Emails are integral to any business, as they provide the most convenient mode of communications. Business organizations conduct email marketing campaigns, where they dispatch thousands of emails to their prospective clients. As a result, they are bound to receive email responses in the thousands, as well. The free SMTP hosting services like SMTP host Gmail or Yahoo have restrictions on the number of emails you receive in an hour. Thus, digital marketers can lose out on potential consumers. Hosted SMTP is the ideal solution as it guarantees the best delivery rates for your incoming and outgoing emails.
What Is SMTP?
Before we go into the aspects of what a hosted SMTP is, let us understand the basic idea of SMTP. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or SMTP is the procedure behind the flow of emails on the internet. This analogy will clear the concept further.
How do you send your regular post? You post your letter in the postbox, and an organized postal delivery system takes care of the rest. The SMTP works similarly. It ensures the delivery of your emails to the concerned recipient.
How Does SMTP Work?
Let’s take a look at the step-by-step working process of an SMTP service.
- Your mail client or the Message User Agent (MUA) is responsible for taking care of your emails.
- Your MUA sends the email message to an SMTP server that acts as a Message Transfer Agent (MTA). The MTA verifies the details contained in the message transmission data such as sender, recipient, and domain.
- If the recipient’s domain is directly connected to the SMTP server, it delivers the email immediately. Alternatively, the SMTP hands over the message to another SMTP incoming server to ensure delivery of the emails. This system is known as an SMTP relay server. The process goes on until the email message reaches the recipient.
- In case the recipient’s server is busy, the SMTP host places the email in a backup server. It queues the email and retries the delivery at periodical intervals. If the server remains unable to receive it, the SMTP host returns the email as undelivered.
What Is A Hosted SMTP?
Free SMTP hosting services have severe limitations. Servers like SMTP host Gmail or SMTP host Yahoo Mail restrict the number of emails to around 100 to 150 per hour and about 500 per day from remote email servers. It defeats the purpose of digital marketing, as this restriction can result in a loss of prospective customers due to non-delivery of emails or non-receipt of email responses. Hence, it is advisable to have a dedicated email hosting service without any restriction on the number of emails you send or receive. Such an SMTP email hosting service is known as hosted SMTP.
Which SMTP Server Should You Use?
You have two options. One is to set up your SMTP server. Alternatively, you can buy SMTP server or use the SMTP server from a provider.
SMTP servers from reputed providers are reliable because they not only enable processing of large volumes of data but also have robust spam filters. The free SMTP hosting servers should be excellent for personal email correspondence. Business entities looking to use emails as a digital marketing tool should consider buying dedicated SMTP servers. Leasing SMTP servers is also a widespread practice today. Corporate entities like Amazon SES and SparkPost specialize in leasing SMTP servers.
Advantages Of Personal SMTP Servers
The most significant benefit of the private SMTP server is that there are no restrictions on usage.
- The user has full control over its settings.
- It is also possible to install the highest levels of data security.
Demerits Of Personal SMTP Servers
- The individual SMTP servers transmit a dynamic IP address that many major email providers do not recognize. Thus, emails sent through such private servers end up as spam mail and find a place in the junk folders of the recipients.
- However, business organizations can apply a few restructuring measures to traverse such issues. If the primary purpose of your SMTP server is to send and receive emails, it is ideal to have a personal email hosting service.
- Setting up a personal SMTP server requires you to have the technical know-how and hardware.
- The costs of setting up or maintaining a personal email hosting service is also a critical aspect.
If you can afford to buy SMTP server, it is an excellent decision for your business. However, you can also use the SMTP relay service as an ideal alternative.
How Do You Use SMTP Relay Service?
An SMTP relay service enables emails to be transmitted from the sender to the recipient’s inbox through the internet. The advantages of using SMTP relay service are that organizations need not have to own dedicated email hosting services.
SMTP relay services are better because it saves money that businesses have to invest in owning an SMTP server. However, SMTP relay services have their disadvantages. One of the principal demerits is that it is easy to hack into SMTP relay servers. It also explains why people receive innumerable fake messages and phishing emails. A hosted SMTP server is better because it offers data security of the highest quality.
Why Is Hosted SMTP Better Than SMTP Relay Service?
- A hosted SMTP server does not impose any restrictions on the number of emails you send or receive.
- It ensures data encryption, whereby there is no compromising of the message content in the emails.
- Hosted SMTP servers offer high levels of data security, as they have spam filters and other programs to filter emails.
- Hosted SMTP services guarantee the delivery of emails to the intended recipients. At the same time, it also ensures that the sender receives every response from the recipients without fail. Therefore, business organizations do not lose out on their customers.
- A hosted SMTP server does not require much effort to set up and maintain. In this aspect, these dedicated email hosting services are better than the personal SMTP server.
- Hosted SMTP services come with all the requisite hardware. There is no need for businesses to invest in specific hardware equipment.
- Hosted SMTP services are reliable because they have developed an authenticated reputation with SMTP service providers.
One of the principal drawbacks of hosted SMTP services is that it is not advisable to store sensitive data on external servers. Yes, SMTP is not concerned with the content in the emails. It focuses on the sender, recipient, and the domain. Nevertheless, it is better to be safe rather than be sorry.
Final Words
We have seen how hosted SMTP works and why it is better to use hosted SMTP or buy SMTP server instead of using free SMTP hosting services or SMTP relay services. Hosted SMTP is integral to any business because of the advantages it brings with it. Data security is a significant aspect. Secondly, guaranteed delivery of email messages is crucial for the overall business network.