A local chamber of commerce client has their website hosted with a company that does not also provide email hosting. I don’t really understand that, email hosting is too easy. There can be the issue of having clients unknowingly send out spam and getting the server address blacklisted. But that’s usually pretty easy to handle.
Google provides free email hosting for 501c3 qualified non-profits, but the Chamber is not a 501c3.
So I found another email hosting service (zoho.com) that will provide up to 25 mailboxes for free on their domain and set them up with that. They were using an embarqmail email address.
First we had to get their domain on their own domain registrar account – because the domain was owned by a third party that had little to do with the Chamber. Then I used the DNS with the domain registrar to set the MX record for the domain to point to the email hosting service.
The typical business would have their email hosting with the same provider as their website hosting. Some website hosting services charge extra for email accounts – but there are many that do not so there is no reason to pay extra for email accounts on your own domain.
Businesses should always have their email on their own domain. It just doesn’t look professional to use a generic email account to conduct business. Also for network-provider email accounts such as Embarqmail, Comcast, Verizon, or Rogers, what happens if you end up changing your network provider? They’re not going to want to continue providing free email hosting, so most likely you’re going to lose that email address. It’s much better to own your own domain. You can change hosting service any time and keep your existing email addresses.