Emails have attained place of prominence in enterprise communications and are aptly called as lifeblood of businesses. No business can conduct its daily operations without relying on email communications. These have become inseparable part of internal as well as outward business processes irrespective of industries or size of business.
This underlines significance of an email hosting service for smooth business operations. It also highlights importance of choosing the right email collaborating software as well as a trustworthy email host. This article attempts to throw light on five of the most vital criteria that need to be considered before choosing the right email service provider.
Security of email content
Whenever you are shopping for the right email solution, you need to attach the highest importance to security aspect of your email content. If the security of your email is compromised, then your business communications can be exposed to intrusion or hacking attempts by way of unauthorized access.
Security of email communications can abort hacking attempts as and keep your business critical email communications secured. Impaired email security can lead to unimaginable financial losses and the average financial loss of small organizations due to mail leaks is pegged at $8700 as confirmed by USA Today.
Entrepreneurs need to look for email solutions that incorporate high end security features as follows:
• Anti-spam filtering
• Prevention of data loss
• Anti-malware
Availability of advanced data and email backup tools is an important consideration for protection of information. This is usually provided by service facilitators that are backed by globally redundant servers, efficient Disaster Recovery systems, and round the clock support of technical assistance.
Selection of proper email service providers should also involve confirmation of adherence to compliance policies and relevant regulations that govern the industry. If you are dealing with healthcare services, you should look for HIPAA compliant services and in order to ensure compliance to government related services you need to find providers that follow FISMA regulations.
Ease of administration and operations
The most ideal email hosting providers enable users to exercise seamless control over their email environment with a robust support in the event of any issues. Reliability of technical support is an important factor and the service should be accessible round the clock via chat, email, and telephone mediums of communications.
Simple and user friendly operations can only be provided with help of web based interfaces. It is worth noting that Microsoft Exchange eDiscovery Center facilitates users to operate In-Place eDiscovery across SharePoint and Exchange in addition to Lync data from a single interface. These interfaces also enable creating list of approved mobile devices with enforcement of PIN lock system for enhanced security.
Any small enterprise needs to be flexible in terms of timely execution of administrative tasks. This is facilitated by an easy to use and web based user interface. If the same is supported by a responsive support of help desk, then it deserves to be called as an ideal email solution for small enterprises.
Email solutions need to be flexible and compatible
The best email server hosting solutions blend with the organizational infrastructure to boost the productivity of the organization. It is significant the communication solutions are able to provide seamless compatibility by way or enterprise level syncing.
This is achieved by use of mobile devices and web based applications. Irrespective of number of employees working for an organization, every enterprise needs to gain ability to access calendar, email, and contacts on some of the major browsers across all locations and on different devices.
It is also expected that email solution providers offer freedom to select email options according to your requirement and preferences. Ideally you need to find a provider that is able to offer wide spectrum of alternatives to facilitate small enterprises that are poised to grow bigger without need to keep on jumping between different providers.
Seamless service availability
Modern marketing environment makes it mandatory for organizations to be consistently available online. Downtime can lead to huge losses and it is substantiated by a 2014 IDC report that confirmed a loss o $20000 for 80 percent of small and medium enterprises for every hour of downtime. It is essential to find an email hosting service that promises minimum network uptime of 99.99 percent backed by SLA.
Email service provider must be able to keep you seamlessly connected and should also provide automated patching to keep your system updated. Your email service should also be accessible via all types of internet enabled devices such as smart phones or tabs.
Optimum storage and archiving
Cluttered email box can lead to confusion and difficulty of sorting relevant messages. Messages that are highly important and should not be accidentally deleted need to be archived. This calls for sufficient storage capacity.
Some reputed email solution providers offer cutting edge email archiving functionalities that facilitate automated archiving in addition to assured access to archived emails. This will obviate need to cumbersome and locally stored .pst files with ability of managing archived email within inbox.
Evolving technology has underlined need for improved email hosting services. Your ideal email service provider needs to be future ready with history of consistent improvements in hosting abilities.
Interesting Topic: Best email solution for Corporate/Business Email