This article set out to help you understand what email hosting in Nigeria is, how it works, and how to get it. If you are considering getting your own email hosting and are unsure how the whole thing works, we have written this for you. We hope it will give you more understanding of email hosting, especially in Nigeria, and help you make the best choice for yourself and your business.
We go through the basics of how emailing works and how it got popular. The article also goes through the reasons you might want to get email hosting for your businesses and how it will help you. We understand that choosing an email hosting provider might prove difficult, so we also included details to help choose the best one for your business. To finish off, we give you an overview of how to get email hosting for your business in Nigeria.
What is email hosting?
Email hosting is simply a service that runs email servers. It is a service that makes your email messages and files stored on an email server. Email hosting facilitates sending and receiving mails for individuals and businesses. If you already have a website running, email hosting makes it possible to add an email hosted on your domain name.
You are most likely already using a free email hosting provider like Gmail or Hotmail. However, those free emails have many limitations that you will begin to notice as your business or personal brand grows. For example, most of them contain ads that can distract you from your work or even make it difficult to use. There are also limits to the file space that your email can contain, and as time goes on, you will outgrow that space. The biggest limitation is that your email is on the provider’s domain which is not professional enough.
Email hosting was created to fill out the limitations in the free email hosting service. Email hosting works on an email server that allows your email to be based on your domain name. That is, unlike “[email protected]” you used to have, you can have “[email protected].” Since your email is hosted on an email server, you have unlimited space and capacity to host your emails and files. Email hosting companies also offer great services that make using emails more productive and easy. We will discuss more on the advantages of email hosting later in this article.
If you already have a running website, you most likely already have a domain and web hosting. Most web hosting plans nowadays include email hosting plans. However, those packages included on those plans are usually low-tier, and if you want something more, you still need to buy a proper email hosting plan.
How does email hosting work?
Email hosting sounds pretty cool, yeah? Now how does that magic happen?
When someone sends you an email, you receive it on your website’s domain address. The email is then routed through the world wide web and stored on your email server. Your email administrators will then decide to take in or reject the mail through spam filters, re-routing filters, and blacklists. Then, it is made available for you to read. Of course, all of this happens in a few seconds, so you don’t even know it is happening.
The server hosting your website is usually the same handling your emails. However, it could be different servers handled by the same or different servers. This is why most web hosting companies nowadays also offer web hosting services. In fact, some web hosts offer both in one package.
Why do I need email hosting?
We have mentioned some of the advantages of email hosting in Nigeria earlier in this article. This section will go in-depth to show you why you need to ditch your free email hosting provider and get an email hosting service now.
1. Appear professional
In business, appearances and first impressions are very important. With a free email, clients or your business partners will mostly feel you are a novice. Having a mail like [email protected] makes you appear more professional and established, and that small effect goes a long way in your customer’s perception of your brand and will definitely have a high effect on their decision.
2. Security
As your website grows and your personal brand becomes popular. Your security concerns increases. Cybercriminals of all kinds might want to hack into your email. Therefore, you must make sure your emails are always secure. With your free email service, your email is compromised once your free email hosting provider is hacked. However, with email hosting, you can install as much security as you need to ensure your confidential communications are not exposed.
3. Unlimited inbox and file space
There’s a limit to the number of emails and files you can store on their servers in free email hosting. If you are someone or a business that interacts with many emails, this will limit you. With email hosting, you have unlimited email and file space. So, you can keep receiving thousands of emails without having to delete your important emails.
4. Spam Protection:
Email hosting services come with spam filters and blacklists that ensure that you have spam blocked out. That way, you can have awesome email communication only a few have access to.
Some other awesome features email hosting gives includes unlimited aliases, unlimited forwarders, autoresponders, large attachments, robust spam/virus protection, mail rules, IMAP/POP3, online storage, calendars, mailing lists, whitelists, blacklists, backups, archiving, folder management, contacts management, etc. Another important thing is the ease of access, as you can access your email from any device without stress.
How To Choose A Great Email Hosting Provider?
As we have noted earlier, email hosting is usually provided by web hosting companies. Nowadays, there are many web hosting companies, and it can be hard for you to choose one for your emails. It goes without saying that your current web host will most likely be the best option for you. However, there’s no problem with choosing a different email hosting provider.
Some factors to consider when choosing an email hosting provider include:
- Security: Security is one of the major reasons you are opting for email hosting in the first place, so it would be useless if you go for a provider that is insecure. So, in your research, look out for email hosting providers who have had a lot of security breaches in the past and avoid them.
- 24/7 support: No matter how great the service is, you will still need customer support at one time or the other. It is important that your email hosting provider can get your issues solved at any time.
- Availability and Uptime: This is very important as you should access your emails whenever you want. If an email hosting service has many downtimes, it will affect your business rather than help it.
Some other factors to look out for include flexibility of their plans, how much storage they are offering you(if it isn’t unlimited), and of course, compare prices to choose the one that suits your budget.
Our Recommendation
There are a lot of email hosting providers out there. However, the best for us is Truehost Cloud Nigeria.
TrueHost Cloud Nigeria focuses on providing web hosting, registering domains, and providing email hosting in Nigeria. The company’s services are very affordable and very reliable. On top of that, TrueHost is really concerned about the businesses it is working with.
Check out TrueHost’s email hosting packages and prices here now.
