As with any purchase decision, there is often a tradeoff between quality, cost, support and convenience, and email hosting is no different. Many commercial email providers will demand one of these compromises, they will either be expensive, leave you to fend for yourself when it comes to support or be a little hit-and-miss when it comes to quality of service. User feedback is still the most effective way of deciding on an email hosting provider because whatever the challenges facing the industry, users will always rely on experience to judge a vendors success. A modern business has to react robustly and efficiently to tackle problems, and how an organization conducts themselves when things go wrong is the best barometer of how they provide their services.
These commercial companies also have to content with the like of Gmail or Hotmail, which is free and offers pretty good service to users. Most businesses like the word free, especially when it's combined with a relatively good service. The spam filter is good, but not foolproof, with inboxes still receiving a goodly amount of mail asking if you want to enlarge yourself or buy Viagra. That said, for a completely free service, they offer a lot to the user. However, for a commercial operation it isn't so generous. There are no service levels, quality assurances, and you're pretty much on your own when things go wrong. The community is strong and supportive, but you still have to find your own answers. For most companies, this simply isn't workable, which is where the commercial providers come in.
By offering a full service, including support, guaranteed SLAs, and uptime, a paid-for email hosting provider can offer real value for money to business. While most organizations use quality and convenience as the bar when selecting a provider, in reality what most customers want is reassurance. Reassurance that the provider will look after them, support them and won't let them down. It's that safety blanket that is most often the driver between choosing a paid for solution and a free one. As with many services, email hosting is about reassuring the customer that you're there for them and that you won't let them down.
Service contracts are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and are still one of the biggest emerging markets in the country. Business has enough to contend with right now without having to worry about essential services like email hosting. That's why it's such a big business. Decision makers want to know that they are being looked after and don't mind paying for it.
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