Have you ever wondered why it is recommended to keep your website and email separate? The advantages might not be so clear, but there are clear benefits, as we will explain in this article. A web host may offer customers excellent hosting infrastructure and security, but email is not their strong suit. Let us see why separating your web server and hosting is a good idea.
The web host is not an expert in email
The web host is a hosting service provider. It may provide email as an add-on, but it can no compare to the email service offered by specialist email service providers in parameters such as speed and efficiency. Some popular email services are.
- Outlook – Outlook is a Microsoft application that allows users to manage their email, calendar, and contacts. It also provides users with access to task management and note taking features. Outlook is available as a desktop application, as well as a mobile app.
- Zoho – Zoho is a leading technology company that offers a complete suite of online tools for businesses of all sizes. From cloud-based office applications and customer relationship management software to accounting and invoicing solutions, Zoho has everything you need to run your business from anywhere in the world. With millions of customers in over 180 countries, Zoho is one of the most popular and widely used business software platforms on the market today.
- ProtonMail – ProtonMail is a free and open-source email service that offers end-to-end encryption and privacy protection. ProtonMail is one of the few email services that provides true end-to-end encryption, which means that your emails are encrypted and decrypted locally on your device, and never stored in the clear on ProtonMail’s servers. In addition to encryption, ProtonMail also offers various privacy-enhancing features such as anonymous email addresses and self-destructing messages.
- Hover – Hover is the email tool that allows you to quickly and easily manage your email communications. With Hover, you can easily organize your email inbox, create new email messages, and track your email activity.
- Mailgun – Mailgun is a cloud-based email delivery service that provides users with a powerful set of tools for sending and tracking email. Mailgun offers a flexible pricing model that allows users to pay only for the email they send, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. Mailgun’s features include a powerful API, comprehensive email tracking, and robust email deliverability.
Some web hosts have made a virtue of not offering email services, such as Kinsta, and they are proud of it. Kinsta asks why it should reinvent the wheel (offer web hosting and email services) when it can be best at web hosting, and that is a valid question.
Using both services from the same provider will eat into resources
Using the email service on top of the web hosting can eat into your resources (bandwidth, storage). You might not notice it if you are a small operation, but it will undoubtedly become noticeable once you scale. Why not just use the bandwidth to run your website efficiently than share it with email, and take the risk of your website slowing down? There is also the risk that each service, standing on its own, will become less reliable. And you can take it from us, the web host would not have expended the same resources on the email service as it does on the web hosting.
When a web host shares server space with an email service, it can reduce the bandwidth available to the website hosting service
The danger of trying to have your cake and eat it too
What will happen if the web server goes down? Will the email service go down too? It probably will since both the web hosting and email service are connected. Suppose you are expecting to receive an important email and the web host goes down, you are not going to get the email on time, which will affect your work and lead to frustration. The possibility of this happening is perhaps the biggest reason you should consider separating your web server and email server. If you separate your web server and email service, if the time ever comes to change your web host, you will be able to do it without affecting your emails.
If the web host goes down for any reason, it will take the email service with it since they are intricately connected in a shared service.
Conclusion
Despite the advent of social media and instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, email hasn’t gone out of fashion. People still have email ids and use them regularly to communicate with others. If you look at how many people are using email worldwide (some 4 billion email users apparently), you could say that email is seeing a resurgence. So, email being so important, it makes sense to keep your website and email separate.