Why We’re Recommending G Suite

The Truth About Web Hosts and Email

I’ll get right to the point: Hosting email is the bane of the web host’s existence. Providing email services on a server that is also hosting web pages introduces a lot of complexities into server administration, and, as web hosts, our focus is on the website portion of the hosting experience. Email accounts are an extra courtesy service we provide because some people really want it.

The downsides to hosting email on a web server are many, but we’ll focus on the aspects most important to our customers:

  • Our IP’s are sometimes blocked by third-party providers, such as Google, ATT, Hotmail, and others, due to the volume of mail being sent from them.
  • If your web server goes down, your email goes down with it.
  • You can get blocked in the firewall for too many failed email login attempts.
  • Hosting email on a server slows it down, plain and simple – and your website is slower as a result.

We Will Continue Offering Email Accounts with cPanel Services

While we are not discontinuing cPanel (and therefore email accounts associated with web hosting accounts) entirely, we are strongly urging people to move away from cPanel. You can read about why that is in another post, The Great and Terrible cPanel.

99.95% of our customers use WordPress – that’s where we want to focus our attention and resources. Moving to servers without email accounts is the way of the future – the really really fast, smooth future.

Why G Suite is Amazing

If customers choose not to have email with their hosting package, what’s the best option? We very strongly encourage people to use G Suite (formerly Google Apps) for email, rather than their hosting server.

First, there are many customers on each of our shared servers, and, as a result, a lot of email is sent from it. Many third-party providers see the volume of email coming from the IP and block it for the volume of mail being sent.

The advantages of G Suite are:

  • Google’s IP’s are never blocked by any third parties – your email will always be delivered reliably
  • Incoming spam is filtered using Google’s excellent, robust spam detection system
  • Email is displayed within Google’s excellent gMail interface, or you may use an email client (we recommend Thunderbird over Outlook)
  • You can reply from your domain-baSed email address
  • Your email will function, even if our server is offline – your email is wholly separate from your hosting.

The disadvantages are:

  • This is not a free service; it costs $5 per month per email address
  • That’s it!

To sum up – Google does mail really, really well: Far better than any web host out there, ourselves included. You’ll have a better email experience using their services, and a better web hosting experience moving to a non-cPanel server.

If you have any questions, or if you’d like to move to a non-cPanel service, drop our support team a line, and stay tuned here – more information coming soon!