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What About Email?Should It Be Included?

Description: A common feature of many web hosting packages is the facility to have several email accounts associated with each domain name. But is this worth having and should it be included?

Some web hosts offer ten or twenty email accounts with their most basic packages, while other packages aimed at large businesses come with thousands. So should you expect to have email accounts ready and waiting for you when you opt for your next hosting package?

The answer depends on what you need from your hosting package. If you have a personal website that you just want to use as a way to let your friends and family know what you are up to, then there is really no need to opt for web hosting that also provides you with a lot of email accounts, because you will already have email addresses set up that your friends and family are familiar with.

If you are running a business however, then things will be somewhat different. You will want to present a professional image when you are operating your business, and it looks far more professional to ask people with any queries to email you at queries@joebloggs.com than it does to direct them to jbloggs@hotmail.com. There is nothing wrong with Hotmail or any other free email account when you are using it for personal reasons, but when you are running a business you will want to present the best image you can.

There is also the matter of organization. While you may not need anywhere near as many as three thousand different email addresses - especially if you run your own business and you have no employees - it can work well to set up several email addresses to help you see at a glance what emails need to be attended to.

For example you might set one up for queries, another one for sales, another one for general information and another one for returns. All the email addresses will have your domain name attached to them, and as a result you will find it easier to sort through your emails each day and deal with the most urgent ones first. It also ensures that your customers know exactly where to send their questions and enquiries so that they are handled in the shortest time possible.

You will also commonly find that the email features web hosts can give you are much better than free email accounts provide. These can include advanced spam filters and virus protection. It also saves you the hassle of having to seek out and find another email provider.

So while email doesn't have to be included in web hosting packages, if you are running any kind of business involving your website then it is definitely to your advantage to use a web host that provides a number of email accounts as part of your package.

Because it is a fairly common feature with web hosting, you won't pay much more - if anything - to receive this benefit when compared with web hosts who don't provide it.