What Factors Should I Consider When Choosing a Business Email Provider?

For most organizations, email has become the primary channel for client interaction and internal coordination. This makes the selection of a business email service a critical factor. A professional email service provides much more than the ability to send and receive messages. It may offer the provision of a company domain, enhanced security, reliable service, administration tools, and storage individually or in combination with proprietary business apps.

From the perspective of businesses operating in Abu Dhabi and the UAE, selecting a business email service provider means looking into the reliability of the service, the level of security, the ability to scale the service, service and technology support, and the ability to integrate the email service with other business services.

With Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and other business email hosting services available, how do you choose the optimum email service for your organization?

What is a Business Email Service Provider?

This is a business service that offers email hosting for other businesses. It allows companies to register email addresses using their company domain name. Emails can be addressed to info@companyname.com, sales@companyname.com, etc.

In contrast with free personal email accounts, business email service accounts usually include domain name administration, larger email storage, integration with business productivity and other enterprise apps, and security services.

For businesses building their digital presence, a company domain email also helps promote the trust and authenticity of the business.

What Should I Look For When Choosing A Business Email Service?

1. Support For Custom Domain Emails

A professional email system should have a custom domain. Before choosing an email service provider, confirm that they have a custom domain email solution. They should provide you with the technology and tools you need to manage and create multiple mailboxes, aliases, and department addresses.

For example, you may want to have email addresses like info@yourcompany.com, sales@yourcompany.com, and support@yourcompany.com.

Custom domain email helps you have a consistent identity throughout your website, marketing campaign, documents, invoices, and customer communication.

2. Email Security

Email security should be at the top of your list when evaluating providers. An email address, no matter how secure, is still a store of records for your customers' information, your company's documents, contracts, calls to action (CTAs), and internal communications.

Your email service should provide protection for your data from phishing, spam, malware, and unauthorized access and safeguard against suspicious activity.

Some helpful features include spam filters, malware filters, phishing protection, multi-factor authentication (MFA), email encryption, access controls, and suspicious login protection.

For businesses in Abu Dhabi and the UAE, strong email security is important because employees are always communicating with customers, suppliers, partners, and international organizations.

3. Reliable Service And Uptime

Email is the single most important communication method for many businesses. Service interruptions, no matter how brief, impact customer service, sales, internal and external communications, and business operations.

When selecting an email hosting solution, a potential customer must consider reliability and performance of the underlying infrastructure, service availability, data redundancy, backup, disaster recovery, and service level agreements (SLAs).

A reliable email hosting solution has mechanisms to minimize service outages and provide mechanisms to help the business continue to communicate during the service outage.

4. Storage and Attachment Capacity

Businesses have varying needs when it comes to storage. A small business with a high volume of frequent text message exchanges may require less storage, but a business that frequently sends contracts, presentations, images, invoices, and other large attachments requires more.

See how much storage space comes with each option, and understand what additional storage, archival, or cloud storage would add if your business were to grow.

Sufficient storage may save you from an unwanted expensive upgrade later.

5. Scalability

Your email solution should scale hand in hand with your business.

A business that begins with a handful of employees may require dozens or even hundreds of mailboxes. A scalable email solution makes it easy to add users, create department accounts, increase storage and security, and add new domains and stronger security policies, among other features.

This is particularly important for businesses in Abu Dhabi, where a growing business is more likely to add employees and customers and add new branches.

6. Multi-Device Access

Given how employees work across many devices (such as a desktop, laptop, phone, and tablet), email services must support access across devices.

Check whether a provider supports webmail, mobile applications, syncing, and the systems and devices used by employees when selecting a provider.

For business owners, managers, sales personnel, and remote employees or those who travel frequently, access to mobile email is essential.

7. Integration With Business Applications

Integration with business applications is a feature of modern business email. Based on the needs of your business, email may be required to work with a calendar application, a cloud storage application, a CRM, a collaboration platform, productivity applications, and a video conferencing application.

For example, with Microsoft 365, email is integrated with other productivity tools, while with Google Workspace, email is integrated with Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Meet, and Google Docs.

It is important to consider the applications already in use in your organization and the type of workflow you want to achieve.

8. Technical Support

Technical Support is crucial, especially for organizations that do not have an internal IT team.

Issues related to email may touch on domain configuration, DNS, mailbox configuration, recovery of mailbox passwords, delivery of email, email spam filters, and records, such as authentication, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

Technical Support from a reputable provider may speed up the resolution of email configuration issues and help reduce time spent on email outages.

Businesses in Abu Dhabi might also find it useful to work with local IT solutions companies that offer services for business email setting, migration, configuration, and troubleshooting.

9. Email Migration

If your business has an email system, migration should be considered when choosing a new service provider.

When moving to a different service provider, one may be required to move emails, contacts, calendars, folders, and aliases, and appropriate settings for the domain. A planned migration can help reduce the disruption and the likelihood that important business information is lost.

If you are considering the use of Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or any other business email services, check if migration support is provided.

10. Spam and Phishing Protection

Spam isn't a productivity issue only. Emails which should not be there can be malicious, and can put employees and the business at risk of phishing, malware infections, and theft of sensitive information.

A good service provider will implement email filters that will identify spam messages, and messages which may be dangerous, but avoid misclassifying legitimate business email messages as spam.

Preventative measures must be in effect at employee and system levels.

11. Backup and Recovery

Business email can contain important messages and data which may have to be retained for some time for the operation or the law to be in compliance. There are many ways important information can be lost due to the inadequacy of recovery measures.

Understand what backup and recovery options are offered when comparing providers.

Email storage must be distinguished from data backup. An email mailbox does not guarantee data backup of business email.

12. Pricing and Total Cost

Cost is important, but businesses should choose an email provider based on more than just the lowest price per month.

1. Consider the total cost for the solution of user subscriptions, storage, security, migration, support, backups, archival, and future costs.

2. A more expensive business email service may be worth the cost if it offers better security and up-time, easier administration, and the features your business needs.

13. Administration and User Management

A good business email service should simplify administration. Administration must be able to create, update, and delete users, reset passwords, control user access and security permissions, create email aliases, manage access to email and the domains, and control user accounts.

Simplified administration can be a time saver for small businesses without dedicated email or IT administration.

14. Compliance and Data Protection

Businesses must also think about applicable data protection, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance.

Depending on the industry and what information they process, businesses operating in Abu Dhabi or any other emirate in the UAE may face different requirements.

Assess a prospective provider's security controls, data management, access rights, and administration to recommend their functionality.

How do I select a business email provider?

Different businesses will have different preferences depending on the size of the business, budget, users, security, existing software, storage, and future plans for the business.

To begin, you must understand what your business requires. A small business may stress cost, simplicity, and functionalities like admin panel and professional email through a unique domain, while a large business may be concerned about security, compliance, integrations, central admin, and adaptability.

It is also wise to list providers based on security, dependability, storage, adaptability, support/service, integrations, migration, back up, and the complete cost of ownership instead of focusing strictly on a subscription price.

Business Email Provider vs. Free Email

Free email providers serve well enough as personal email services. Business email services, however, grant a business the ability to use its own domain, as well as provide additional administrative, security, and storage services, as well as productivity services. Professional email addresses serve as a brand name when communicating with clients and partners. An email provided through a business email service would be sales@companyname.com, while a personal email would be less brand focused.

Why Is Business Email Security Important?

The nature of professional email makes it an attractive target to hackers.

Phishing emails accompanied by malicious attachments, fake invoices, and repeated attempts at taking control of an account can result in a loss of both finances and reputation.

The email service provider should offer controls such as MFA, anti-spam/anti-virus, encryption, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, as well as access controls. Having these should not replace employee education and safe practices.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I look for in a business email provider?

A BES provider should have reliability, flexibility, security, storage, scalability, integration, support, and pricing. They should also offer cloud-based services with the ability to backup and recover data.

What is the difference between business email and free email?

A BES uses a company-specific domain to send emails, and provides domain administration, security, storage, collaboration, and a suite of productivity applications, in contrast to a free email service.

Is Microsoft 365 good for business email?

Microsoft 365 combines enterprise-grade email and helps an organization coordinate through online applications targeted towards collaboration. Its fit depends on a company’s demands and support systems.

Is Google Workspace suitable for business email?

Google Workspace also has similar productivity applications and services and is designed to be used in conjunction with its cloud services.

Do small businesses need professional email hosting?

It is imperative for small businesses to utilize a professional email system to provide a custom domain and create a secure resource with proper administration and email controls.

Can an IT company help set up business email?

IT solutions companies can help configure a domain, create accounts, set-up email services, and as well as help manage the system, troubleshoot, and configure security measures.

Conclusion

When looking for a business email service provider, there are multiple factors to consider. These include pricing, service level agreements, and reliable security, storage, scalability, mobile accessibility, integrations, technical support, migration, backup, administration, compliance, and total cost of ownership.

In Abu Dhabi and UAE, there are several quality solutions to suit professional email with the added benefits of support for security, productivity, and future business growth.

When evaluating business email services, it is helpful to consider how secure, reliable, scalable, and professional the services are. This can help you choose the right email service to meet your business needs now and in the future.