Email is still a strong force of communication, and according to Statista, it will remain trendy for a while ahead. There were 4 billion email users worldwide in 2020, and approximately 306 billion emails were sent and received daily. The number of users is forecasted to grow further, up to 4.6 billion in 2022.

Top email hosting companies guarantee a secure, spam-free, lightning-fast email experience. You might be a small business owner or a freelancer looking for domain email hosting. Furthermore, you can be a job applicant who needs a good representation. Regardless of the case, email hosting services can grant you what you are looking for; well, that’s until you choose the right provider.

Selecting the best email hosting might be challenging since thousands of competitors are on the market. Fortunately, our experts have done the job for you. They have performed an in-depth market analysis to provide unbiased recommendations for the top-performing email host providers.

For more insigts about Email hosting costs you should check out our Email hosting pricing page.

In this article, you can find the two main categories of specialized email services, along with their advantages and drawbacks, and more:

• Best web hosts that offer email hosting packages
• Best email hosting providers who specialize in email and office productivity

If you are in a hurry, here’s a list of our top email hosting providers following a fair evaluation based on essential factors for email hosting.

Top Web Hosting Providers Offering Email Hosting

1. HostArmada – Best Worldwide Email Hosting Provider
2. IONOS – Best Email Hosting for Security
3. FastComet – Best Cheap Email Hosting Provider
4. Hostinger – Best Email Hosting for Ease of Use
5. HostGator – Best Email Hosting for Scalability
6. Ultahost – Best SSD & NVMe Email Hosting Provider
7. A2 Hosting – Best Overall Email Hosting Provider

Sure, you can always go for the traditional email-focused hosting providers like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Email-only centered plans often provide additional storage space and added software for contacts, calendars, and chatting. However, they frequently turn out costly for regular companies and especially startups. In addition, they fail to deliver a custom domain name for your website.

In turn, selecting one of the best web hosting companies offering email in their bundled offers will prove more worthwhile. The most obvious advantage would be sheer simplicity in setting up and operating your web hosting and mail account from a single place or one account interface. In addition, you’ll have to pay one bill and communicate with one group of support agents. They can drastically reduce your time, effort, and headaches regarding email inbox configurations by helping you connect your custom domain names, SMTP server, MX record, and webmail clients.

Best 7 Email-Focused Hosting Providers

Still, you might prefer traditional email hosting and delivery platforms, especially if you are a medium or a large enterprise with significant storage needs. The following picks might also work for you if you opt for many inboxes and extra productivity and collaboration features, including analytics, automation, marketing, and social media integrations.

1. Google Workspace – Best for Keeping Everything on the Cloud

Workspace combines a corporate-level Gmail management console with Google Docs, Meet, Calendars, Drive, and several other features. Workspace pricing is much easier to grasp than Office 365 pricing. Gmail offers three straightforward pricing options: $6 monthly, $12 monthly, or $18 monthly per subscriber, depending on the enterprise management services you want. You can also contact sales for an enterprise pricing deal.

Unfortunately, with the move of G Suite to Workspace, the non-enterprise subscriptions lost their unlimited storage. Although G Suite was appealing by itself, the limitless storage made it an absolute must-have. Workspace’s attractiveness has been diminished by the removal of that functionality, but it still performs admirably in terms of mail handling.

Your Domain Name: Yes

Mailbox Size and Cloud Storage: 30GB, 2TB and 5TB

Sending Size Limits: Up to 10,000 messages per day (2,000 per single account), 1,500 for multi-send

Attachment Size Limit: Up to 500 attachments per single email / 25MB

Spam and Virus Protection: Yes

24/7 Support: Chat, ticket, or phone

Archiving and Storage: Depending on the plan

Price: Starting at $6 per month

2. Microsoft 365 – Best for Multiple Microsoft Apps

Office 365 is evolving into Microsoft 365. But not totally. Home customers will continue to receive Office 365. This is a fantastic tool, but Microsoft seems to go out of its effort to create confusion with its branding alterations. It’s almost as if it’s a pastime.

Microsoft 365 includes all of the Office desktop programs, every one of the Office online applications, Microsoft Teams, all of the Exchange advantages, calendaring, phone applications, and more. That being said, there is no way to go wrong using Office, er, Microsoft 365. And if you’re a fan of Microsoft’s Outlook email software, you’ll be perfectly comfortable with Microsoft 365.

Your Domain Name: Yes

Mailbox Size and Cloud Storage: 50GB and up

Sending Size Limits: Up to 30 messages per minute, 10,000 recipients per day

Attachment Size Limit: 50MB

Spam and Virus Protection: Yes

24/7 Support: Chat, ticket, or phone

Archiving and Storage: Depending on the plan

Price: Starting at $6 per month

3. Rackspace – Cheap Professional Email

Rackspace is a pioneer in the cloud infrastructure industry. Today, the firm provides a variety of infrastructure-as-a-service alternatives, such as complete Exchange hosting, Microsoft 365 administration, and classic email hosting.

The firm provides aid with migration from other hosts, a huge team of MCSA-certified professionals, and the capacity to handle an existing Microsoft Enterprise operating Agreement.

Your Domain Name: Yes

Mailbox Size and Cloud Storage: Unlimited

Sending Size Limits: 10,000 total recipients per 24-hour period

Attachment Size Limit: 50MB

Spam and Virus Protection: Yes

24/7 Support: Chat, ticket, or phone

Archiving and Storage: Added fee

Price: Starting at $2.99 per month

4. Zoho – Best Free Email Hosting

Zoho is another company that offers a wide range of services. Instead of web hosting, Zoho provides a large selection of cloud-based software. It’s similar to G Suite on spades. This is critical when considering the notion of tightly integrating email with CRM. Zoho also has an excellent CRM tool.

The email interface is robust, and it includes extensive management options as well as a nice little Slack-like program called Streams that allows you to speak when outside of your email box.

Your Domain Name: Yes

Mailbox Size and Cloud Storage: 5GB or 50GB

Sending Size Limits: Depends on the subscribed CRM Edition, up to 2,000 mass emails per day

Attachment Size Limit: The attachment limit per record is 100 MB

Spam and Virus Protection: Yes

24/7 Support: Email and ticket

Archiving and Storage: Added fee

Price: Starting at 0.90 euros per month

5. Amazon WorkMail – Best Email Hosting for Small Business

So, to be clear. You’re looking at AWS-hosted email. That’s very much the best model of cloud infrastructures, competing exclusively with Google & Microsoft Azure. WorkMail interfaces with all other AWS services because it is an AWS-based service, allowing you to construct a rather comprehensive cloud-based, bespoke architecture.

If you’re a local firm looking to put up just a few email accounts, I wouldn’t recommend WorkMail. It can be difficult to wrap your head around AWS. WorkMail, on the other hand, is a practical and established choice for building up a cloud-based enterprise infrastructure that requires a lot of customization, safety, and Active Directory connectivity.

Your Domain Name: Yes

Mailbox Size and Cloud Storage: 50GB

Sending Size Limits: 10,000 recipients external to the organization; no hard quota on recipients internal to the organization

Attachment Size Limit: 50MB

Spam and Virus Protection: Yes

24/7 Support: Chat, ticket, or phone

Archiving and Storage: Added fee

Price: Starting at $4.00 per user per month

Ranking comparison between the Top Providers

At HostAdvice, we focus on independent and category-specific rankings. All of our recommendations are based on real humans and expert opinions. We also give significant weight to user reviews from around the globe.

How do we do it? First, we develop the ranking criteria. What’s relevant for one category might be entirely useless for another. So, our testing efforts always aim to use the services how they are supposed to be used and test them accordingly.

At this point, we also assign a weight to each criterion expressed in percentage. The percentages help us calculate a single weighted score, reflecting the overall quality of the web host. A higher percentage indicates that the specific factor is more important for the category than the rest.

Then, our professionals purchase the plans as regular customers. Our in-house team performs various tests, including speed, uptime, security, and support. Is the provider transparent in their offer? Is the functionality of the service up to the promised standard? If our team can spot any leaks and red flags, we only have to report them to our faithful customers.

Different web hosting email providers allow for various features. It all depends on your business needs or personal preferences. For instance, you might be looking for the best cheap email hosting, while another user might prefer a more expensive solution with superior qualities. Also, the market offers free hosting with email. In other words, the pool of opportunities is truly endless.

Regardless of your choice, a quality email hosting service should satisfy the following criteria at a minimum, if not more:

• Excellent Server Performance (9%): Timely communications are vital for business success, as most of your customers will sit and wait for email delivery. So, you cannot afford unreliable email server hosting. Instead, look for email hosting with a minimum of 99.95% guaranteed uptime (up to 100%). Also, consider the web host’s speed, number, and positioning of servers worldwide, speed-enhancing tools, caching technologies, CDN, and more.
• Superior Protection For Your Sensitive Data (10%): Today’s emails are subject to fraud, phishing, malware, and cyberattacks. As time goes by, the thread on email is solely increasing. As a business, you can harm your organization by opening these messages. Worse yet, you can unknowingly further spread them to your customers. Even the best free email hosting services often become subjects of cyberattacks. So, you must do your best to protect your business and customers. Here, it would be best to consider the web host’s security practices, including firewalls, email scanning, and filtering tools that detect spam, phishing, and malware; they prevent them from arriving in your inbox and stop infected emails from being unwittingly sent. In addition, review data loss prevention capabilities, backups, a network of globally redundant servers, 24/7 server monitoring, and effective disaster recovery techniques.
• Sufficient Number of Email Addresses (5%): Even if you are a freelancer or a job applicant looking for the best personal email hosting, you still might need multiple email addresses. And not to mention well-established brands or giant companies. It’s a necessity. For instance, you might need an email address for each department separately (sales@, info@, or newsletter@) or for each employee. It allows for better organization and monitoring. Domain and email hosting providers usually offer various options, from a single email address to unlimited addresses.
• Adequate Archiving and Storage (10%): Emails usually carry essential data and attachments you might need for compliance or future reference. That’s why archiving and storage are important qualities you need to consider when hosting email. There’s nothing worse than a cluttered mailbox. So, it would help if you went for email hosting that allows you to separate current conversations from important emails. Also, opt for an email hosting provider that allows for scalability. You should be able to extend your storage without migrating to another email hosting service. Cheap professional email providers might also advertise unlimited bandwidth and storage. Here, it’s essential to read the fine print because companies usually find a way to charge you indirectly. Is there an added fee?

• Ease of Use and Management (5%): High-quality business email hosting always comes with straightforward use and control of your email settings. You should be able to carry out tasks, such as adding or deleting email addresses or configuring your account settings quickly and efficiently. Here, it would be best to look for user-friendly control panels, such as cPanel or Plesk. They allow you to manage your email and run your website from the same interface. Better yet, they offer a suite of tools to improve the email service.
• The Hosting Essentials (8%): Sure, you are looking for the best email hosting for small business. However, it would help if you never oversaw the importance of a free domain name, free and easy site migration, free SSL certificates, beginner-friendly control panel with Softaculous and 1-click installs, easy website builder, auto-installs, and setup of popular CMSs, such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, and more.
• Special Email Tools (8%): Your web hosting and email service should come packed with special features, such as email hosting software alternatives (POP3, IMAP, SMTP, Contact Form 7, phpList, Dada Mail, Pommo, Horde, SquirrelMail, RoundCube), email forwarders, auto-responders, email delivery route, email authentication, MX Entry, mailing list, email filtering, global email filters, global level filtering, email routing, email disk usage, and so on. At this point, it would be best to also consider sending size and attachment size limits.
• More Than One Email Access Point (3%): Email hosting services should provide flexibility and compatibility with all devices and syncing with web and mobile apps. You need to be able to access your email in the office or on the go. You will probably need the option to collaborate using global address lists, tasks, and shared calendars, regardless of your team size.
• Customer Support (7%): Apart from simplicity, it would help if you also considered technical customer support. It would be best to choose a team available 24/7 via live chat, phone, and email.
• User Reviews (30%): The global customer base is your main indicator of the email hosting service’s quality. Check online forums and reputable sites, and consult your acquaintances or business partners. You don’t want to spend a fortune or, worse yet, entrust a low-quality provider with your sensitive data.
• Pricing (5%): Finally, it would be best if you considered the price of the email hosting providers. If you are a small business, you most probably have a budget. But unfortunately, the cheapest email provider won’t always ‘cut it.’ Instead, it would be better to look for the best value for your money and always go for transparent pricing with no hidden fees.

Using these criteria, we selected the following hosted email providers. Read on to learn more about each option.

What Is Email Hosting, and Who Is It For?

Email hosting is a specialized service that enables you to set up a unique email account that matches your domain and use it to send and receive emails. For instance, your email address would be ‘yourname@yourwebsite.com,’ or something similar if your website is ‘yourwebsite.com.’

An email address that matches your domain can enhance your professionalism, help you build trust in your clients and future employees, and provide much-needed credibility in today’s competitive business environment. The best email hosting services can also grant you more control over your service. At last, you also get direct access to the support staff, so they get to resolve any technical issues you are facing.

Email hosting is a necessary service for any online business. It doesn’t matter if you are to get all your online services bundled from a single provider or if you prefer getting email services separately from your web host. If you want others to take you seriously, you must have a professional email address.

How You’ll Host Your Email?

The first choice you must make when looking for the best email hosting is deciding how to host your email. You have three primary choices, each of which has advantages and drawbacks. So, it all leads to your business needs, preferences, and budget. Let’s dive into more details.

Shared Web and Email Hosting (Bundled)

Your first option is to go for a bundled email and website hosting offer. Packaged email hosting refers to those email services included with your web host account for free.

Bundled offers can prove quite useful depending on your demands because you won’t have to maintain your emails on a different account or pay the extra money for email hosting. In addition, combining your domain name with your online communications will indeed help you build brand recognition. By sending/receiving emails from a custom domain name, you’ll demonstrate high sophistication levels and build confidence and trust in the market by showing your attention to detail. More importantly, you’ll be able to configure many webmail clients and mobile apps on a budget.

However, the space available for the bundled email hosting is frequently restricted by the total capacity of your website hosting account. Most packages provide a single quantity of storage capacity that is shared by your web hosting and email. In addition to space, you are dividing the network bandwidth assigned to your account with other users on the same server. To overcome these limitations, it would be best to choose a reputable web hosting provider granting you sufficient resources for operation.

Pros:

Cons:

Self-Hosting On A Dedicated Server

Instead of using a third-party service, you may host your email on your own servers. Dedicated email hosting may be the answer if you want email hosting for additional accounts or want better email-related functionality. It doesn’t necessarily imply that you require a complete mail server for your personal usage, but it does imply that the account is only dedicated to handling email.

You will be given a fixed amount of storage and bandwidth for your account, which is independent of your web hosting. Some dedicated email hosts additionally provide sophisticated services such as additional security, automatic smartphone syncing, and so on.

But while self-hosting gives you greater flexibility and customization, it also has drawbacks. The disadvantage is that it’s far from the cheapest email provider; you’d have to pay more for email when opposed to a bundled service.

Pros:

Cons:

Third-Party Email Hosting (SaaS)

Top email hosting companies options like G Suite and Microsoft 365 Business are available from service suppliers such as Google and Microsoft. Those are all dedicated email services that are simple to use and powerful, but they must be handled independently of your hosting, even though they can utilize your custom domain name.

You can avoid the fees of self-hosting by using a third-party email host. Furthermore, a membership to a hosted email service provider frequently includes additional tools for running your business, such as calendars and shared contacts, constructed video conferencing, group chat, and more.

Pros:

Cons:

What Are the Key Features in Web Hosting with Email?

When you mix your email and web host, there isn’t much to look for in terms of services; you receive whatever your web provider has to offer. And so, when you self-host, you create your own features; the alternatives for tools to manage and modify your email are more limited.

When it comes to third-party email hosting services, true decision-making occurs. There are several characteristics to explore and analyze, and what is crucial differs per business.

Rather than examining every conceivable functionality of email hosting services, I focused on those that are relevant to the majority of company types:

• Unique Domains
• Support Available 24 Hours A Day, Seven Days A Week – You shouldn’t need to employ a systems administrator solely to manage your email if you do not even already have one on staff. I  chose products that provide round-the-clock assistance, so there’s always somebody to assist you once you have questions or problems (or when they don’t).
• Detection of Spam, Malware, and Phishing – You can route all emails through a third-party program to obtain capabilities such as spam and virus filtering, but most organizations are better off utilizing a server that includes those functions.
• Cloud Storage and Email – If your workers use email to make critical business decisions or contact clients/customers, they will want enough storage space for preserving old emails. I looked into how much storage a firm provided, especially for email, and how much basic cloud storage they provide.
• Sending Size Restrictions - You don’t want to continuously hit attachment size limits when you need to distribute files. I assessed the maximum attachment size permitted by various providers, as well as how simple it was to attach files utilizing cloud storage linked to the account.

Which Email Hosting Provider Is Best for You?

When administering email for a full team or organization, email isn’t the straightforward service you’re used to; the instruments you use for your business demand a little more thinking and attention. It can, however, remain a set-it-and-forget-it service.

Once you decide, you’ll just need a few hours using today’s best business email providers to connect your domain to your email service, establish new employee profiles, and import their old data. Your service will handle the rest, ensuring that your workforce always has access to their emails, connections, and calendar appointments.

Why and When Do You Need A Professional Address?

Our email account is our online persona via which we communicate. An email account is required for all purposes, whether private, educational, or professional. To minimize the confusion, it is necessary to establish a separate email account for each function.

A professional email account, often known as a branded email address, is primarily used to manage business-related correspondence. It allows your coworkers, colleagues, or customers to contact you formally, but still, an email address will only become professional if it contains your domain. When the email is sent from your domain, it clears up any uncertainty and shows that you’re conducting serious business.

Aside from being a tool for demonstrating professionalism, a professional email address built on a domain is quite strong. Establishing a solid foundation of credibility is one of the first obstacles that a new business owner encounters. Potential clients must perceive you as a legitimate firm.

What factors influence people’s perceptions of a company’s legitimacy?

In many respects, your domain name is the public face of your company. It comprises the name of your firm, how people discover you on the Internet, and one further place it may help you each day: at the bottom of your company email address.

Here are the key benefits of having a professional email address:

• It Exudes Professionalism – Unlike many other business decisions, deciding between a corporate domain email and a personal mail is simple. If you really want your organization to appear professional, you must use an advanced business email address.
• Differ from The Competition – Customers can easily seek up your company and website for further information if you use a professional email account that includes your domain name. This also helps reassure them that you are a respectable and established firm, which fosters trust. It is also an excellent marketing tool.
• Accessibility – Business owners regularly check their email from various devices. They must communicate with clients regardless of wherever they are, so having access to new emails on their smartphones is vital. A desktop program may be used to manage email lists and other clerical duties.
• Security – Business emails frequently include sensitive information. Customers want you to keep their information safe, which is difficult to guarantee if you utilize a free email provider. Free email service providers often have a large user base, making them an appealing target for hackers.
• Scalability – If you started your company as a solopreneur and have since then expanded to a team of ten, employing bespoke email addresses depending on your domain name seems to be the only practical approach to handle this expansion. However, adding more employees or departments would be difficult if you use free email addresses.

Free Email Hosting Services – For Whom Can It Be Suited?

A free email account (also known as an email web host) may be readily set up with an email hosting service provider. The disadvantage is that you will receive advertisements in your email account, and the provider will most likely collect information from you.

Pros and Cons of Free Email Services

Advantages:

• Your email account is accessible from any device: Because you may view your account from any desktop, these services are beneficial if you cannot be near your PC or are relocating and do not have an ISP. Even if you can reach your ISP-based email address remotely, having a free email account is perfect if you are using a shared computer or a shared wifi hot spot and are worried about disclosing the data of your primary account.
• You may gain additional benefits: Since there are so many of these providers vying for subscribers, they have added features such as vast quantities of space, spam detection, antivirus software, and better fonts and visuals.
• You can gain access to more services: In order to entice clients, service providers are increasing, including additional software or capabilities with their free email accounts.

Disadvantages:

• Your confidentiality and security may be jeopardized: If you send your username, password, or communications in simple text, they can be readily intercepted. You should utilize SSL encryption if your service provider supports it. Look for a “protected mode” or replace the “HTTP:” in the Address with “HTTPS:” to see if this is accessible.
• You might face privacy concerns: Although you are not spending on your email address, the service provider must find a means to recoup its costs. Selling advertising space is one way to generate cash, but selling or trading information is another. Examine the service company’s privacy statement or terms and conditions of service to discover if your name, email address, address book email addresses, or any other data in your profile may be shared with other organizations. Talk to your boss first if you’re thinking of transferring your corporate email to a personal email account. You don’t want to break any existing security policies.
• Your service might not be dependable: While you may be able to log in from any device, you must ensure that the account will be accessible when you need it. Comply yourself with the terms of service of the service provider, so you know precisely what they have pledged to give you. Can you, for example, access your communications if the service is discontinued or your account is deleted? Does your service provider easily download communications that you need to save on your machine? Also, if you are in a different city than the provider, their server maintenance may interfere with your typical email routine.

• You are far more limited than with a paid service: You have fewer options than when you’ve subscribed for email. The number of emails and files you may send and receive may be restricted. You may have a restricted amount of storage space. Large attachments may be inaccessible through email. You do not have control over your email address or data.

Cost:

• It is free.

Who is it meant for?

It may be enticing to use a free email hosting provider with a basic email account, such as mybusiness@gmail.com, if you run a small business; however, this does not appear professional, and a Gmail email address doesn’t really look like a respectable business email address. It also shows potential business partners and customers that you do not have a competent IT infrastructure for your firm.

Best Email Hosting: Final Recommendations

We hope you get the idea. Email hosting can do so much for you. However, it’s up to you to choose a quality provider. Whether you are looking for the best email hosting for small business or personal email hosting, you can rest assured. HostAdvice experts have put together a list of the best-of-the-best on the market. So, no matter which provider you choose from the list, you can expect a smooth experience.

Even if you don’t have any experience or expertise in this regard, you sure know your business. So, match your needs with our suggested email hosting providers’ offers, and you will be good to go!