Internet Access for your company is much the same as Internet for your home. You can use cable, DSL or T1. Cable & DSL are fast and relatively cheap but are not as reliable as T1. Downs Consulting Services advises clients to have a backup service for the times when your main Internet service has a long interruption. Downs Consulting Services can assist you in getting your business on the Internet.
Let’s say that you have cable and it goes down for a few hours. At home this is not pleasant but you don’t have employees sitting around doing nothing. If you have an alternative service like DSL, you can temporarily switch over and continue business.
If you have T1 and voice over IP, then you will lose phones as well. Fortunately you have cell phones for outgoing calls so that’s a backup in itself. You can even setup MiFi (Wi-Fi wireless router) or AirCards to
Email is much the same whether it’s your home account or business. When your business depends on email, you need a good provider. Typically the host you use for your domain provides your email but you may be able to use another service if the host allows you to change your email settings (DNS).
Some providers like Rackspace provide hosted email. They will even help with migrating from another provider.
Typically there are two types of email – POP3 & IMAP
Downs Consulting Services can help you with an anti-SPAM and anti-Virus solution that matches your environment.
Want to do some with email marketing? We can help you get setup your projects and comply with anti-spam legislation.
IMAP – Internet Messaged Access Protocol
IMAP email is generally accessed from your browser (aka webmail) so it’s easy to get to as long as you are connected to the Internet. Basically you are accessing email directly from the host. This approach works best for people who use different machines to access email.
The best approach is to have an IMAP account you can access when away from your main computer and use POP on the desktop/laptop.
POP – Post Office Protocol
POP3 is what most people use to download to their Email client (e.g., Outlook, Outlook Express, and Windows Mail). POP3 email is downloaded to your PC and removed from the email host by default. Since it’s on your PC you can read the messages even if you lose your Internet connection.
It’s possible to save copies on the host server in advanced settings of your email client. The problem with this is that you may run out of space on the server and start rejecting new email.
Whenever you change machines or wipe out the existing machine, you need to save the data store of your POP3 email. Then you can copy this email to the new setup.