Email Hosting

An e-mail hosting service is an Internet hosting service that runs e-mail servers.

E-mail hosting services usually offer premium e-mail at a cost as opposed to advertising supported free e-mail or free webmail. E-mail hosting services thus differ from typical end-user e-mail providers such as webmail sites. They cater mostly to demanding e-mail users and Small and Mid Size (SME) businesses, while larger enterprises usually run their own e-mail hosting service. E-mail hosting providers allow for premium e-mail services along with custom configurations and large number of accounts. In addition, hosting providers manage user's own domain name, including any e-mail authentication scheme that the domain owner wishes to enforce in order to convey the meaning that using a specific domain name identifies and qualifies e-mail senders.

Most e-mail hosting providers offer advanced premium e-mail solutions hosted on dedicated custom e-mail platforms. The technology and offerings of different e-mail hosting providers can therefore vary with different needs. E-mail offered by most webhosting companies is usually more basic standardized POP3 based e-mail and webmail based on open source webmail applications like Horde or SquirrelMail. Almost all webhosting providers offer standard basic e-mail while not all e-mail hosting providers offer webhosting.