Email reliability and hosting

Email reliability and hosting

Email is probably the main communication mechanisms used today. In the context of your business most customer inquiries come by email, you follow up meetings by email, and you communicate with your customers and suppliers using email. Email reliability is crucial to running your business.

Most businesses want their email to match their website – for example if your website is www.awesomephotographers.com then you probably want the email address “[email protected]”. This is easy to do, but there are pitfalls. The main pitfall is most people have their email hosted on the same server as their website, and most website hosts consider email a tick-in-the-box “must have” feature. The provide it because it’s expected, not because they’re email specialists. Because of this machines get put onto email blacklists, and the server reputation can suffer if one of the hundreds of other customers using that server are classed as sending out spam. In the worst cases potential customers emails might not get to you, and your replies might not get to them.

The solution is usually reasonably simple. It’s reasonably simple to have your website hosted on one server, and have your email hosted by a specialist firm somewhere else. Google/Gmail, FastMail, Microsoft Office 365, etc. The general process is:

  • Set up your account with the new email host.
  • Change the TTL on your existing DNS MX records to ensure a fast switch (ie make sure everyone knows where you email should go as soon as you change it).
  • Migrate your existing email over to the new host (optional).
  • Change the DNS MX records to point to the new host.
  • Ensure there were no “stragglers” going to the old email server.
  • Make sure all email clients (including PCs, phones, tablets, etc) point to the new email server.
  • You can also add Sender Policy Framework and DKIM to your DNS, so that if anyone tries to impersonate you for fraud or spam there’s a high chance it will be stopped. This also helps prevent “email backscatter”.

If you have email issues or you want your email moved to a reliable host get in touch, we’d be happy to help! We have more information about our email services on our email services and migration page.

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