Your company’s email system is far more critical than you think it is. You need a robust communication system to guarantee that work is sent out, contracts are delivered and that agreements are made. Fully reliable and working email systems are a vital part of any company’s lifespan. All you need to do is simply imagine the chaos that would ensue if your email system went down for a single day.
Many companies try to avoid upgrading their email systems because they feel that the current systems are too deeply embedded, in that they fear the consequences of taking it offline even for a day. These kinds of fears are irrational, especially when you weigh up the benefits of upgrading. If you’re experiencing any of the following warning signals from your server, you should probably get in touch with your IT consultants about upgrading.
Also read: 5 Reasons Why Your Email Marketing Campaign Isn’t Working
Running your own server is costly
“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!” seems to be the mantra of many IT professionals when it comes to deciding whether or not to upgrade. A long-perpetuated myth as regards this situation is that in-house email servers are far cheaper than outsourcing to an external provider, or a cloud service like Mimecast.
Although having an internal server gives you some control and flexibility and saves you on storage, the true costs are probably even higher than you think:
- Software upgrades
- Hardware upgrades
- Hiring additional staff to maintain and support the servers
- Maintaining and updating security software
- Added responsibilities and manpower to back up emails
- On-call maintenance
- Anti-virus subscriptions and security updates
These are just a handful of the costs behind running your own internal server. Most of them are ongoing costs, too: they’re not one-off expenses that you can get out of the way at the start.
Also read: 3 Ways to Secure Web Forms
Physical issues
Apart from the monetary costs of managing your own server, there are a lot of practical issues that act against overall efficiency:
- Downtime due to local infrastructure problems can occur when local resources are not available, or power outages, configuration errors and database corruption cause disruption.
- A complex in-house server will not be able to cope with your business growing, unless you spend more money on extra maintenance and management.
- Expanding your current system is, in addition to being expensive, also difficult because of the added need for higher maintenance and management.
- Deploying a new version of the existing system usually involves unpredictable issues with getting the new version off the ground: it’s quite difficult to plan.
In effect, sticking with your current system isn’t going to work out too well in the long run if you try to expand it alongside the growth of your company. In fact, it could lead to your company’s growth being stunted because of the onset of practical difficulties as well as the costs involved on top of that.
Also read: Setting up Outlook Custom Email: Best Free Alternative to Google Apps
It always pays off to invest in a new system that will reduce your overall costs and the strain of having to manage and maintain the system yourself. Popular solutions include outsourcing the server, or moving into cloud storage, now that Postini replacement is no longer an option. These are the alternatives you may want to investigate before committing to renewing your old system.
