02/11/2026
Lets talk about business email!
Email is a service that all of us use in someway and it has changed greatly over the years from its humble beginnings. Now that we have texting and messaging service, alot of the younger generation tends to not use it as much outside of business. Personally, while I do use texting on a daily basis, I still prefer email. In the beginning email was plain and simple and worked off of a protocol called POP (Post Office Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Then as time moved on and security began increasing, IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) was introduced. This brought not only security but it also allowed you to sync mail to multiple devices. Today we now have Office 365 which uses a proprietary protocol called Exchange. This has even more security and many more features than IMAP or POP. Since Exchange is a Microsoft product, you can only use this if you have a 365 subscription or an on-prem Exchange server. What does this mean for you? Well, lets dig a little deeper. Most of use today use services like Gmail or Yahoo mail. These are free email systems that use IMAP to sync content to your devices. For the basic home user, this is more than sufficient, but for businesses, I recommend something more business oriented like Microsoft 365. This gives you an Exchange server experience and control without paying the high cost of buying and licensing a server. Im sure some of you out there are thinking, What about Google Workspace? Sure this is a business oriented platform to and it does work pretty well. Gives you control as an admin and security that is similar to Microsoft. I have personally worked on most email platforms, not only as a user, but also as an admin and my personal choice is 365. The fact is, they all have their pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. Having said all that, it really doesn't matter what you use, as long as you choose a good business email platform (not free) to run your business. It does not look professional when you send an email to one of your clients and it says [email protected] or [email protected]. The part most small business owners dont realize is that they need their own domain name so that your email ends with it. For example [email protected]. This is a minor detail that often gets overlooked but I can say for me, if I get an email from a business and they dont even have their own domain name, I seriously question how they run their business or if i should even open it. In times past, it cost a lot of money to not only have your own domain name but to also have your own mail platform. Today this is so cheap, it should be an automatic. One other piece to consider when using a free email for your business, is if/when something goes wrong with your email, who do you call to fix it. No one has admin rights to a free email system other than the person that created it. We have seen many times, for some unknown reasons, if you lock your self out of your account there isn't any easy way to get back in it. Free almost never comes with support! At the end of the day, the best thing to do for your business is to get your own domain name and pay for a business class email system. You will be happy you did! As always if you need help, please message or give us a call and we can assist you! Thanks.
SIDE NOTE: For all you Outlook users, Classic Outlook while is still in use, it is slowly being phased out. Be prepared to move to New Outlook.
