How often have you sent an email and got no response and then, following up, find that the person you sent it to hasn’t received it?  Most of the time you get some kind of message telling you it hasn’t been received, but not always.

Why has your email failed to arrive?  Is there a big email cookie monster out there munching up your email?

The obvious one is that someone’s junk filter has decided it’s junk and dumped it.
Sometimes an attachment is the problem – we tend to forget that images and some other files are big and just expect the internet to port them over no problem.  However, email was intended for text only and usually has a default limit of 5MB so really big files may simply not be delivered.

If you want to send someone big files use something like Dropbox, Google Docs or a service like WeTransfer.

Now and again it’s down to the fact that professional email addresses are often attached to the web address and hosted in the same place.  If someone has changed their web hosting and didn’t tell the new company to set up email, incoming mail can disappear into a big black void!

If you don’t want your email to be dependent on your website hosting you can use something like Google Apps, which can make your Gmail account look like your chosen domain name (although there is a monthly fee for this).

If you want the belt and braces approach use Microsoft Exchange and sync your computer, laptop, tablet and smartphone so all your email is automatically replicated.  As junk filters work differently on different devices there’s a fighting chance that one version of incoming messages will be visible somewhere!

The benefit is that MS Exchange offers an onsite or in the Cloud option and doesn’t just sync your email.  It also lines up your calendar, contacts and tasks – very handy!