One of the first things you need to do when it comes to legitimizing yourself as a website or an online business is to set up the web hosting email that benefits your business by using your domain name. An email that reads john@yourdomain.com is far more authoritative than an address such as anythingelse@hotmail.com or any other free web address. When you have your mail at least appearing to emanate to and from your site, this serves as a comfort to those who may want to contact you, letting them know that you are not some fly by night scammer out to fleece them or otherwise waste their time! Let’s look at what’s involved with setting up your web hosting email.
When you first sign up for your web hosting account you will most likely be at least partially automatically set up with an email server. There are some things you’ll need to do to configure your email accounts, such as choose the actual names for them whether they be people’s names or “admin”, “info”, or some other naming convention. The key here is to have it make sense, and allot only what access you need to. One of the ways people find themselves with a problem is if they are granting too much email access.
You are also usually able to customize many features of your email account, such as spam and virus filters, configuring for mobile devices such as iPhone, Blackberry or other Smartphone, forward your email, hook it up to your Outlook or other email service, create email aliases, and use several different webmail choices to be able to read your mail (usually SquirrelMail or Horde).
There is also quite often the ability to set and use autoresponders directly from your email account. There are many reasons why this is not a good idea. First of all, you (and your email software) aren’t anywhere near as good at being able to manage and process a significant number of email responses, such as opt-ins to any lists you may be trying to create, and any other offers or requests for information that come in.
You need a professional autoresponder company to handle this for you. There are several good choices for this out there, the two best being Aweber and GetResponse. Their fees are a small price to pay for such a valuable resource that you simply can’t afford to get wrong. They will relieve you of the large burden of management, as well as save valuable space on your hosting account. Not to mention that using a company like these will also shield you from having your account be accused of spamming!
Your web host will have much more sophisticated security and virus protection than most free email providers, further protecting you and your client’s communications and information.
Setting up your web hosting email accounts is quite easy, and will take you very little time to execute. Having these accounts set up through your web host will also go a long way towards helping you with branding yourself and your business. Ditch the free email providers today!
