Why you need company email addresses

Email is everywhere

Email has become known as the killer-application of the Internet. An email account is as important nowadays as a telephone line is for conducting business. In fact email has also made the fax machine all but obsolete.

Firstly, what is email? It is the exchange of electronic messages between computers using a network. E-mail was one of the first uses of the Internet and is still the most popular use with billions of e-mails being transmitted every day. Virtually every business relies on email and in today's networked world, many people regard email as their preferred method of communication. Email can be read at home or the office using your desktop PC or laptop, it can be read on your laptop, cellphone or PDA using using a wireless network. In fact email has become ubiquitous.

Getting your own

An email account is normally provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Individuals are normally sold email accounts on the same domain as the ISP (the domain is the portion after the @ sign). The same applies for free email accounts. Your email address will be on the free email provider’s domain.

To get a corporate email address of your own, you need to register your own domain name. A domain is your piece of "real estate" on the Internet. Once a domain name has been registered you have exclusive rights to occupy and use that piece of "land" on the Internet. You will be able to create a website, create mailboxes and name your servers using that domain name. If you have the correct computer infrastructure you can even host your own domain and email on your own network. However, if you are a smaller company with limited IT infrastructure, you will find it more economical to use an ISP or Hosting Service Provider to host your domain.

How email works

An email account can normally be configured to work in one of four ways:

• Use your mail program to connect to the email server and have your company emails downloaded to your PC (known as POP3)
• Store your company mail directly on the email server and use your mail program to read the mail (known as IMAP)
• Use a webmail system to read your mail online from anywhere in the world
• Have your company mail forwarded to your existing personal mailbox

Aliases

Companies can also set up "email aliases" (also known as "email forwards"). These are email addresses which don't really go into an actual mailbox. Rather, any mail sent to these addresses will get forwarded to a real mailbox. For example, sales@company_name.com can be created as an alias which in turn gets forwarded to the people who deal with sales queries in the company. The same can be set up for finance@company_name.com or support@company_name.com. The correct use of email aliases can allow a company to project a professional image and appear to have much larger staff and infrastructure than is actually the case.

What's in a name?

What many people do not realise is that their corporate email account is also an important marketing tool. If you use a free Hotmail, Yahoo or GMail address it might not project the professional image that your business requires. Most large corporates, and even smaller organisations regard free email account accounts in the same vein as cheap and badly printed business cards. These should be avoided for business purposes.

How to get started

Please contact us if you are interested in a mail and hosting service. The service will include registering a domain for you and providing professional-looking email addresses for your company to use. Once the domain is registered, you and your staff will be able to use mailboxes that read your_name@company_name.co.za or your_name@company_name.com . Later you can use the domain name to host your own website.

For more information on how Maxxor Mail Hosting can satisfy your business's requirements, please submit an online Sales Request or email sales@maxxor.com.