Is Email Backup Service Worth It?

Web-based email services (Yahoo, Gmail, Windows Live) seem to be the communication tools that make the world go round, but one of the main problems with these services is that they do not automatically create a local back-up of your emails. Using desktop email services is out of the question for us who have used Gmail with all of its great services, and any other web-based is by far superior. Desktop email services slow your computer down as well! So what are we to do?

Some people will opt not to have any backup what so ever. This is stupid (no offense). If you do anything of important over email you will want to have some sort of record of it. This Feb 28th Google accidentally deleted 40,000 accounts (which since then have been restored), and this probably sent 40,000 different people into a panic. Besides glitches in systems you can also worry about security breaches where you can no longer log into your account. Can you imagine losing all you business and personal emails? Not to mention all of your contacts, documents, calendars and everything other service you probably utilize via your email service account.

No worries though there are ways to back-up any web-based account within the service on your local machine. It requires work and research to be able to set it up, but it can be done. It does take a lot of set up though, so I have opted for other modes of email-back up.

What Else Can I do Besides Back-up Emails without the Complicated Steps

There are a plethora of choices of email services out there. There are even a lot of free email services. Now the question becomes do you want to backup all your data with a free email service or do one of the ones that charge.

The main risk of using a free back-up service is that the service no longer exists when you need the emails because your account failed. For personal use I do recommend the free services, but with business accounts it may be smart to consider a back-up service that charges.

If you do opt for a free service it is good to check if they do offer customer support, and to contact customer support. This way if anything does go wrong with your email service you know that the customer support system actually exists to help you. You know for certain that you can actually get into the back-up account if, for example, you lose your back-up account password.

Article by LookupExpert, premier email lookup service.

Featured image courtesy of Sean MacEntee