Email hosting vs web hosting: what’s the difference?

Web hosting serves your website: browsers find it through your domain’s A or AAAA record. Email hosting runs the mail servers that receive, store and send your domain’s mail: other mail servers find them through its MX record. The two share nothing but the domain and its DNS, so you never need web hosting to have email on your domain, and you can change either one without touching the other.

What does each one do?

Because each service follows its own records, they can point at different companies. That’s the whole trick behind keeping a site on one host and mail on another.

Do you need web hosting to have email on your domain?

No. Three setups are common:

• Site on a web host, mail on an email host. A records to one, MX records to the other.
• A domain with no website at all. Register it, point MX at an email host, create the mailboxes. Plenty of domains only ever send and receive mail.
• Both on one web hosting plan. One bill and one control panel, if the plan’s mailboxes do what you need.

Why do people think email comes with web hosting?

Because many web hosting plans include a few mailboxes, email can look like a feature of the website. It’s a separate service that the plan happens to bundle. If you rely on bundled mail, check four things on the plan’s own page: storage per mailbox, IMAP and SMTP access for your mail apps, DKIM signing, and how many domains it covers.

Should email and web hosting be with the same company?

Either works. One provider is simpler to pay and manage. Two providers keep the services independent: a problem with the website host doesn’t take your mail with it, and vice versa. If you run several domains, a mail host that keeps every domain in one inbox can matter more than which company hosts the sites (email hosting for multiple domains).

How do you move email off a web host?

1. Create the mailboxes at the new email host first, with the same addresses, so mail has somewhere to land the moment DNS changes.
2. Copy the old mail across over IMAP while the old host still receives (migration guide).
3. Lower the MX record’s TTL a day ahead, so the change spreads quickly, then point MX at the new host.
4. Publish the new host’s SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. Take the old host out of SPF only once it no longer sends for you. The free email checker shows what any domain publishes.
5. Keep the old mailboxes for a while to catch anything sent during the switch, then close them.

None of this touches the A record: the website never notices.

Where does SuperMailOS fit?

SuperMailOS is email hosting only. It runs the mail server for every domain you bring, with the website left wherever it is. Each domain’s records come from the mail server’s own zone and are checked live, in one click on Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Hetzner DNS and Spaceship, or pasted anywhere else. Mailboxes have IMAP and SMTP for any mail app, Pro costs $3–$4 a mailbox a month and Business $5–$6, and aliases like hello@ and support@ are free on every domain.

Sources

• RFC 5321: SMTP, including how senders find a domain’s mail servers through MX records.
• RFC 7208 (SPF), RFC 6376 (DKIM) and RFC 7489 (DMARC).

Questions