Free vs paid email hosting: Which one should SMEs choose?

There is a growing trend to the adoption of digital technologies by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). When people think of digitizing their business, the first thing that often comes into mind is getting an email address. An email address is important as it is where you will communicate with potential clients and deal with vendors. It is also where you will communicate with your employees (if any).

In terms of digital recruitment technique, an email address is the gateway to all digital platforms to hire candidates. Without an email address, you will not be able to tap into a wider talent pool and gain access to social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Apart from your own recruitment website, an email address is also a means for potential candidates to contact you with regards to any vacant positions.

There are many email service providers out there, from unpaid options to paid email hosting services. However, you might want to take some time to think it through and compare between the two options to see which is more suitable for your business.

Paying for an email hosting service simply means you can send emails through your own domain. For example, [email protected]. It immediately makes your business contact look more professional and credible as compared to [email protected], or worse, [email protected]. Whether you are recruiting or sourcing for new clients, professionalism is important at every level, and it does not matter how small or large your business is.

Similar to any paid services, if you pay for your email service, you would expect to receive more reliable service compared to free email service. For example, the free version of Gmail includes access to Google’s very own word processor, spreadsheets and presentation applications but you are unable to call Google for help if you run into any problems. If you opt for the paid version, they provide 24/7 support to you.

More importantly, the paid version of Gmail guarantees a 99.9% uptime. This means that its service is designed to operate 24 hours every day without fail. There is no similar guarantee for the free version of Gmail, although that does not mean that the free version has a lot of problems either. Paid email hosting services also normally provide twice the amount of storage and sometimes unlimited storage space compared to free versions.

That being said, who wouldn’t love free stuff? Email service providers such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail are free to use and you probably use one of these as your personal email so it is quite natural for you to start your business email this way too. Another benefit is that these email service providers are very common and easily recognizable to the people you communicate with as they might be using it themselves.

If you are not a heavy user, most of these free email services also give you enough amount of free storage for your documents, emails, photos and other files. As mentioned, some of these free email service providers are also bundled with various other useful add-on features such as word processors, file backups, calendars, contacts and many others.

Every business will have its own different requirements, therefore you would want to be sure that you choose the best email service provider according to your needs. If you are a start-up or a small business that seldom rely heavily on emails to communicate with your clients, then there is no harm in using a free email service.

Nevertheless, if you are already an established business dealing with many corporate clients from industries which would require a higher level of professionalism and in need of better services, sharing and storage features, a paid email hosting service is definitely the way to go.

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