Businesses run on e-mail. So, deciding on the system that runs your e-mail should be a carefully considered process. Yet, many SO/HO businesses simply settle on using whatever their ISP provides, or employ public e-mail services. While these may be “good enough” options by some standards, these sorts of e-mail accounts are certainly not business desirable solutions.

Because you’re reading this, you’re probably already considering business-class e-mail. If, however, you have any questions about what the issues are, contact me so that I can get you additional information.

SOHOSites provides e-mail as part of its webhosting solutions. I also provide e-mail as part of the Office 365 and G Suites hosted productivity apps. What follows is a quick explanation of what each option is. For more details, please contact me directly.

Traditional E-mail

When you host a website with SOHOSites, you usually get at least one e-mail account. Generally, that e-mail account is a sort of all-purpose, or catch-all, account. In any case, the e-mail will be formed with the domain name that is being hosted. For example, if the website is www.fabowebsite.com, then the e-mail account might be info@fabowebsite.com. Other e-mail accounts created would follow the same structure, such as john@fabowebsite.com, jsmith@fabowebsite.com, or sales@fabowebsite.com.

To access the e-mail “box,” users can choose from several different technologies. The most basic would be webmail. Webmail gives the user a way to check their mail box by using a common web browser such as Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.

For those users wishing to use an e-mail client such as Apple Mail or Microsoft Outlook, the e-mail accounts can also provide POP and IMAP services. These two standard methods of receiving e-mail are used in conjunction with an SMTP service, which provides the method to send e-mail.

Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 is a hosted, or cloud if you must, service. As part of its offerings, e-mail is managed by MAPI via Microsoft Exchange. Users generally can use a variety of E-mail Clients with Microsoft Outlook being the most suggested choice. However, the system is compatible with POP and IMAP options, as well. In addition, webmail is also available, and provides the users a pseudo MS Outlook interface with rich functionality.

G Suite

Google G Suite is a hosted service, providing e-mail as part of its set of services. G Suite e-mail is powered by the Gmail engine, and its web-based e-mail looks and functions, for the most part, like Gmail. POP, IMAP, and SMTP services allow use with many e-mail clients.

Co-Op

For businesses that feel that they are too small for their own domain name, but still want some amount of uniqueness with their e-mail branding, there is the Co-Op option. Co-Op e-mail systems allow several businesses to band together with something that defines their identity. SOHOSites has a co-op offering whose members are identified by a oceanstate.biz suffix. This is a business only designation, and e-mail addresses follow the format of business@domain.com, for example sohobe@oceanstate.biz. An e-mail account may represent itself by one business name only.