Choosing a Compliant Business Email Solution for your Company

Choosing the most compliant business email provider for your company used to be an easy choice, as there were only a few service providers to consider. Now there are so many options when looking for the best type of compliant business email system to suit your needs, you need to be vigilant and know exactly what requirements you are searching for. Email correspondence is a critical part of your business and the differences between systems can be confusing but crucial. There are a few things you need to ask before you begin your search:

• How many employees need to access the email?
• Should email be available on multiple devices?
• Should calendars be shared?
• Will your company need collaboration tools such as shared spreadsheets and documents?
• What type of compliance rules does your industry have to adhere to?
• On average, how many emails do you send and receive every day?
• Are mass email campaigns a part of your business?
• Is real time email receipt a priority?

These questions provide a firm foundation for an investigation into the right type of business email platform for your business. The question of industry compliance is especially important because many shared email services are not compliant with some industry standards. Many businesses are moving towards a hosted email service with cloud storage. There are many advantages to using this type of system. This is discussed in the next section.

Advantages of Hosted Email

If you are outfitting a small to medium sized business, then a hosted email service may be for you. The email model is simple and straightforward and helps many businesses save money. Hosted email means there is no memory backup on company servers, but instead, it is hosted online. Hosted email providers typically offer at least 25 GB of storage per user which is more than sufficient for many small businesses. It also cuts down hardware, infrastructure, and licensing costs.

The service provider should offer reliable backups for the server, ensuring that you never need to worry about unplanned downtime and a resulting loss of productivity. There is no delay with deploying the service once you choose this option, because it is just a matter of registration and migration. There is also no need for dedicated IT personnel to take care of an internal system. The cloud service provider is responsible for all maintenance and service which lowers the businesses’ cost significantly.

If enhanced security features are needed with a cloud-based email system, these features can be added to the existing server for a nominal fee. Consider how critical it is to keep your information secure and what types of information are being shared through the email system. If this information is particularly sensitive or valuable, enhanced security features are probably a good idea.

Email management services like Mimecast’s, are constantly managed and users may be added and subtracted with ease, which is not always offered by other cloud email service providers. It is also important that a provider offers advanced compliance scanning to ensure that inappropriate information does not get sent out, as well as archiving and discovery solutions, where emails can be stored or recovered if needed.