Reddit answers: should you host your e-mail account separately from your website?
The debate over whether to host your email separately from your website is common among website owners, often met with conflicting opinions.
To cut through the noise and explore practical insights, we dug in on Reddit discussions. Real-world examples, mistakes, and lessons learned from those who’ve faced outages, migrations, and access loss.
Why does this question spark so much discussion on Reddit?
This question ignites widespread conversation on Reddit because it pinpoints a recurring and frustrating issue. Emails are technically sent. They don’t bounce back or show obvious errors, but they often end up in spam folders or fail to reach recipients. This is especially problematic when email is hosted alongside a website, where deliverability can be compromised by factors beyond the user’s control.
The result? A familiar sentiment echoed across threads: everything looks configured correctly, no bulk emails are being sent, yet email still doesn’t work.
mterrats says
“Question, are your emails being bounced or just hitting the “spam” folder of the recipient? those are 2 different things.
If mails are not bounced, it’s a good sign, but if gmail/hotmail/your_fav_company marks them as spam then there are only a few things you cam do, first will be to make sure your domain has its SPF configured at least, if the problem persists they need to contact their email provider and ask for a solution (good luck!)
If emails bounce then its your provider’s fault, probably due bad reputation. Move your email to another company.”
[deleted account] says
“I set up all my clients with Microsoft 365 Basic accounts. It’s $5/mo. per user and you get a lot more than just email (1TB OneDrive per user, Teams, SharePoint, etc…).
I used to use email from my host, but even with good hosts, it’s a crapshoot.”
General Reddit reaction
The overall sentiment on Reddit is clear and pragmatic. Many participants view having everything in one place (domain registration, website hosting, email, and backups) as an unnecessary risk rather than a convenience. Email services bundled with hosting plans often raise skepticism, especially when reliability and deliverability are at stake. Overall, separating these services is seen not as added complexity, but as a fundamental strategy to reduce reliance on a single provider and mitigate the impact of inevitable failures.
redditor_rotidder says
“My personal rule is to separate these things, always:
- Registrar
- Webhosting
- Backups”
alento_group says
“ABSOLUTELY!!! ABSOLUTELY!!! ABSOLUTELY!!!
Let’s say that you use your domain email with your domain registrar and something goes tilt so that you miss a renewal payment … you will lose the domain because your ‘adminstrative contact’ email cannot be reached. This is just one of many examples …”
aMUSICsite says
“I guess it depends on your host. I would have no problem having my domain and hosting done on the same email through my hosts because they have great technical support, including phone. So if anything went bad I could phone them up, get them to sort things out and prove that I am the owner.
IMO your first line of defense in any 3rd party online service is to have great customer service.”
sfcspanky says
“Always keep it separate. What’s public in WHOIS becomes a greater target for attacks.”
alento_group says
“They both COULD help resolving your issues, but neither is the ultimate fix.
With option 1 (fixing something on shared hosting — editor’s note) you are still using a crappy horrible provider. No amount of correcting your DNS issues will resolve those issues.
With option 2 (separating web and email hosting — editor’s note) you have to mitigate the same issues on your own. Not ideal as the worst part of running a mail server stack is managing the IP reputation.
I am for option 3 — using a dedicated email service provider which is focused on email deliverability.
In the comments so far people have recommended Fastmail, Microsoft 365, Zoho, and MXroute.
Let me offer my thoughts on each and offer another.
Fastmail – good decent provider but on the more expensive side at $3 per user mailbox per month.
Microsoft 365 – M$ sucks because they tend to reject emails from most people that you want to receive them from — even emails sent from M$ accounts to M$ accounts. They are also pricey but at least you do get some perks as mentioned by another user.
Zoho – webmail only unless you pay for their premium service.
MXroute – a provider which specializes in email and only email with a focus on deliverability. It just works, and your email is just delivered, period. If you are a single user or two they may not be the best choice as they are geared more towards larger volume users with higher storage requirements. That said, if you need that amount of resources, their prices cannot be beat. Unfortunately, their customer support can at times be spotty. Most users set it up and forget it so there would generally not be a reason to seek support.
And lastly I can recommend anydomain.email. They are a reseller of MXroute actually with smaller packages available. Perfect for 1 or 2 email user accounts.”
pridetechdesign disagrees
“That’s really not the case.
People have that idea because so many hosting providers offer very unreliable service. As long as you receive your services from a good provider you’ll be fine.
The fact is, Website hosting and E-mail hosting are very similar. A person or group who is good at one is capable of being competent at the other.”
Kaisuke says
“Well I recently left the hosting industry and an email account setup and used in your first example is email all ran under the same host. Meaning any and all email passed by the Web host server is all subjected to the same rules. Signing up for a specific email plan usually means that there is better support and rules set in place to ensure your emails are delivered with an acceptable spam score and not throttled by cpanel.
Generally speaking the first choice (web + email — editor’s note) is not a good plausible business solution for email whereas the second would be (ensuring it has exchange support).
You might want to look into the differences between IMAP vs exchange and go with what works best for your use case.”
all2humanuk says
“The answer might be in a more detailed look at those services. You said you had researched one well known company but don’t mention who they are but lets imagine they are setup like this: web hosting package comes with cpanel like they mentioned so you have a basic pop3 and smtp server, maybe IMAP, and you admin the accounts. The standalone email package on the other hand is Office 365 so you have additional services like Exchange Activesync and a well polished Outlook web interface. Plus it’s a much more reliable and robust system, with decent support and backup.”
AwardSpace says
“Hi there!
Generally speaking, there are two major factors that can impact your messages’ delivery success:
- The IP of the mail server.
- The email-specific DNS records that you have set up.
The situation with the first point is quite obvious – if the IP address that your mail server is using is associated with SPAM, you will face mail delivery issues no matter how many fixes you try.
The second factor is a bit more tricky – here, your IP has an OK reputation, however, your domain’s DNS is not set up in a way that proves your authenticity. So, mail providers may think that your messages might have been tampered with and they send them to the recipient’s SPAM folder as a precaution.
So, what’s the best course of action?
Since you are already paying for the mail service at GoDaddy, it might be worth checking your domain’s DNS records and fixing them if any issues are found. A good start would be to ensure that:
- your MX records are set up according to GoDaddy’s specifications
- your domain has a valid SPF record
- your domain has a valid DKIM record
There are other records that can improve your mail sending reputation, but these are the essentials.
If your domain has the above records and you are still experiencing issues, then it is likely that the IP that GoDaddy provides has a poor reputation. In such cases, a change in your mail provider (or at least a change of the IP address) is recommended.
We hope this helps!”
Ultimately, Reddit doesn’t advocate for a strict “always separate everything” rule. The consensus is more practical: the more critical email is to a business, the riskier it becomes to host it alongside the website on shared infrastructure. Separation isn’t viewed as overengineering; instead, it’s a means to mitigate risk, maintain control over communication, and avoid the fallout from others’ mistakes.
Here, at SpaceLama, we don’t lecture you on how to run your business. We understand that you might prefer to separate your website hosting from your email hosting, and that’s totally fine with us. Whatever your hosting and domain needs are, SpaceLama is here to support you every. single. time.
With SpaceLama’s 24/7 dedicated hosting support, you can rest easy knowing we’re always here to assist you, no matter the hour. Our reliable hosting solutions ensure that your website stays up and running smoothly, so you can focus on what truly matters – growing your business.