Email hosting using cPanel - Yay or Nay?

What are your thoughts on the email service within cPanel? I know the consensus is hosting your own email service is not worth the headache. And I agree. However, is the email services provided in a cPanel subscription any better? We lease a dedicated server and have cPanel email as an option. Just trying to determine if it is worth using this over something like gsuite or office365. We do not really need the other business offerings from gsuite or office365 as use Nextfloud for most of these services.

I personally use and love Google Workspace. I like using the ‘big name’ email providers because they do all the hard work of keeping things running smoothly. I’ve found that a lot of the smaller ISPs, webhosts, and similar types that have email server options just do the basics of getting the software functional and then just let it ride. If they have someone on staff that will properly maintain the server it might be worth using. I think the $6/month/user is a cheap price to pay for a service that offers so much in the way of maintenance and functionality.

Microsoft 365 offers similar functionality at similar (slightly higher) pricing. I guess it comes down to how much proper email is worth to you / your business. Any way you go, I advise testing it well before making it part of your daily workflow.

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@RobR Thanks for the feedback. The server is hosted and maintained by a reputable enterprise hosting service provider. With that, proper maintenance isn’t much of a concern. We have been using it for 2 years without any issues. However, as we grow we are evaluating whether this is the direction we want to continue or look at a separate third-party email hosting solution. Outside of the maintenance, are there other considerations that should be made? The monthly price is not a concern. It is more the fact that we would not use the other offerings in Office365 and gsuite as those are covered by our Nextcloud solution. My primary question is are there are any unrealized negatives with our current solution to warrant moving to a 3rd party provider?

Keeping off the spam list is much harder when using something other than Gsuite or Office365. This issue is compounded if the cPanel email is going out via a shared IP address. If one other client is sending spam then everyone on that IP get’s to be on the blocklist.

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If you don’t wanna use all the other features in G Workspace or M365, why don’t you just purchase an Exchange Online license?

I’d stay away from self hosted mail solutions if you plan to do things at scale.
1 day of interrupted service for > 100 customers can be catastrophic.

Yup, been there, done that, can be a big problem.

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I recently started using MXroute, they have strong rules on not sending spam and have a focus on ensuring there servers are not being used to send spam. They also have a cool dashboard if that matters.

I do a lot of email deliverability work for small businesses, making sure that their messages get to the inbox instead of the spam folder, and I have found that if you are not sending at least a couple hundred messages a day then it’s very difficult to build a good email reputation on a dedicated IP such as a VPS at your hosting company.

Hosting companies vary a LOT though so it’s hard to lump them all into one category. For example, even if the service uptime and/or support is good the difference between a dedicated vs a shared IP can be significant, especially if they don’t do a good job making sure all of their clients are following best practices (not spamming people) or if there is a breach. I transition a lot of clients to Google Workspace because it’s cheap and just works. Don’t forget to turn on the 2-factor authentication though and never share accounts else Google might shut them down because they think the account is compromised.

There are many other email service providers out there and you don’t have to use Google but when a new client comes to me with this problem one of the things I ask them is what they use for mail now (business and personal). Gmail is often the answer and change is hard (or training is expensive?) so I try and work with what they already know.

I like the cpanel email hosting, but it lacks a lot of features. Much prefer 365/exchange online.

Same here and glad those days are gone too.