Email Services

Email Services – Setup, Migration, Spam Prevention

Email is a staple of business communication – the majority of many businesses inquiries and many customer interactions are by email. Having a reliable email system running on your business domain is essential for businesses large and small. We primarily use Google’s G-Suite (Gmail for Business) to set up reliable emails services for businesses, but also use Microsoft 365 and FastMail, and others by request.

A lot of businesses start with email hosted on their web server, with firms such as HostGator, GoDaddy, BlueDomain, WestHost, etc. These companies tend to concentrate on web hosting, their email services aren’t always as good as they could be, and email reliability and security features generally aren’t set up. Dozens to hundreds or even thousands of domains can be hosted on one server, if any one of them starts sending spam or is compromised your email domain reputation can be compromised too, potentially preventing your important communications from reaching your customers, or their email reaching you. Other photographers start up using a free @hotmail, @gmail, or similar address, which appears less professional than using @yourdomain.com.

Specialist email providers tend to have better infrastructure, better security features, they support features such as SPF and DKIM to ensure your email arrives, they make it easier to access your email on multiple devices. Google’s Google Apps (Gmail for business) is the most popular provider, but others such as Microsoft Office 365 and FastMail are worth considering. Here at PTS we host email for all our domains on Fastmail.

Here at PTS we can help ensure you have a reliable email system by moving your email to the provider of your choice. We do this based on industry best practice – we understand email so you can concentrate on your business. As part of our hosting setup and migration service we:

  • Set up your account with your provider of choice (Gmail, Fastmail, Office 365).
  • Migrate your email from either your old server or your PC to your new provider, giving you access to all your email from anywhere, and providing a good search facility. Read more about email migration below.
  • We can set up multiple accounts if you have more than one person working in your business. Each account can have more than one email address.
  • Set up both SPF and DKIM to ensure your emails have the best chance of arriving with their recipient.
  • Set up autoconfig and autodiscover records to make setting up email clients on your phone and PC easier.
  • Help set up your phone & PC to check your email.
  • Guarantee not to lose any email during the transition between email providers. If we cause email to be lost during the transition there’s no charge. See the notes below on transition period and propagation time.
  • If you’re moving your web to a hosted provider (GoodGallery, SquareSpace, etc) at the same time as your email migration, and you need a simple change to make this happen, we’ll do this for no extra charge. If you need more complex work, for example to create subdomains to host shopping carts (eg http://proofs.website.com), slide shows, or other content while your main website is on a hosted service, this will usually incur extra costs.

Please see our pricing page for current costs. We work on a set fee basis to give customers certainty of costs, though particularly complex cases may be charged based on an hourly rate.

Gmail, Google Apps, and Email Migration

Email migration can be anything from simple to very complex. Migrating from a well set up email server is quite simple, but if your server isn’t set up properly (like bluhost) or your email is all on your PC it can take more time and effort.

Transition Period

When your email server is changed over there’s a period where email can arrive at either the old or the new server. This is because email servers on the Internet “remember” where to send your email for up to a day, so it takes time for the Internet to notice the change. This is called “DNS Propagation”, a search for “DNS Propagation Time” will give more background. In practice we find that when your server is changed email typically starts going to the new server, with only a few straggler emails arriving at the old server. You do need to check your old server either via webmail or your email client for perhaps a week after the change is made, just to be sure you don’t miss any emails.

General Email Services

We can also provide more general email services, including but not limited to:

  • Investigating why you’re getting a lot of spam, or why spam appears to be coming from your domain.
  • Making email generally more reliable, both sending and receiving.
  • Helping get your email working on any device, be it a computer, a phone, a tablet, a TV, or even a smart fridge if you so desire!