7 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2016)

Is email marketing a priority for your business in 2016? Are you looking for the email marketing software? Choosing the best email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign. In this article, we will review the 7 best email marketing services for small businesses.

Why Choosing The Best Email Marketing Service is Important?

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing tool. It is easy to manage, gives you full control and allows you to establish direct contact with your customers. For more on this topic, see our guide on why you should start building your email list right away.

While you can use OptinMonster to easily get more email subscribers, the actual email delivery part comes down to your email marketing service provider.

If you aren’t careful, then you might end up paying a lot more money for fewer features and terrible deliverability (which causes you to lose even more money).

A good email marketing service enables you to create highly engaging emails. It also allows you to manage your contacts, segment users into groups, and track the performance of your email campaigns.

Most importantly, a good email marketing service ensures that your emails do not end up in the spam folder.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best email marketing service providers and how they stack up against each other.

1. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing service in the world. It is also the most easy to use and beginner friendly email marketing service.

You can easily manage your email lists, contacts, email templates, and more.

Each account gives you access to easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, an image library and 1GB of storage for your own files.

Constant Contact offers unmatched support with live chat, email, community support, and a vast library of resources.

They also offer online training as well as live seminars in your neighborhood. This allows small business to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it like a pro.

For all the reasons above, we rate Constant Contact the best email marketing service for small businesses.

Constant Contact has a 60 day free trial (no credit-card required). After that their pricing starts as low as /month.

2. AWeber

AWeber is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world. They offer a wide-range of tools for small and medium sized businesses to manage their email marketing.

Getting started with AWeber is easy. It connects seemlessly to most platforms including WordPress. For detailed instructions, see our ultimate guide on how to connect AWeber to WordPress.

You get access to ready to use email templates, list management, autoresponders, and email tracking with detailed insights.

Support options include live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.

AWeber offers a 30 day free trial. After that, their pricing starts from /month.

3. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.

ConvertKit allows you to easily offer content upgrades and incentives with email signup forms. It also comes with easy to manage auto-responders allowing you to send drip emails.

With ConvertKit, you can easily segment contacts into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This is great for marketing automation.

ConvertKit offers email based support and have extensive knowledge base with great learning material.

Pricing for ConvertKit plans start from /month with a 30-day refund policy.

4. GetResponse

GetResponse is a hugely popular email marketing solution. It is extremely easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses and absolute beginners.

It comes with some amazing marketing automation tools which allow you to create smart automated campaigns. With a drag and drop builder, you can create campaigns, segment contacts, and send content designed for specific groups. These tools help you create effective campaigns to boost your profits.

GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, tracking, and autoresponders. It also integrates with third party lead generation software like OptinMonster, SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, etc.

Support is provided by phone, live chat, and email. Their help section is full of free learning material including videos, webinars, how-tos, guides, etc.

GetResponse offers a 30 day free trial. Their pricing starts from /month.

5. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers. They offer a very easy to use interface with great tools and awesome support.

It integrates beautifully with WordPress, Magneto, Shopify, and many other platforms. If you are using WordPress, then see our ultimate guide to using MailChimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.

MailChimp also comes with easy email creator, merge tags, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking and analytics. It also allows you to set up delivery times based on user’s timezones and setup segmenting based on geolocation.

Support is offered by email, live chat, and a huge knowledge base with how-tos, videos, and tutorials.

MailChimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for upto 2,000 subscribers. Their paid plans start from /month.

Because of their free plan, we rate MailChimp the best email marketing software for nonprofits.

6. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is another popular email marketing solution. It gives you everything you would need to run successful campaigns and then some more.

They have a beautiful drag and drop email builder. It allows you to use professionally designed email templates and make them your own. They also offer a drag and drop segmenting tool to create different campaigns for different contacts based on behavior and actions.

You can personalize each message using the rich customer data. This makes your emails more personal and gives much better results.

Not to mention their easy to use A/B testing, tracking, optimization, and social sharing tools.

Support is available 24/7 via email and support forums. Premier customers can also avail phone support. They have extensive documentation step-by-step how-tos to help you get started and fix things on your own.

Campaign Monitor’s pricing plans start from /month.

7. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign combines your email marketing, automation, with CRM and sales. It comes with all the tools you will need to create smarter email marketing campaigns.

ActiveCampaign comes with a beautiful email template editor and mobile friendly signup forms. It allows you to segment contacts based on their actions, location, behavior, and social data. It can also fetch additional data about your contacts using only their email address.

It integrates beautifully with many third party software including WordPress. You can also send SMS messages to your contacts for follow up on campaigns.

ActiveCampaign’s plans start from /month. You can also request a demo with limited features for a test run.

Although the pricing on ActiveCampaign gets quite high, it’s totally worth the money if marketing automation is what you’re looking for.

We hope this article gave you a good overview of the best email marketing services for your business. You may also want to see our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2016) appeared first on WPBeginner.

30 Must See Free Web Hosting Services

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I don’t recommend free web host for any webmasters who are serious with their websites – especially if you are making any sort of money from it.

A good, budget hosting service is unbelievably cheap these days – in most cases, less than /month – and they are often 10x better than the free ones (title="Cheap web hosting guide" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/ultimate-cheap-web-hosting-guide/">learn how to pick up a good cheap web host and title="Hosting coupons and discounts" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/discount-coupons-and-freebies/">how to save money with our special promotion codestyle="line-height: 1.5em;">).

However, with that being said, I do recognize in certain cases it is necessary to minimize the hosting cost down to zero. For instances, a free web host would be a good choice for school projects, teaching/learning medium for teachers/students, charity events, and so on. For the benefit of those who need a free web host – no matter why you need it – here is a list of 30 really good free hosting service providers. Check them out!

1. XtreemHost

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XtreemHost provides free hosting which includes domain name, MySQL and PHP support without ads. Their service also comes with 5.5 GB of disk space (with 4MB maximum file size) and 200 GB data transfer every month.

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Visit online: href="http://www.xtreemhost.com/" target="_blank">http://www.xtreemhost.com/

2. Zymic

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Zymic offers free web hosting service that is comparable to that of a paid service from other providers (well, that’s what they said on their website ;)). Zymic hosting comes with 5 GB of disk space for every account – users can make unlimited number of accounts— 50 GB data transfer every month and free hosting features.

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Visit online: href="http://zymic.com/" target="_blank">http://zymic.com/

3. AwardSpace

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AwardSpace claims that it is trusted by over one million customers. This free hosting plan includes 250MB of disk space, 5GB data transfer every month, 1 domain hosting, 3 sub-domains, 100% no ads, PHP5, MySQL v.5 database, FTP access, and others.

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Visit online: href="http://www.awardspace.com/" target="_blank">http://www.awardspace.com/

4. Host-Ed

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Host-Ed comes with both free and paid web host services. The free hosting service includes 250MB of disk space (with 2MB file size limit), and 5GB data transfer every month. However, Host-Ed does mention that their paid hosting is 70% faster than the free host.

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Visit online: href="http://host-ed.net/" target="_blank">http://host-ed.net/

5. T35

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T35 has been providing web hosting service since 1997. This hosting company claims to have 99.9% uptime, has a real-time member count of 1,756,075 at the time of writing, offers backup for their free and paid hosting service, and runs with a 24/7 support team. T35 free web host service comes with unlimited web space and bandwidth but with forced ads text links and only allows sub-domain URL.

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Visit online: href="http://www.t35hosting.com/" target="_blank">http://www.t35hosting.com/

6. LeadHoster

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LeadHoster free hosting service comes with 250MB web space, 5GB monthly bandwidth allowance, FTP, CGI, MySQL, and others but with forced ads banners.

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Visit online: href="http://www.leadhoster.com/" target="_blank">http://www.leadhoster.com/

7. FreeDomainSite

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FreeDomainSite management say that they are the only place on the internet that offers free domain name registration, free web hosting, and everything else that you need to get your site up and running for free. The free hosting service includes 1GB web space, unlimited bandwidth, no forced ads and others.

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Visit online: href="http://freedomainsite.com/" target="_blank">http://freedomainsite.com/

8. Freehostia

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FreeHostia has to be the best looking website on earth (check out their beautiful, cool background – I love it so much)! The web host claims itself as the hosting paradise on Earth – the free hosting plan comes with 24/7 support, no set-up fee, no top and bottom banner ads, 250MB disk space, 6GB monthly traffic, and others.

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Visit online: href="http://www.freehostia.com/">http://www.freehostia.com/

9. 1AspHost

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1ASP Host started back in 1998 and it’s one of the few who offer ASP hosting. 1ASP Hostfree service includes 100MB disk space, 1GB monthly bandwidth, active server pages support, and windows-based hosting but with text-link bottom forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://1asphost.com/" target="_blank">http://1asphost.com/

10. PhpNet

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PHPNet provides a wide variety of services with 24/7 technical support for all products, including the free hosting service. The free hosting provider actually claims that its server technology is light-years ahead of nearly all other hosts who utilize single server solution which is more prone to overloading and failure. The free hosting service includes 350MB disk space and 15GB data transfer every month.

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Visit online: href="http://1asphost.com/" target="_blank">http://1asphost.com/

11. AgilityHoster

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AgilityHoster claims that it has fast servers, personal customer approach, more than 500,000 sites hosted, and the best 24/7 customer support. The free hosting service includes 250MB web space, 5GB monthly bandwidth with no forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.agilityhoster.com/" target="_blank">http://www.agilityhoster.com/

12. AtSpace

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AtSpace free hosting plan comes with 50MB web space, unlimited bandwidth, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and no forced ads. The web host also provides some very affordable hosting plans, ranging from .99/mo to .99/mo.

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Visit online: href="http://www.atspace.com/" target="_blank">http://www.atspace.com/

13. 000WebHost

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000WebHost stands for .00 webhost. 000WebHost provides free hosting services for websites that take less than 1GB disk space and 100GB data transfer every month.

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Visit online: href="http://www.000webhost.com/" target="_blank">http://www.000webhost.com/

14. 100Webspace

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100WebSpace claims that hosting with it will be a *wonderful* experience; unfortunately, I found that the video on its homepage rather annoying :p. This free hosting service includes 100MB web space, 3GB bandwidth per month but with banner-top and text-links forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.100webspace.com/" target="_blank">http://www.100webspace.com/

15. DomainDLX

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DomainDlx free hosting service includes 100MB web space and 1GB bandwidth but with text-link bottom forced ads. The site design is exactly the same as 1 ASP Host hence I believe the two hosts are actually managed by the same company.

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Visit online: href="http://www.domaindlx.com/" target="_blank">http://www.domaindlx.com/

16. 007Sites

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007Sites free hosting service includes 700MB web space, 7GB monthly bandwidth, a friendly support forum, and an easy to use WYSIWYG editor (which is great!). However, do note this free hosting service comes with a forced top banner ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.007sites.com/" target="_blank">http://www.007sites.com/

17. ByetHost

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ByetHost covers a wide variety of web hosting services, including the free hosting that comes with 250MB web space and 20GB monthly bandwidth without forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://byethost.com/" target="_blank">http://byethost.com/

18. BlackAppleHost

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Black Apple Host claim that its service is backed by powerful servers (Intel Xeon Processors, 8GB RAM), fast network speed with multiple GB backbones, and intelligent support staffs that are always happy to help. The free hosting service includes 5GB disk space, 20GB monthly bandwidth but with text-link bottom forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.blackapplehost.com/" target="_blank">http://www.blackapplehost.com/

19. BatCave

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BatCave offers lucrative free hosting deal: 250MB disk space, 5GB monthly bandwidth, and no forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.batcave.net/" target="_blank">http://www.batcave.net/

20. Jumpline

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JumpLine comes with 10GB web space and 100GB monthly bandwidth without ads. Unfortunately, their free service will only last for 12 months.

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Visit online: href="http://jumpline.com/" target="_blank">http://jumpline.com/

21. HelioHost

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HelioHost offers its own professional-level services with a twist and claims that they beat most professional hosts when it comes to feature and what is more is that their service is for free. This free web hosting service comes with 250MB web space and 2.5GB monthly bandwidth with no forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.heliohost.org/home/" target="_blank">http://www.heliohost.org/home/

22. GoFreeServe

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GoFreeSeve is a wonderful free hosting service that covers 1 GB disk space (which is one of the largest free storage you can get online), 40GB monthly bandwidth, and no forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://gofreeserve.com/" target="_blank">http://gofreeserve.com/

23. FreeHostingCloud

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FreeHostingCloud provides free hosting service that supports up to 2,000 visits per month. It’s more like a free trial for the company’s premium hosting service. Unfortunately, this free hosting service is unavailable here in my country due to continued abuse and/or frauds.

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Visit online: href="http://www.freehostingcloud.com/" target="_blank">http://www.freehostingcloud.com/

24. X10Hosting

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X10 tagline is pretty bold – “free hosting for the masses”. This free host covers basiscally everything from unlimited disk storage to unmetered bandwidth.

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Visit online: href="http://x10hosting.com/" target="_blank">http://x10hosting.com/

25. RipWay

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RipWay is one of the few that provides free hosting and PHP scripting in the same time. This free host comes with 30MB web space, 750MB monthly bandwidth, and no forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.ripway.com/" target="_blank">http://www.ripway.com/

26. ProFuseHost

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ProFuseHost covers 100MB, 1GB monthly bandwidth, and no forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://profusehost.net/" target="_blank">http://profusehost.net/

27. 50Webs

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50Webs offers both free and paid hosting services. The free hosting plan includes 60MB web space, unlimited bandwidth, and no forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.50webs.com/" target="_blank">http://www.50webs.com/

28. TopCities

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TopCities – 150MB web space, unlimited bandwidth, and no forced ads.

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Visit online: href="http://www.topcities.com/" target="_blank">http://www.topcities.com/

29. Hosting Engine

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Hosting-Engine free hosting service comes with 250MB of disk space, 5GB data transfer every month, 1 domain hosting, MySQL v.4/5 database, PHP4/5, as well as CGI feature.

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Visit online: href="http://hosting-engine.tk/" target="_blank">http://hosting-engine.tk/

30. Biz.ht

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Biz.ht claims to be the number one free green web host with its 100% wind-powered web hosting service. This green, free hosting service comes with 250MB disk space and 5GB monthly bandwidth.

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Visit online: href="http://biz.ht/" target="_blank">http://biz.ht/

Like Our Roundup List?

Roundup lists are amazing time savers for those who are searching for a particular service or product. So, here’s more.

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class="list-icon icon-angle-right accent" style="font-size: 85% !important;">  href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/featured-articles/30-must-see-web-generator-for-lazy-webmasters/">30 Web Generators for Lazy Webmasters

class="list-icon icon-angle-right accent" style="font-size: 85% !important;"> href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-tools/10-best-file-hosting-services/">10 Free File Storage Services You Should Have in Your Bookmarks

class="list-icon icon-angle-right accent" style="font-size: 85% !important;"> href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/23-must-see-free-blogging-platfo">23 Must See Free Blogging Platforms

Have fun!

Page 26 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

5 Must-See Website Uptime Monitoring Services

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About Shared Web Hosting Services

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The most important part after completing the creation of web pages, is hosting the website over the internet by an href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/compare-best-five-hosting/">efficient hosting service.

If you will surf around the internet you can find several hosting packages, claiming them as the best, by which you can host your website for making it accessible over the internet via World Wide Web. Many href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-reviews/">web hosting companies offer packages like dedicated hosting, managed web host services, virtual data centres and others but the hosting package which offers you the best result in terms of performance and budget is the shared web hosting service.

Concept of Shared Web Hosting

Shared Web hosting is one of the most popular webs hosting service over the internet because of its economic budget and reliable features.

Almost all of the hosting providers over the globe offer the shared web hosting package which is in high demand for individual and small scale websites.  In shared website hosting technique, several websites are hosted over a single robust server and they access the computation infrastructural resources of the particular server including web space, data-processing feature, random access memory and others. The cost associated with shared webhosting is very economical as the server acquiring and maintaining cost is distributed over all the websites hosted by that specific server.

Advantages of Shared Web Hosting

The various web hosting benefits associated with shared hosting are reviewed below:

Cost efficiency  The best benefit associated with shared mode of web hosting is the budget price. As the specific server hosts several websites over the internet, thus the cost is distributed over each of the website leading to much cheaper rates which you cannot find on other hosting service packages. Normally, the annual cost lies with shared hosting ranges in between to 0. And you don’t have to compromise with the web space and speed as you will get great web space of around 1 GB and up to 50 GB or even higher bandwidth.

Feasibility and operational ease As the servers under shared hosting are associated with several websites, so any individual has not to worry much about maintaining the server. Highly efficient IT experts look after the performance of the server this makes web site hosting feasible for many organizations that are not much handy with hosting techniques.

Utility Management Tool  Irrespective of the number of websites shared over a single server, web-hosting companies provide the administrative utility panel to each of the website separately. Through this admin utility control page, a user can do the modification and customization of the webpages. Also one can issue the subdomains and can create site emails as like the normal web hosting features.

Limitations associated with Shared Hosting

Though shared web hosting technique is money valued and featured hosting package but still there are few drawbacks that comes with the service. Some of such drawbacks are listed as under:

• The main drawback is related with the safety issues. A shared web hosting service offers less security as many websites share the common server.
• The shared hosting holds good for small websites but its performance highly degraded with bulk weighted websites
• Less robustness is also a limitation which one has to deal with shared hosting.
• No dedicated IP address
• Self-handling and update of web pages.
• Some examples of good shared hosting providers: href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/ipage/">iPage, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/webhostinghub/">WebHostingHub, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/hostgator/">Hostgator, and href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/greengeeks-hosting/">Green Geeks.

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What should I look for in a cloud services supplier?

alt="What should I look for in a cloud services supplier?" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/handling-cloud-servers-500x320_c.jpg" />

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What to do when your web host doesn’t provide email hosting services?

alt="What to do when your web host doesn’t provide email hosting services?" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/email-hosting-services-500x280_c.jpg" />

As y’all know, WHSR href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/site-updates/bye-bye-hostgator-hello-wp-engine/">switched to WP Engine last week (do check out my latest href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/wp-engine/">WPEngine Review here). There are plenty of good things to talk about href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/wpengine.php">WP Engine but in this post, I’m gonna talk about the problem I had during the migration – email hosting.

I was actually caught in surprise that WP Engine does not come with email hosting features.

And because of this, I spent hours reading and searching online for the right solution; and I signed up a few trial accounts for my own review.

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Dig deeper: Don’t repeat my mistake, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/choose-the-right-web-hosting/" target="_blank">learn how to choose the right web host for yourself.

Email hosting: What are your choices?

Generally, if you need your email account ending with your domain (ie. email@yourdomain.com) to be hosted separately from your hosting, your choices are, 1,  Other hosting providers that provide email hosting; 2, Free email hosting services like Google Gmail Apps; And 3, Paid email hosting services like RackSpace, Gmail, Microsoft 365, etc.

The configuration is simple – all you need to do is to update your MX record* to route email messages through your new email servers.

* About MX Record

MX record stands for Mail Exchange Records. Mail Exchange is simply another name for server whose primary function is to send and receive emails. A domain’s MX record can be seen using various free lookup tools available online (for example, MX Tool Box http://www.mxtoolbox.com/); and can be only changed at the domain registrar (where you register your domain name, ie. GoDaddy, Network Solution, etc).

This might sounds complicated especially if you are doing this for the first time but believe me, it is not that difficult. I have never done this before until last week and I switched between email hosting services three times for the past 10 days with no error.

Read on.

My experience with different email hosting solutions

Feeling a little geeky I took this chance to play around with my WHSR email account and here’s what I did.

First, I tried hosting my own email accounts at Hostgator (while my domain is now on WP Engine); three days later I switched over to Google Apps (which is href="http://wpengine.com/faq/email/email-recommendations-from-wp-engine/" target="_blank">recommended by WP Engine); as I don’t like my emails to be hold at Google, I switched to RackSpace 15 days trial plan 24 hours later; and, at this time of writing, I am using Microsoft 365. I did read a lot on other services including RunBox, Mail2Web, as well as FastMail, but never signup an account with them.

1. Hosting My Own Email Account At Hostgator

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/0228-1.jpg" alt="GoDaddy DNS Controls" width="750" />

It was both convenient and cheap to run my email accounts on Hostgator as I already have a hosting account with the gators. To get this done, simple:

1. Contact Gator supports, ask for the MX records of your mail server (assuming that you already have a Hostgator account). You should get something like this:

mail.yourdomain.com. IN A 184.172.183.xxx
yourdomain.com. IN MX 0 mail.yourdomain.com.

2. Copy the details, and head to your domain registrar (I’m using GoDaddy so this will be in our example).

3. At GoDaddy, find your way into Total DNS Control (refer to image above).

4. Click ‘Quick Add’ under A (Host), type ‘Mail’ under Host, your ‘IP (184.172.183.xxx)’ under Points To.

5. Click ‘Quick Add’ under MX, type ‘0’ under priority, ‘@’ under Host, and ‘mail.yourdomain.com’ under Goes To.

6. And… you are done.

You will need to go thru the same process every time you switch an email host. Once you have done it once, it’s basically a small piece of cake. I have done this a few times (from Hostgator to Google to RackSpace and to Microsoft) without any trouble – I believe you can do the same!

Moving on, let’s talk about a few other services I have tried.

2. Google Apps

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/0228-4.jpg" alt="Google Email Apps" width="750" />

You can setup up to 10 email account (ended with your domain) at Google using Google Email Apps; and for anything more than that you will need to pay /user account under Google Apps For Business.

Updates October 2015: Google Apps (known as Google Apps for Work now) is no longer free today. Entry plan costs per user per month (or /user per year, excluding tax) and includes a number of addon features, including Google Video and Voice Calls, 30 GB of online storage, and integrated online calendars.

 

If you are comfortable with Google holding your emails on top of all the data in your Google Search, Web Analytics, Adwords account, Adsense, YouTube, FeedBurner, G Talk, Google Plus (which I am not); then Google is your thing. It’s free, it’s on Cloud servers, it’s supported by the most powerful tech company in the world, it is Google.

You can learn more about href="https://www.google.com/intx/en/work/apps/business/pricing.html#choose-a-plan" target="_blank">Google Apps for Work in this page.

3. RackSpace Email

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/0228-2.jpg" alt="Rackspace Email" width="750" height="469" />

RackSpace was voted as the href="http://redmondmag.com/articles/2011/11/01/2011-readers-choice-awards.aspx?page=4#administration" target="_blank">Best Hosted Exchange for 2011.

The company provides 15 days trial period and I took a ride on it. The ordering process took a little longer than expected – RackSpace staff will call you to verify your information; but their staffs are generally very professional (I dealt with a girl named Stephanie a few times and she is extremely helpful and friendly).

RackSpace is cheap (/month/account with 10 GB storage) and it gives everything you need in a webmail system. The only problem I have with them is that the minimum order with RackSpace is /mo thus I was forced to buy 5 email accounts with them (I only need two).

For more details, here’s the webpage to visit: href="http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/" target="_blank">http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/

4. Microsoft 365

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/0228-3.jpg" alt="MS 365 Email" width="750" />

I am now running my email accounts with href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/online-software.aspx" target="_blank">Microsoft 365 and I believe I will stay with them for quite some time.

As much as I like them now, I do had some tough time getting started with Microsoft 365. I find documentations at Microsoft 365 a little confusing. I got bumped around between the company sisters sites and was reading at href="http://help.outlook.com" target="_blank">this, href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/support.aspx" target="_blank">this, href="http://community.office365.com/en-us/searchresults.aspx?q=email" target="_blank">this, and href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ms348103">this site. But… that could be just me because I am not very familiar with Microsoft services.

Anyway, that’s that and I have to admit that I fell in love with Microsoft 365 as soon as I got familiar with the environment. I like how the system sync between webmail, mobile, and my Outlook 2007; and the entire configuration process (via Microsoft Lync) is very, very smooth. Furthermore, at Microsoft 365 I can order as many, or as little, user accounts as I want at /user account. So that’s a huge plus for me when compare to RackSpace as I do not need to pay for the unused extra accounts.

What’s Microsoft 365?

Never heard of the name Microsoft 365? Well, here’s how the official says:

It’s familiar Microsoft Office collaboration and productivity tools delivered through the cloud. Everyone can work together easily with anywhere access to email, web conferencing, documents, and calendars. It includes business-class security and is backed by Microsoft. Whether you are a small business or multinational enterprise, Office 365 offers plans designed to fit your organization’s unique needs. Learn more today.

For more details, here’s the href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/online-software.aspx" target="_blank">introduction frontpage and here’s the href="http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-smallbusinesses/hh689729.aspx" target="_blank">Get Started Guide.

Wrapping Up

I hope you learn something from this post. I had some busy (and great) time searching and reading and learning for the past two weeks due to the move to WP Engine; and I hope this experience can be a good reference for some of you guys.

In case you have question or spotted any mistakes, do voice up in the comment box below.

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