Email Service Providers

This week we are going to talk about email service providers for those concerned about privacy.

What’s up Fish Fans! My name is Marcus. You’re watching Marketing Madness, the Blue Fish vlog!

So recently a buddy of mine texted me and asked me what he could do to set up email outside of the normal Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail accounts. His concern was about privacy. And without getting into a big rant about privacy on the internet it is safe to say that if a product is free then you are the product. What that means is, if you are using an application like Facebook or Instagram and they are not charging you to use that application as a service, then someone is paying for access to information about you. As an agency that places a lot of ad spend on social media, it is amazing what the social media networks know about their users. But that is a video for another time. And Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail definitely use your information.

But how do they use your info? Some people think they actually sell their info to advertisers like Blue Fish. It isnt like that though. What they do is collect the information and then categorize you so that if an advertiser wants to get their ads in front of someone with your same interests you will see the ad. For instance, I like GMC Trucks. The tech companies are not selling a list of email addresses or physical addresses to dealerships. What they do is the dealership says they want to show their ads to people that have an interest in GMC trucks, and the tech company shows the ad to me because I have been categorized as someone that might be interested that product. I’m actually a fan of this type of advertising. I hate seeing ads for things I have no interest in. But it is kind of dangerous to my wallet to see ads that are specific to me and my interests.

So back to email, I am not aware of an email service provider that is free that does not use the information they garner from your activities so your only option is to pony up some money if you really want to disconnect. Step number one would be to register a domain name with a domain registrar. You don’t have to have a website to do this. The video last week explained that domains are really just traffic cops so if you want some more information, find that video on our website.

Once you register a domain name you would just need to send all of your email traffic to an email service provider. Sometimes domain registrars provide email services. So you could use Godaddy Email Essentials, Microsoft 365, Fastmail, or Rackspace to name a few. The other option is, if you have a website, many hosting plans have an email component. It just isnt as elegant as some of these other offerings.

I do want to weigh in with what we normally suggest for our clients. We are big fans of Google’s Gsuite product. It includes applications to write documents, create spreadsheets and presentations, and it has an online storage component that is nice when collaborating with a team. Plus the calendar functionality is really nice. For roughly $10 a month per user it is a steal for what it provides. But I can almost guarantee that Google is using information it gathers from users of Gsuite.

So there it is. If you are looking for a way to cut the chord, register a domain and choose the email service provider of choice and voila! You are good to go!

Well, that’s a wrap for this week! I want to thank you for checking in. Make sure to hit that like button. And if you have any questions or comments leave them down below. If you want to talk about how Blue Fish can help you grow your business just send us a message and we’ll get the conversation started!