Friends of Ministry can host an unlimited number of email accounts attached to your domain, such as minister@mychurch.org. We also can set forwarding orders so that email sent to your domain also arrives in your personal inbox.
Our prices for email hosting are set by (any part of) the calendar year:
• For each email address attached to your domain: $40/year
• For each forwarding order: $10/year
• For each change in email set-up: $10-$40 per request, depending on amount of support time required
• Email storage always has been unlimited and will remain so, at least through 2017, although in some cases stored emails consume several times the space required for website hosting.
• Email support (set-up on a new computer, virus removal, troubleshooting and custom solutions) will continue to be provided on an as-needed basis by a third-party team member who has his own rates and bills separately.
FAQ
I have free accounts at gmail and AOL and would rather use those than pay for email hosting. Can I do that?
Yes, you can, although there are reasons you may not want to do that.
- Anyone can register a free account at gmail, AOL, Yahoo or several other places on the internet, but only you can own accounts attached to your domain. Using an address that ends in your church’s website address (such as minister@mychurch.org) projects a level of professionalism and trustworthiness you may want to offer to people you communicate with about church business, concerns and activities.
- At the rates we have set, you may find that keeping your hosted email accounts at Friends of Ministry is your least expensive option for hosting of email attached to your domain. Here’s why: The time required to remove established email addresses, forwarding orders, inbox contents, and links to those addresses throughout your website is not insignificant. Then new settings and links must be entered to ensure that your web visitors can reach you at other email addresses. The likely result is that changing your set-up may be more expensive than leaving it the way it is.
- If you have ever published or used your domain-related email addresses, they are in your congregants’ lists of contacts and on likely on search pages (Google, AOL, Yahoo, etc.) all over the web. When your members and prospective visitors and donors try to reach you through links to domain-related addresses that no longer exist, they will not be able to get in touch without following up with a phone call or extra searches of their contact lists and your website.
Why is email hosting no longer free?
After 11 years of providing free email hosting and countless hours of free support, and after much thought, research and reflection, we concluded that we need to establish prices for this service because it consumes significant resources on our servers as well as many hours for set-up and support.
What if we want to add or delete email addresses or forwarding orders we already have set up?
Email addresses and forwarding orders may be added or deleted at any time. However, management of email accounts is no longer free. Typical costs for adding or removing accounts range from $10-$40 and may go higher, depending on your needs. (Setting up email to work with some special servers can take four hours or more.)
My email was working, but now I’m having problems getting it set up on my new computer. Can you help?
Contact us for a referral to our team member, who can assist you. He sets his own rates for support and bills separately.
