7 powerful reasons why you must host your emails separately from your website

Email is here to stay

Did you know that Americans spend, on average, 5 hours a day checking their emails? 

Yep, 5 hours. 3 hours for work email and 2 hours for personal mail.

According to this study by Adobe, people refresh their inboxes while watching TV, relaxing in bed, in meetings, driving, during meals, and even in the bathroom.

If you’re like me, maybe you even check your inbox while queuing to pay for your groceries at the mall

People prefer to be sold to. Via email.

In the same study, Adobe also discovered that 60% of respondents prefer to receive sales pitches and marketing offers via email.

This is significantly higher than social media and many other marketing channels where people are less receptive to marketing messages.

But the truth is. Most emails never reach the inbox

In real life, according to data gathered by Returnpath, only 79% of sent emails reach the primary inbox. 

The other 21% of emails never make it to their destination or get caught by the spam folder.
Statistica claims spam emails amount to 55% of all emails sent per day globally.

How to reach the inbox more often. And why you need to host your emails separately from your website

1) I.P address blacklisting

 A lot of people host their websites and emails on shared servers. 

While there is nothing wrong with shared web hosting, shared servers mean shared I.P addresses.

If someone who shares the same server with you sends email spam to their recipients. 

Your I.P address, the one that you share with hundreds of other people, gets blacklisted. 

Once blacklisted, all emails originating from your I.P or server are automatically flagged as spam.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

Someone might say,  “But I’m a good guy, I don’t send spam.”

Unfortunately, in the real world, if you spend a lot of your time hanging out with shady people then soon enough people will start looking at you with suspicion.

I.P address blacklisting works in the same way too. It dumps emails from shady I.P addresses straight into the spam folder.  
This might explain why some studies say that up to 85% of all emails sent daily are spam

2) Specialized servers

Email hosting companies are wary of I.P blacklisting so they regularly monitor I.P addresses. 

And if your I.P address is blacklisted, they notify you and help get your I.P removed from the blacklist. 

Some email hosting companies will even allocate you a dedicated I.P address so your email account is not associated with anyone else’s.

Companies that bundle web hosting and email hosting together probably don’t bother where your emails end up.

On the other hand, email hosting companies stay or go out of business based purely on inbox placement rates.

3) Space and storage

When you host your website and email on the same server. 

It means the two compete for the same storage space. 

Your emails will gradually require more space because of files such as email attachments. 

And your website will eat up storage space thanks to pictures, graphics, and video. 

By contrast, email hosting companies only run servers optimized only for emails, and not for websites. 

This specialization trickles down to your email account in the form of speed, stability, efficiency and free storage space.

4) Avoid keeping your eggs in one basket

You’ve most likely heard the saying, “Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket” 

Experienced investors always stress the importance of diversifying your investments in order to hedge against risk. 

But most people host their websites together with their emails anyways and argue that it’s convenient having everything in one place.

This could be a recipe for disaster because if your website goes down then your email account goes down too.

 Almost all websites experience downtime due to unforeseen technical issues, network outages, or planned maintenance.

Even tech giants such as Amazon or Microsoft suffer outages from time to time.

But if your email is hosted separately from your website, you can continue to send and receive emails during those times when your website is down or offline.

5) Malware and viruses

Website and email hacking attempts are at an all-time high. 

Tech giants such as T-Mobile, Yahoo, Uber, Facebook, eBay, and Adobe have experienced some of the biggest data breaches of the 21st century. 

If malware or a virus finds its way into your website, it will most likely infect and corrupt your emails if the two are sharing one server.

But again, if your email is hosted separately, you can easily regain control of your compromised website.

6) Easier migration

Switching website hosting companies is easier if your emails are hosted with a separate email service provider. 

To complete your website migration, you will only need to point your DNS records to your new web host.

Email migration is not as straightforward. 

In some instances, you might need to copy and paste emails and their attachments one by one into the new email account. 

This is obviously a time-wasting hassle which often comes with issues such as messy formatting errors.

7) Privacy and security

Most dedicated email hosting companies offer additional security and privacy features to safeguard your emails. 

For example, Protonmail and Tutanota offer some of these security enhancements.

• Strong end-to-end email encryption. This means interceptors will not be able to decrypt and read your emails. Even Protonmail itself can not read or decrypt your emails.
• With Tutanota, when you delete your emails in your email client, they’re also deleted from Tutanota’s servers. This means your email history and activity are virtually untraceable.
• Protonmail offers additional features such as self-deleting emails that disappear after a set time.
• I.P address stripping. Protonmail and Tutanota strip your I.P address from your email headers so your recipients, and even robots, won’t be able to see and trace your I.P address

But I have nothing to hide, so I don’t care about privacy

Some people choose to bury their heads in the sand arguing that they have nothing to hide.

But hackers take advantage of that passive way of thinking and through phishing attacks, they steal sensitive information from many people. 

Hackers may steal money from you or send fraudulent emails in your name to deceive even more people.

Phishing attacks almost always lead to situations where hackers demand ransom for them to halt their cybercrimes.

How email hosting companies offer security and higher email deliverability

Email hosting companies employ a raft of security standards that ensure your emails are deemed trustworthy by ISPs and mailboxes. Some of these measures include.

1) SPF authentication

SPF authentication fights phishing emails that look like they’re from a trusted sender when they’re, in fact, fake clones of the genuine email address. 

SPF gives you the power to define which servers and I.P addresses can send emails on your behalf. 

If an email is sent from any server or I.P address which isn’t specified or recognized by your SPF records then that email is caught by the spam folder.

2) DKIM authentication

The moment you send your email. 

There is still a high risk of hackers intercepting and modifying your email before it reaches its destination. 

So after you hit the ‘send button’, DKIM verifies that your email wasn’t intercepted and modified on its way. 

If all DKIM checks are met, your email hits your recipient’s inbox. if not, then the email is automatically sent to the spam folder.

3) DMARC

Because sophisticated cyber attackers have been able to bypass SPF and DKIM. 

DMARC adds another layer of protection by linking SPF and DKIM together. 

So while DMARC isn’t necessarily an authentication standard, it employs rules that make sure an email passes 

• SPF and SPF alignment
• DKIM and DKIM alignment

DMARC also gives you (the sender) the ability to instruct ISPs how to handle emails that have failed SPF and DKIM authentication. You can instruct email providers to either

• Quarantine all emails (send to spam folder) that fail DMARC
• Reject (don’t deliver) emails that fail DMARC

So which are the best email service providers?

You will never go wrong with either Office 365 Business Premium (by Microsoft) or G Suite (by Google). 

Both G Suite and Office 365 Business Premium allow you to configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your emails.

If you’re interested in trying out one of these premium email hosting providers but aren’t ready to pay for one then try Zoho’s popular and free (lite) plan.

There are a lot of other free email providers such as Gmail by Google. 

However, such providers make money by targeting you with annoying ads in your inbox, or even worse, selling your data to third-party vendors.

Are you keeping your email hosting separate from your website hosting?

Email has an unmatched return on investment of $38 for every $1 you spend on it. 

For those who demand and expect financial rewards from their email campaigns, then investing in email hosting is a no-brainer.