It’s important to try and keep business expenses down. Some things like free email accounts seem like an easy way to just that. After all it only takes a moment to sign up and BOOM, fully working email account that you can use for your business. However, this isn’t a good solution for several reasons. In todays blog post we are going to discuss a few of the reasons why you want to get a proper professional email account for your business and the good news is its a lot more affordable than you think.
First off remember nothing in this world is truly free, and this applies to free email accounts. Free email accounts don’t allow you to truly own your data as your own because they use the contents of your inbox to learn more about you and sell your data to 3rd parties. This is a concern, especially if you are in a regulated business where you are handling sensitive data such as PHI. That free email account can cause you to fail an audit which can lead to hefty fines.
Another thing to consider is how it looks. Do you really want others to tie you to a free email service or is it more professional to use an email account that is tied to your business?
A proper email service also gives you a lot more control. Lets walk through a few examples to understand this more clearly.
- An employee leaves – When you have an employee leave you need to change all business passwords for accounts they had access to. This is standard security 101. This means going into each individual account to update it. But what if that employee who left is disgruntled and decides to change it to lock you out? Now you no longer have access to your email that all your vendors, patients/clients, and marketing materials point to.
- Data loss – Free email accounts do not protect against accidental deletion, or worse purposeful deletion. Proper accounts through a provider gives you the ability to place legal holds and protection policies. Not to mention you can also backup your data protecting yourself even further.
- Complete control & flexibility – a proper business provider will provide you with a management account where you can control all your email accounts in a single pane of glass and be able to reset passwords, route email, etc. Many times you can create distribution groups, service accounts, and much more free of cost to you.
- More features – Any more email providers such as Microsoft 365 build in a lot of value for the cost. They give you access to everything from instant messaging, time tracking, collaboration tools, and even fully installable office suites, and much more.
But is it easy? The short answer is yes. Many business email providers build very easy to use wizards to walk you through the process of setting it up. Further many IT providers, like us, actually build this into your costs so email management doesn’t cost you any headaches or your budget.
So why wait? Contact us today to get your business a professional business email.