Why We Do Not Provide Email Hosting (And Why That Is Better for Your Business)

When prospective clients see that our managed Joomla hosting does not include email, the first reaction is often surprise. Email hosting is a standard feature of most web hosting packages. So why do we deliberately exclude it?

Because mixing email and web hosting on the same server is a practice that should have died a decade ago. Here is why separating them is better for your business.

The Single Point of Failure Problem

When your website and email share the same server, they share the same infrastructure, the same IP address, and the same fate. If the web server needs maintenance, your email goes down. If a traffic spike overwhelms the server, your email delivery slows. If a security incident compromises the server, both your website and your email are affected simultaneously.

For most businesses, email is the more critical service. You can survive a few hours of website downtime. You cannot survive missing client emails, losing order confirmations, or having your sent emails land in spam folders because your server IP was blacklisted due to a web hosting issue.

IP Reputation

Your server's IP address has a reputation score that affects email deliverability. If your web server shares an IP with other websites (as in most shared hosting), a single compromised neighbouring site can send spam that blacklists the entire IP — including your email.

Professional email platforms (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Zoho Mail) maintain dedicated email infrastructure with IP addresses specifically managed for email delivery. They invest billions in deliverability — maintaining sender reputation, implementing DMARC/DKIM/SPF authentication, fighting spam, and ensuring your emails reach their destination.

No web hosting provider can match this level of email infrastructure investment. It is not their core business.

What We Recommend Instead

Microsoft 365 — the standard choice for businesses that use Outlook and the Microsoft Office suite. Enterprise-grade email with 50GB+ mailboxes, advanced threat protection, 99.99% uptime SLA, and full integration with Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

Google Workspace — the choice for organisations that prefer Gmail, Google Drive, and Google's productivity tools. Equally robust email infrastructure with excellent spam filtering and mobile synchronisation.

Zoho Mail — a cost-effective alternative with strong privacy credentials (Zoho does not scan email content for advertising). Suitable for businesses that want professional email without the Microsoft or Google ecosystem.

All three platforms provide features that no web hosting email can match: advanced spam and phishing filtering, automatic encryption, mobile synchronisation, archiving and compliance tools, and dedicated infrastructure that is managed independently from your website.

We Handle the Configuration

As part of our managed hosting setup, we configure the DNS records that connect your domain to your chosen email platform — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records that authenticate your emails and maximise deliverability. You get professional email that works perfectly with your domain, running on infrastructure designed specifically for email, completely independent of your web hosting.

Your website can go down for maintenance without affecting your email. Your email provider can experience a brief outage without affecting your website. Two independent services, each running on infrastructure optimised for its specific purpose. That is how professional infrastructure should work.

Joomla 6: What Is New and Should You Upgrade from Joomla 5?

Joomla 6.0 launched on 14 October 2025, and version 6.1 is scheduled for April 2026. If you are running Joomla 5, you may be wondering whether it is time to upgrade to the latest major release. Here is what Joomla 6 brings, what it changes, and whether upgrading now is the right move.

Key New Features in Joomla 6

Automatic core updates. Perhaps the most practically significant addition. Joomla 6 (and 5.4) can apply minor version security patches automatically, without requiring an administrator to log in and click "update." For website security, this is a major step forward.

Framework 4. Joomla 6 is built on a modernised framework that benefits extension developers with cleaner APIs and better tooling. For website owners, this means better extensions over time — faster, more secure, better maintained.

Compatibility Plugin. Joomla 6 includes a backward-compatibility plugin that allows extensions built for Joomla 4 and 5 to continue functioning. This eases the transition by ensuring most extensions work from day one, even before their developers release native Joomla 6 updates. The plugin adds some performance overhead, which can be eliminated as extensions update to native support.

Improved accessibility. Continued improvements to screen reader support, keyboard navigation, and ARIA implementation throughout the frontend and backend. Important for meeting European Accessibility Act requirements.

Performance improvements. Further optimisations building on Joomla 5's performance gains. Faster database queries, more efficient asset loading, and better caching integration.

Should You Upgrade from Joomla 5?

Not urgently. Joomla 5.4 is the Long Term Support release and continues to receive security patches. There is no pressing security reason to upgrade immediately — unlike moving from Joomla 3 or 4, where end-of-life status creates genuine urgency.

Consider upgrading when: Your key extensions have released native Joomla 6 versions (so you can disable the Compatibility Plugin for better performance). You want automatic core updates. You want the latest features. You are comfortable with a slightly younger extension ecosystem.

Wait if: Critical extensions have not confirmed Joomla 6 support. Your site is complex and stability is the top priority. You prefer to let others discover any edge-case issues first.

The upgrade from Joomla 5.4 to Joomla 6 is a standard in-place upgrade through the Joomla Update component. It is the simplest major version upgrade Joomla has ever offered.

Need to go from Joomla 4 to 6? See our upgrade service →

European Accessibility Act: What Every Joomla Site Owner Must Know

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) has been enforceable since 28 June 2025. If your Joomla website offers goods or services to consumers in the EU, you are now legally required to meet accessibility standards. Non-compliance can result in penalties of up to €100,000 or 4% of annual revenue, depending on the member state.

This is not a future concern. Enforcement agencies across EU member states are actively processing complaints and issuing findings. France, Germany, and the Netherlands have been among the most proactive enforcers.

What the EAA Requires

The EAA mandates that products and services offered to EU consumers must be accessible to people with disabilities. For websites, this means conforming to the European standard EN 301 549, which incorporates the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA.

WCAG 2.1 Level AA includes 50 success criteria organised around four principles: content must be perceivable (visible and understandable), operable (navigable and interactive), understandable (readable and predictable), and robust (compatible with assistive technologies).

The Two Deadlines

28 June 2025 (passed): All newly published digital content must comply.

28 June 2030: All existing digital content must be fully compliant. Every page, every document, every form on your website — not just content published after 2025.

Who Must Comply

Any business offering products or services to EU consumers, unless you qualify as a micro-enterprise (fewer than 10 employees AND under €2 million annual turnover). The EAA applies regardless of where your business is physically located — if you serve EU customers, you must comply.

How This Affects Joomla Websites Specifically

The Good News

Joomla 5 and 6 have made significant accessibility improvements. The Cassiopeia default template meets many WCAG criteria out of the box. The backend administration interface has been redesigned with accessibility as a priority. Joomla's core output generates more semantic HTML than ever before.

The Challenge

Your website's accessibility depends on more than the Joomla core. It depends on your template — does it produce semantic HTML with proper heading structure, ARIA attributes, and focus management? It depends on your content — do images have meaningful alt text? Do links have descriptive text? It depends on your extensions — do forms have associated labels? Do sliders work with keyboard navigation?

A default Joomla 6 installation with Cassiopeia template and carefully written content can achieve strong WCAG compliance. A heavily customised site with a commercial template, multiple extensions, and years of content created without accessibility awareness will likely have significant remediation work ahead.

The Most Common Accessibility Issues on Joomla Sites

• Images without alt text — every meaningful image needs a text description
• Insufficient colour contrast — text must meet 4.5:1 contrast ratio against its background
• Keyboard navigation failures — users must be able to navigate and interact using only a keyboard
• Missing form labels — form fields must have programmatically associated labels
• Skipped heading levels — heading structure must be logical (H1 → H2 → H3, no gaps)
• Non-descriptive links — "click here" and "read more" links convey no meaning out of context
• Missing page language — the HTML lang attribute must be set correctly
• Inaccessible embedded content — maps, videos, social widgets, and chat tools often lack accessibility

What You Should Do Now

1. Assess your current status. Run an accessibility check against WCAG 2.1 AA criteria. Our free site audit includes an accessibility baseline assessment.
2. Fix the most impactful issues first. Alt text, colour contrast, keyboard navigation, and form labels cover the majority of user-facing accessibility barriers.
3. Publish an accessibility statement. The EAA requires a public statement describing your conformance status and providing a feedback mechanism.
4. Plan for 2030. Start reviewing and remediating existing content systematically. The deadline for all existing content is four years away — start now to spread the work.
5. Build accessibility into your workflow. Ensure new content meets accessibility standards from creation — retrofitting is always more expensive than doing it right the first time.

Combine Accessibility with Your Joomla Upgrade

If you are upgrading from Joomla 3 or 4, the migration is the ideal time to address accessibility. Building accessibility into the new template and content structure from the start is far more efficient than retrofitting an existing site. We integrate accessibility requirements into every upgrade project on request.

Learn about our EAA compliance service →

Get Your Free Accessibility Check →

Is Joomla Dead in 2026? Facts vs Myths

Search for "is Joomla dead" and you will find no shortage of opinions. WordPress advocates declare it irrelevant. Wix and Squarespace users wonder why it still exists. Even some long-time Joomla users question whether the platform has a future. Here are the facts.

The Facts

Joomla is actively developed. Joomla 6.0 was released on 14 October 2025. Version 6.0.4 shipped in March 2026. Joomla 6.1 is in release candidate stage with a stable release scheduled for April 2026. The development community is active, the release cycle is consistent, and new features are being added regularly.

Nearly a million websites run on Joomla. Approximately 930,000 live websites worldwide use Joomla as their content management system. It is the fifth most popular CMS globally. That is not the scale of WordPress (which powers over 40% of all websites), but it represents a massive, real-world installed base of organisations that depend on the platform.

Joomla's community won awards in 2025. Joomla was named Best Open Source CMS by the CMS Critic Awards and received over 75% of votes in the 20i FOSS Awards, demonstrating strong community support and engagement.

The Joomla 6 codebase is modern. Built on Framework 4, supporting PHP 8.2+, with automatic core updates, improved accessibility, and a modern REST API — Joomla 6 is a genuinely current platform that follows modern web development standards.

The Honest Assessment

Joomla's market share is declining. Joomla held 8.7% of the CMS market in 2013. Today it holds approximately 2.4%. It has been losing ground steadily to WordPress on the full-CMS side and to Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace on the hosted-platform side. This is a real trend, not FUD.

Fewer new websites are being built on Joomla. Most new website projects today default to WordPress, Shopify, or a hosted builder. Joomla is rarely the first choice for greenfield projects unless the specific requirements favour its strengths (complex access control, native multilingual, structured content types).

The extension ecosystem is smaller than WordPress. Joomla has approximately 5,000 extensions in its directory. WordPress has over 60,000 plugins. For common functionality, both platforms are well-served. For niche requirements, WordPress has more options.

So Is Joomla Dead?

No. Joomla is not dead. It is actively developed, actively maintained, and actively used by hundreds of thousands of websites worldwide.

But your version of Joomla might be dead. If your website runs on Joomla 3, that version is end of life — no security patches, no bug fixes, no future. If it runs on Joomla 4, same situation since October 2025. The platform is alive and well at version 6. Your installation needs to be there too.

Joomla is not going to overtake WordPress. It does not need to. For the specific use cases where Joomla excels — complex access control, native multilingual content, structured data management, enterprise-grade user permissions — it remains the better tool. And for the nearly million websites already running on it, the question is not "should I switch to WordPress?" but rather "how do I keep my Joomla site secure, modern, and effective?"

That is exactly the question we help European businesses answer every day.

What You Should Do

If your Joomla site is on a current, supported version (Joomla 5.4 or 6) — maintain it, keep it updated, and continue benefiting from one of the most capable open-source CMS platforms available.

If your Joomla site is on an end-of-life version — upgrade. Not because Joomla is dying, but because your version already has. See all upgrade paths →

If you are considering switching from Joomla to another platform — talk to us first. In many cases, upgrading to modern Joomla is faster, cheaper, and less disruptive than migrating to a different CMS entirely. In some cases, a platform change genuinely makes sense — and we will tell you honestly if that is the case for your situation.

Get a Free Assessment of Your Joomla Site →