It doesn’t have to be difficult to find the email hosting provider that is exactly right for your company. All you need to do is consider four main factors and then choose the company that best fits the bill.

Experience 
Email hosting can be extremely complex, requiring a great deal of technical skill. Accounts need to be set up, customer data needs to be migrated to the new systems, support issues need to be handled, and infrastructures and data centers must be maintained. In addition, the system needs to be flexible enough to enable user mobility. It’s extremely important that you ask each provider you are considering what type of experience it has. Don’t simply choose a new company because it offers services at a lower price than the others.

Support 
You need to make sure that when a company says it offers support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they mean it. You don’t want to speak to someone during a 3 a.m. crisis who can only take your message and have a professional call you during business hours. It is essential that the company you choose keeps certified technicians on staff that can answer all of your questions no matter what time of the day or night it may be. Also, try to choose a provider that doesn’t outsource its customer support to a third party in an effort to cut costs.

Variety of Services 
The more applications your business uses, the more difficult it can be to get them all to work in concert. Talk to each email hosting company you are considering about what other types of integrated services it offers. For example, see if they offer anti-spam services, collaboration tools, file syncing, and archiving. Not only will you save money in the long run, you’ll also reduce the hassles that can come from information technology (IT) integration.

The Contract 
Here’s where we get to the nitty-gritty of how to separate the different email hosting companies you are considering. Get as much detailed information as possible from each provider regarding what is – and is not – included in your contract. For example, migration of data from the old provider should be covered, and you should not have to pay extra for support, whether you need it during business hours or afterward. If a company says that you’ll need to pay extra for additional admin accounts, that should be a huge red flag. The more information you get on the contract at the beginning, the less likely you’ll be to experience unpleasant surprises down the road. This will also make it easier to compare different providers.

By taking the time to obtain as much information as possible from the email hosting companies vying for your business, you’ll have the best chances of enjoying reliable service in the long term.