The Optimal Website Hosting and Email Hosting Setup
At Wisevu we often get asked to register web hosting and email hosting for clients or to assist them in moving their website hosting and email hosting to a better website hosting provider. This post provides our answer to this question so that you also are no longer uncertain how to setup your website and email hosting.
Recommended Setup: Keep Website and Email Hosting Separate
We always recommend to keep website hosting and email hosting separate. There are several benefits of this setup, and some of the main benefits are listed below:
If your website server goes down, your email will not be affected
When you keep your website and email hosting separate, you minimize downtime. Even though it is rare, servers do go down and when this happens your website and/or email will also go down if both are hosted on the same server. When you have web hosting and email hosting separate this ensures that when your website hosting goes down you will still have access to your emails and vice versa.
Optimized server space
When website and email hosting are kept together, the email space can fill up the website server without you being aware of your server space limits. This can especially happen if you become a victim of an email DDOS attack. This will fill up all your website server space, in effect slowing down your website load speed and possibly resulting in your web server provider completely taking down your website.
Decreased chances of sluggish load speeds
Sometimes emails get hacked, and your email may become a victim of a DDOS attack. When this happens your server provider may likely suspend your account until the issue is resolved. If you have website hosting and email hosting on the same server, this means both, your site and emails will be down. By having email hosting and web hosting separate, this eliminates the possibility of your website going down in case your emails get hacked.
More stability and control in case you get hacked
If your website gets hacked and malicious code gets injected into your server, your hosting provider will likely suspend your account until you can resolve the issue. If your website hosting and email hosting are on the same server, this will mean that both your website and emails will be suspended. If your admin email is hosted on the compromised server you will not even get the warning email and will only find out about the issue when you notice that your site is suspended by visiting it. Having your website and email hosting separate allows you to have access to your emails while your website is suspended. This may be a life saver as you will likely need your email to communicate with your website development team and other 3rd parties to get your site cleaned up.
Shared web hosting is not always stable enough for email hosting
Having a cheap shared web host where you also have your emails may result in your emails not being delivered on time or at all due to server downtime. Shared hosts often have very cheap email services which are often unreliable especially if you have web forms which you rely on for leads. This is why it’s recommended to have a separate reliable email hosting as it will maximize email delivery and speed.
Ease of migration
When email and website hosting are separate, it is very simple to migrate your website to another hosting provider in case you are not happy with the current provider. On the other hand, when your email and website hosting is on the same host it becomes more difficult to move your emails and website hosting to another provider due to the need of having to migrate your existing email accounts to the new provider. So having email and web hosting separate is more convenient in this situation.
Recommended Website Host
For website hosting we suggest WPengine. WP Engine is the World’s #1 WordPress host. They do not offer email hosting on their servers. The main benefit of WP Engine is that they are optimized for WordPress and because of this offer some of the fastest loading speeds.
Recommended Email Host
For email hosting we recommend Rackspace email. They offer some of the most reliable and easy to use email hosting that we have come across. Their prices are affordable, at $1.99usd/email account, which gives you 25GB of space per account. Another reliable email provider is Google but for 30GB of space you pay $6usd/account. So unless you rely on Google Drive and other Google services, we would suggest Rackspace Email.
Alternative Setup: One Server for Both Website and Email Hosting
Although we do not recommend this setup, you may still opt to go with this if your budget is limited. The main benefit of having email and web hosting on one server is the lower cost. This is the cheapest solution due to which bloggers and some business owners will opt out for this solution because of the cost saving.
Questions and Comments?
Do you have a favourite website hosting provider? Tell us what you love about them. Also, do you have a favourite email hosting provider that you recommend? If so, tell us what you like about them in the comments below and don’t forget to give us a heart if you enjoyed this post and would like to see more related posts.