[animate animation=”rollIn”]email

[/animate]Recently we’ve seen a few of our friends and customers who’ve had their Yahoo (other free email services are available ) accounts hacked.  This got us thinking and we decided to drag out one of our older Soap Boxes ( we have many, as you know ) and re-examine why a business of any size needs to get away from using free email.

Now, we’re the first to admit that when you’re starting out every penny counts and why should you pay for a ‘proper’ email solution when you can get one free? Let’s not forget the likes of Yahoo, Google , Outlook ( formerly Hotmail ), AOL and even your own Internet Provider offer loads of space, you can get it anywhere, connect to your smart phone easily and other stuff.

Well that’s all sorted, no need to spend any money, but what about the other side of the coin? ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’, ‘Spend little now, pay twice later’ and we’re sure you can insert your own cliché here:

Hackers are always after them: Going back to our hacked friends for a moment, they are just a tiny drop in a massive of ocean of hacked accounts. ‘The bad people’ of the Internet are always after free email accounts so they can send floods of spam marketing or even worse. They know if they get hold of a legitimate account it will have plenty of email addresses of friends and family or even business contacts they can attack. Then attack those accounts, so on and so forth.

Incidentally, we’ve lost track of the number of times big organisations have had to come out and admit that their mail servers have been attacked and you need to change your details, blah blah.

  • Trust: Let’s be honest, when you see an email from one of the ‘big three’ free email providers you often have this feeling of ‘uh-oh’ what’s this? If you don’t you should, see above.

By default many big organisations and government bodies, block all e-mails from freebie emails because they know they are a den of writhing electronic nastiness.

If you’re using free email for your business and it gets hacked, what will that do to your image and reputation?

  • It’s Free: Hey, you’re not paying for it, there’s no one to contact when it goes wrong, and it’s not even in the U.K. If it goes down, you’ll just have to wait till we get round to it. Why are you moaning?

 

  • Let’s have a look at what you’re typing: Not many people realise this, but what you send and receive through the ‘big three’ are automatically scanned by ‘bots to serve you ‘tailored’ adverts. What else happens to your data?

 

  • It’s illegal in the UK. to fiddle about with Her Majesty’s post, unless it’s your mail of course or a nice Judge says the Police can steam your letters open, so why are you reading my mail Mr. Big Free Email Company? You might be ok letting that happen, but would you stand and shout about your private business in the middle of Northumberland Street, Oxford Street or any other busy shopping area. 
  • It just looks wrong: Ok, for home users who send the odd email, funny messages or ‘you must see this’ ( God Help Us! ) free email is fine but for your business, really don’t think so.  You’ve worked very hard to get your company going, building up relationships with your clients, get a nice website put together ( we offer those too ), marketing and all the other things you have to do and then you go and spoil it by putting a free email address on all your material.

When you see a company using a free email address, what do you think? Do you use them?

The best of it is, it’s actually very simple and cheap to buy a Domain name with e-mail only. You don’t have to have a website right away, that can come later.

Most providers will give you at least 10 email boxes as standard when you sign up, you could set up several emails to represent different departments of your business.

Want to pick up your email while you’re out and about? No problem, everyone offers webmail now, just like the free companies.

If you really must keep that free email, buy a domain e-mail solution anyway, you can always link them together.

Hopefully you’ve seen the light and your dying to ditch free email and invest in some ‘proper’ email. Now that you’re all ready to go, call us now and we’ll make sure it all goes well.

A huge thank you to Jo My PA who very kindly proof read this. It would have been a lot worse without their help.