mailbox will run out of space. This will cause new mail to bounce until you delete your messages and free up space. Since you are downloading them anyways, there is no reason to keep them on the server. Unfortunately some mail programs do not force this option by default and it often causes problems." (www.gutensite.com)

IMAP

Advantage

• "An IMAP connection allows you to view your mail from your mail program on multiple computers. This is handy if you have an office computer and a home computer or laptop and you want to sync all your messaging. The messages are not deleted from the server when they are downloaded to your computer. ..
• You can specify whether or not you want the messages and attachments to be stored on your computer for offline access.
• When you check your mail from one computer, you can still check it from another computer.
• Create folders on the account, which reside on the server.and these folders will be accessible by all the computers that are accessing this account." (www.gutensite.com)

Disadvantage

The only disadvantage to using IMAP is that you would require more storage.