Choosing Business Email: Hosting Mailboxes, a Dedicated Email Package or Microsoft Exchange?

An address like "[email protected]" is the most visible part of a corporate identity, yet the platform behind it is usually chosen by accident when the website is set up. There are three basic options: email included with the hosting plan, a business email package independent of the website, and a fully managed Microsoft Exchange service. This article explains the differences and who each option suits.

1. Email inside the hosting plan

On cPanel hosting plans you can create mailboxes for your domain and use them through webmail or Outlook/Thunderbird over IMAP and SMTP. There is no extra charge, and SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are created from cPanel with one click.

• Good for: teams of 1–5 people, a few dozen emails a day, no need for a large archive.
• Limits: mailboxes share the website's disk quota; a problem with the site can affect email too; no calendar or contact sharing; sending limits follow the shared server's policy.

2. A business email package

Business email packages run on infrastructure dedicated to mail. You can use them whoever hosts your website; the domain's MX records point to the mail server while the site stays where it is.

• Good for: teams of 5–50, large per-mailbox quotas, companies that want to separate email from the website.
• Advantages: no shared quota or shared risk with the site; spam and virus filtering tuned for mail; daily backups; webmail, IMAP/SMTP and mobile device support.
• Limits: shared calendars, contact lists and Outlook-specific collaboration features are not as complete as on Exchange.

3. Managed Microsoft Exchange

The Fiberserver Microsoft Exchange service is a business email solution you use like Office 365 or Google Workspace, except that the infrastructure runs at Fiberserver and all technical work is done by our team. Full Outlook compatibility, shared calendars and contacts, mobile synchronisation through ActiveSync, and meeting-room and resource calendars are its main strengths.

• Good for: teams that live in Outlook, businesses with heavy appointment and calendar sharing, organisations that do not want their data in foreign data centres.
• Advantages: setup, maintenance, updates and security are handled by us; existing email, calendars and contacts are migrated as part of the service; old and new systems run in parallel during the switch.
• Limits: cost per user is higher than the other two options; it may be more than a small team needs.

Comparison

Whichever you choose: deliverability settings

Whether your email lands in the inbox or the spam folder depends more on DNS records than on the platform. SPF, DKIM and DMARC all have to be correct; Gmail and Outlook.com have required them for bulk senders since 2024. See our article why SPF, DKIM and DMARC are mandatory for details and sample records. The sending IP must also stay off blacklists, bounced addresses must be cleaned, and newsletters should go out from a separate email marketing platform rather than from your business mailboxes.

How to migrate

1. List the existing mailboxes and their sizes.
2. Create the accounts with the same addresses on the new platform; for Exchange and business email packages we do this for you.
3. Move old email over IMAP or with a migration tool; with our migration service the old and new systems run in parallel, so no email is lost.
4. Update MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records; keep the old server running for another week.
5. Refresh the account settings on all devices and send a test email.

Tell us the size of your team and the software you use in a support ticket and we will work out the right option together; migrating your existing email is included in the service.