Email is a business’s direct line to its customers.
89% of companies say they use email as their primary channel for gaining leads, and 72% of consumers say they prefer to use email as their main avenue of brand communication. Email is also a crucial part of running a successful business, offering an easy way to connect with colleagues, track information and shared files, and even supplement customer service.
For businesses keen to make an impact online, an email hosting provider is a crucial initial investment. The question is, which hosting provider should you choose?
There are plenty of providers ready to give you your own domain for email communication, access to shared calendars, and more. It can be difficult to determine which option is best at first glance.
That’s why we’ve compiled this list of some of the best providers in 2024. Below you’ll find extensive reviews on our top picks.
The first step in shopping for an email hosting provider is determining how you will host your email. The top options include:
It should be noted that an email hosting provider and an email client are not the same things. An email host allows you to receive and send email messages. An email client (or app) is what you would use to read and write your emails.
Before you start hunting for the best email hosting provider, you need to decide what kind of features you need the most. Generally, most email hosting options included with web hosting are pretty basic, and if you choose to host your email yourself, you’ll be able to build your own features (provided you have the developer knowledge). This means the biggest decisions are often made when searching for a third-party hosting provider.
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to choosing the best email service, but you can usually expect at least some of the following features:
Now we’ve looked at the types of email hosting providers you can choose, and you have a good idea of the kind of features you’ll want to look for, we can begin to examine some of the best hosting providers available in 2024. We’ve chosen these hosting solutions thanks to their wide selection of features, accessibility, and ease of use.
Better known as G-Suite, Google Workspace is one of the most popular productivity tools in the world. The platform is home to a range of tools intended to make businesses more efficient and productive, including cloud-based documents and spreadsheets, Google Meet for conversations, and even Gmail, for email communication.
Google Workspace offers a range of fantastic features for companies of all sizes, and it also has the benefit of being a familiar choice for a lot of users. Many people already use Google tools for organizing their daily lives. So, adapting to Google Workspace is a pretty straightforward process. Business email hosting with Google gives you secure, ad-free email management in a clean and effective environment.
You get your own domain so you can brand all your email messages, and there’s a host of robust integrations to explore too, such as Google Chat, or external applications. You can even access smart technology, like AI-powered smart reply and compose features, designed to help you stay on top of your workload.
Pricing starts at around $6 per user per month for the basic Business Starter plan, and there’s 24/7 support available to help you out whenever you have any issues with deliverability.
Similar to Google Workspace, Zoho Mail is a component of a wider digital ecosystem – the Zoho Workspace. This environment may not be quite as well-known as G-Suite, but it’s an excellent tool for smaller businesses. Designed for companies operating on a tight budget, Zoho comes with access to things like free mobile apps, pricing for as little as $1 per month, and a range of product options.
Zoho Mail is secure and simple, with a control panel that allows you to manage all of your configuration and customization requirements. You can track all of your communications in the same place and get a fantastic 99.9% uptime guarantee. Zoho also supports excellent security with powerful encryption.
Zoho Mail is a good choice if you’re a small business owner, or solo entrepreneur looking for a way to unlock great email features with minimal initial expense.
Pricing starts as small as just $1 per user per month if you just want email. If you want access to the full Zoho workspace, you can start with pricing at $3 per user per month. With email recall and archiving features, and access to a range of tools to bring your employees together, Zoho is an affordable and appealing choice for small businesses.
Unlike other email hosting providers offering a combination of email and productivity tools, Bluehost is a solution combining web hosting for your site, with email functionality. Bluehost is among the most popular website hosting providers in the world, and it has one of the best file attachment limits for email, too, at around 50MB per email.
Unlike most email hosting providers, Bluehost also offers the peace of mind that comes with world-class disaster recovery protection and security. Technical support is always on hand to help you if anything goes wrong. More expensive plans come with extra storage and capabilities.
If you’re already using Bluehost as your hosting provider for your website, it definitely makes sense to check out the functionality for your email too. The service is incredible, and you can enjoy some fantastic disaster recovery too.
Perfect for smaller companies with a limited budget, Bluehost is surprisingly affordable for both web and email hosting. You can get a mailbox and Exchange Online calendar with up to 15GB of storage for only $4.99 monthly. There’s also access to your own domain name for your email address and 24/7 technical support included.
HubSpot Email Hosting is a tool within its Marketing Hub software. Email hosting makes it easy for teams to manage contacts, nurture leads using insight from CRM data, and create highly personalized emails, all for free.
The platform is great for small teams as it offers several time-saving features. The drag-and-drop editor lets you quickly build professional-looking emails, while advanced data collection simplifies the personalization of each communication by audience segment.
Connected to the rest of HubSpot’s marketing software, the email hosting uses CRM data to segment, personalize, and track every single email campaign for a more effective email management strategy.
HubSpot email hosting is a good choice if your sales or marketing team wants email hosting for lead nurturing and customer relationship management.
HubSpot’s email hosting is part of HubSpot’s Marketing Hub toolset, which provides features like landing pages and social ads management. You can avail of those features for free and send 2000 free emails per month if you’re on a budget and have limited requirements.
For those who want to take full advantage of the features in HubSpot Marketing, the paid Starter tier is $45 a month, while at the high end, the Enterprise tier is offered at $3,200 a month. With the latter, you get many powerful marketing features like multi-touch revenue attribution or SEO tools.
Similarly to Bluehost, GoDaddy is a web hosting supplier with an email solution available for a small additional price. If you’re already running your website through GoDaddy, the email hosting solution has many benefits to offer, including high-level security and privacy protection, and an email address that matches your domain.
To compete with other leading email hosting providers, GoDaddy offers up to 50GB of storage per user, giving you enough room to store all of the content you need for your business. There’s also a wonderful search function, which makes it much easier to sort through your emails and find the information you need at speed. You can even buy a version of GoDaddy email hosting which comes with all your favorite Microsoft 365 apps.
GoDaddy comes with plenty of features to ensure it goes above and beyond the standard email hosting experience. However, those features will be limited to the more expensive plans.
Syncing is available to keep your inbox up-to-date wherever you go, and there’s the added benefit of knowing that you get a promise of 99.9% uptime from GoDaddy too. Prices start from as little as $1.99 per user per month, making this service quite an affordable option for smaller brands. You’ll need to commit to a three-year term to get the best savings, however. In case you also want to have access to Microsoft Office 365 as a part of the package, you will have to already shell out $7.99/user/mo.
Just as Google has G-Suite (Google Workspace) to offer the world of productivity and email management, Microsoft has Office 365. Office 365 combines everything you need to keep your business running smoothly, including things like Word, Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. You’ll also have access to Microsoft collaboration tools like Teams.
The Microsoft 365 hosting solution is “Exchange” or “Exchange Online.” The solution comes with things like email hosting and custom email domain addresses, a 20MB maximum file attachment size, 50GB of storage per user, and automatic syncing across devices. You can even access intelligent email suggestions and other unique features to make your team more productive.
If you get the full Microsoft package, you’ll also have access to online and desktop versions of Office applications like Excel, video conferencing, file sharing, and more.
You can access this feature as part of the Microsoft 365 experience, starting at around $12.50 per month, or you can purchase it as a standalone solution, which is ideal if you already have other productivity features to use. Exchange on its own is only $4 per month, but it’s definitely worth looking into the full package if you plan on using other Microsoft tools. Features include:
Ideal if you’re looking for email hosting and nothing else, Rackspace is an affordable email solution offering secured support for a range of business types. One of the biggest benefits of Rackspace is the approach it takes to customer service and support. Support is available 24/7 all throughout the year from Rackspace, and you even get access to easy migrations from older email hosts.
You can use Rackspace alongside Outlook and mobile applications, and it comes with things like premium spam and virus protection to protect you from potential problems. The more you’re willing to spend, the more you can access in terms of archived email storage, Active Sync for when you’re away from the computer, and even push email access.
Rackspace also offers a hosted version of Microsoft Exchange if you want to get the experience of running Exchange on your servers without the headaches of managing the technology yourself. Rackspace pricing starts quite low, at around $ 4.70 per month, and ranges up to $9.90 per month if you’re looking to add storage for archived email (all plans billed annually).
Another good thing to note about Rackspace is you don’t have to commit to a long-term contract to get involved. You can start with a fourteen free trial and cancel your subscription whenever you like once you join a paid plan.
Intermedia, a leading collaboration and cloud communications company, offers email hosting through a hosted Microsoft Exchange email server. Intermedia stands as the largest independent provider of hosted Microsoft Exchange functionality. Rather than just giving you a convenient email hosting solution, Intermedia offers packages full of useful tools.
Along with an unlimited mailbox storage solution on every plan, you also get leading email protection to defend against phishing and spam, an amazing back-end control panel, and active syncing for mobile. Intermedia’s solution also comes with access to video conferencing, email encryption, and a range of other tools too.
Intermedia’s Exchange email solution is ideal if you’re nervous about migrating your existing company email to somewhere new. The product uses Microsoft Exchange, so you can expect excellent core features like shared calendars and contacts, and you get some amazing security built-in too.
Unlike other email hosting solutions which often only offer high-level customer service for more expensive packages, every Intermedia email plan comes with 24/7 phone support and a free expert migration experience. Although pricing can be a little higher than some alternatives, starting at $7.49 per user per month, you do get a lot of functionality.
Ultimately, the best email hosting provider is the one you feel comfortable using for your business. The main options available on the market today often fall into one of two categories: email hosting offered as part of a productivity toolkit or hosting offered alongside web hosting services.
If you’re looking for a solution for email and you already have a website, then a solution like Microsoft 365 or G-Suite could give you access to extra productivity tools to boost business efficiency, along with your own email domain.
If you already have a contract with a website hosting organization, like GoDaddy or BlueHost, it’s worth checking out the email offers they have available. Being able to manage your website and email hosting in the same place is often a convenient option for most companies.