Best Email Hosting Services 2024

Email has long been an important means of electronic communication, and it is likely to remain so for many years to come. However, while there are numerous free email services accessible to individuals and businesses, many of them lack specialized capabilities, such as central management, which is useful in an office.

Best email hosting services of 2024

• DreamHost: Best overall
• SiteGround: Best for resellers and service providers
• A2 Hosting: Best for security
• Zoho Mail: Best for flexibility
• Google Workspace: Best all-in-one platform

What is email hosting?

Email hosting is the technology that saves email messages, files, and other data on a remote server. Email hosting services also make it simple to set up and manage individual email accounts for your staff. All email activity, whether it’s from a personal email address like Gmail or a professional account, is housed in some fashion.

Which email hosting service is right for me?

The ideal email hosting solution for your organization is determined by your requirements. Factors to consider include your sector, existing information technology (IT) infrastructure, manpower, inbox and attachment capacity requirements, feature requirements, and more.

If you need to support a large number of people, you’ll generally want something that offers volume discounts. If your industry is disproportionately targeted by cybercriminals, you should look at security-focused companies.

Essential features

While there’s no universal checklist of essential email hosting service features, there are some basic factors to consider.

• Inbox size: Optimizing storage is critical for efficiently handling your emails while lowering IT expenditures. If your inbox is too small, you may frequently run out of room, making your email ineffective. If you choose an inbox size that is far greater than what is required, you will be paying for capacity that goes unused.
• Attachment size: Consider the size and frequency of file attachments in your emails. If your company routinely sends or receives large files, then you might need an email hosting service provider that enables oversized attachments (you will need to consider this when choosing the mailbox size you require).
• Security tools: are vital for protecting your emails and data. At a minimum, your email hosting solution should have end-to-end encryption, spam filtering, malware scanning, and integration with multifactor authentication services. Depending on the business you operate in, you may need additional tools to keep data secure and comply with standards.
• Calendar functionality: Email and calendar functionality can be critical for creating collaborative working environments. When evaluating your next email hosting service provider, make sure its calendar features fit your demands or interact with your workforce management platform.
• Mobile apps: Mobile devices account for nearly half of all email openings. Before you commit to an email hosting provider, be sure its mobile app provides the functionality you need and is compatible with the mobile platforms your employees use to get the job done.

Support and ease of use

Checking that a hosting provider provides important functions for your organization is relatively simple, but choosing a solution that feels good to employees and isn’t too complicated for your IT team can be difficult.

If the system is difficult for employees to adopt and master, or for your IT team to deploy and operate, inefficiencies will arise, reducing or eliminating the intended ROI.

Before you decide on a hosting platform, you should consider how it looks and feels in your environment. Read evaluations from trustworthy technology experts and watch online demos to discover how the platform works. You may also be able to take advantage of free trials before making a purchase.

Free versus paid-for services

Once you’ve identified your requirements and begun examining choices, you may wonder if you can get by with a free email hosting provider.

In some circumstances, you may be able to get by with the limited functionality, inbox capacity, and attachment size that come with free email hosting services while saving some money each year.

If your company is modest, you may easily upgrade to a premium plan as your needs and requirements evolve.

However, saving money on email hosting is not always the best long-term decision. Email is a low-cost IT service, and subscription solutions provide a plethora of productivity-enhancing features and handy integrations that may easily pay for itself. If you already pay for web hosting, you may be able to add email for a minimal additional fee.

Relying on free email hosting could expose your company to major cybersecurity concerns. After all, many cybersecurity incidents begin when an individual opens an email. Free email hosting services do not often have the additional safeguards available in subscription packages, which can keep your company from becoming the next victim of a cyberattack.

How much does email hosting cost?

The cost of your email hosting service will be determined by several factors, including the size of your business, the tier of service you are purchasing, the term and payment frequency of your plan, upcharges for add-on features and increased storage capacity, and the hosting environment (multi-tenant versus dedicated hosting).

To give you an idea of how much an email hosting service normally costs, consider three fictional organizations. Each organization has unique email hosting needs and preferences, and we’ll evaluate how much it will cost to use some of the most popular email hosting providers in 2024.

• Small businesses

Consider a tiny massage business in a large city with 25 employees. Most employees don’t spend much time using email, so the parlor doesn’t require a lot of bells and whistles – just an email hosting provider that provides a secure and dependable communication channel.

The parlor decides on the Zoho Mail Workplace plan. It includes 30GB of email storage and 5GB of inbox storage per user. At £2.40 per user, they just need to invest £60 each month to keep everyone connected.

• Medium businesses

Our hypothetical medium-sized company employs 100 people to provide marketing services in its local area. It requires a fast and dependable email hosting solution that provides adequate web space and bandwidth for its various websites, as well as advanced features like caching, backups, and priority support. It also requires bespoke domain and branding options to improve its professional image.

The medium-sized business chose SiteGround’s GoGeek package because they prefer the fixed cost for each website they host and the fact that each domain includes support for unlimited email accounts. This plan would cost £6.99 per month for the first year, and £34.99 per month thereafter.

• Larger businesses

A 500-person financial services company with many offices is our hypothetical huge corporation. Due of its scalable design, robust security, and compliance controls, they choose Google Workspace for email hosting. They also get productivity and collaboration tools to improve efficiency and communication.

For this large business, the Enterprise plan is best because it includes custom and secure business email, 1,000 participant video meetings with recording, attendance tracking, noise cancellation, in-domain live streaming, as much storage as needed, S/MIME encryption for emails, advanced security, management, and compliance controls, and premium support.

Depending on users and features, this plan costs differently. We estimate that 500 users would cost £24 per month with a yearly plan or £29 per month with a monthly plan if they each need 10GB of storage. With an annual plan, 500 users would cost £12,000 per month or £14,500 per month.

FAQs

• Do I need hosting for email?

You do not need to pay someone to host your email for you. You can host email on your own server. However, this implies that you must purchase, configure, and operate your own email server, as well as register your domain. Using an email hosting company may save businesses a lot of time, money, and hassle.

• What kind of security measures do email hosting services use?

Email hosting services, like web hosting sites, use multiple levels of security to ensure the integrity of your email messages.

These include end-to-end encryption, which obscures your data when it is sent or received; two-factor authentication (2FA) or multifactor authentication (MFA), which means that whoever accesses your email account must know certain information or have access to certain things, such as a mobile device or email address, to get into the account; and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption, which ensures that email communications remain secure even when the network, such as a public

• Does my email and web hosting provider need to be the same?

No. There is no reason why a company cannot host its website with one provider while hosting its email with another. Keep in mind that many web hosting companies offer consumers a free email domain.

• What features should you look for in an email hosting provider?

Spam protection for your emails is a must-have feature:

• Spam filters: the option to create and maintain an infinite number of email addresses for yourself and your staff
• Email forwarders: for when you’re gone from the office.
• Autoresponders: which may also be used when you are unable to answer your emails and can also be used to provide informational responses to any general email addresses that you set up.
• Webmail software: which allows you to send emails via a web browser.
• You also desire large mailbox sizes, preferably endless.

Are there free web hosting services available?

There are a few web hosting services that allow you to send and receive free emails, typically using webmail or POP clients and email or IMAP clients.

Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail are some examples of such services. While these sites are free and often provide adequate storage space for individuals or small organizations, they have a limited quantity of cloud storage space that medium or large businesses may require.

They typically have limited security measures in place, limited customer support choices, and no means to personalize your email address to represent yourself or your company.

• Are email hosting providers secure?

Like other providers, the finest email hosting services give multiple degrees of security. When evaluating these providers, look for security features such as two-factor authentication (2FA) or multifactor authentication (MFA), documentation demonstrating frequent security updates and patches, intrusion detection, user activity monitoring, data encryption, and privacy protection.

• Can I host my own email sever?

You can run your own email server. However, in many circumstances, it is not worth the effort, especially given the abundance of low-cost hosted email hosting providers accessible.

To host your own server, you must purchase, deploy, and maintain it in addition to managing your email platform, and you will experience disruptions if the server goes down.

• How do I change my email hosting provider?

Changing your email hosting service is possible, but it might be a hassle. You will need to sign up with the new provider and set up your domain name.

Next, create the email addresses you want in your new platform, forward emails from the old addresses to the new ones, and configure the email tool to work as expected.