7 Best Email Hosting Providers for Your Business in 2023

What is the difference between free and paid email hosting?

Paid email hosting offers you many features and advantages over free plans. Let’s understand both in detail:

Free email hosting

Free email hosting allows you to manage email accounts through webmail (POP) and email client (IMAP). Some free email hosting providers are Google’s Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft’s Hotmail, etc.

Pros and Cons

✅ Have adequate file storage for small businesses and individuals.

✅ No need to commit or sign a contract.

❌ Weaker security measures.

❌ As an email address without a domain name doesn’t create professionalism, the recipient might doubt your identity or authenticity.

❌ Less cloud storage for big businesses.

❌ It might show you irritating banners or advertisements.

Having paid or professional email hosting can offer many benefits over free plans. Let’s discuss the features of paid email hosting services.

Paid email hosting

If your business has a huge audience size or storage requirements, it is recommended to go for a paid email hosting provider. Such a plan will fit the need of your growing business and offer you many advantages over free hosting:

✅ A personalized professional-looking domain name like [email protected]. Such email addresses help build brand identity, awareness and enhance your organization’s credibility among users.

✅ More storage space.

✅ Robust antivirus and spam filters.

✅ No advertisements.

✅ IMAP/POP3 protocols.

Different kinds of email hosting

When deciding about email hosting, the first thing to clarify is how you will host your emails. Here are three ways to do choose from:

1. IMAP email hosting

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. IMAP email hosting transfers all the emails to your server, but it doesn’t get transferred to all the devices you have logged in to.

You can view, organize, and delete the emails stored on the server and decide which emails you want to transfer. That way, you can save storage across devices. Such email hosting is used by businesses.

2. POP3 email servers

It stands for Post Office Protocol 3 and is among the most common email hosting services. Internet services providers often give email accounts along with internet services.

With POP3 email hosting, all the incoming emails will get downloaded to your device. It allows you to access them even when you are offline.

The limitation of POP3 is that you can’t access the emails on multiple devices, such as if emails are downloaded on your laptop, you won’t be able to access them on your mobile phone.

3. Cloud email hosting

Cloud email hosting is affordable and best suited for small businesses or SMEs. Hosting emails on a cloud server offers many benefits like security, easy access to data, cheap upgrade, and no need to purchase hardware or software, reducing your cost.

Examples of cloud email hosting are G Suite by Gmail and Microsoft Exchange Emails by Microsoft.

What features should you look for in email hosting providers?

Here are some of the must-have features in an email hosting provider:

✅ Offers security

Your subscribers and clients have faith in your business and trust you with confidential information such as their details, financial information, etc. So, your hosting server must-have features like data security, anti-malware, anti-spam, and the likes.

✅ Flexibility and reliability

Email host providers must give you enough flexibility over your emails and associated files. Besides that, it should be reliable and must have a good reputation.

✅ Easy to access

You may access your email via different platforms that require different configurations. So, look for an email hosting provider that offers you access to webmail, IMAP, and POP.

• Webmail – Webmail allows you to use a web-based email client, which is very convenient

• IMAP – IMAP allows you to read your email from any device without downloading them.

• POP – POP, on the other hand, requires that you download your emails before reading them.

✅ Not blacklisted

Having your IP address blacklisted can greatly impact your business activities, and it can take longer to get it non-blacklisted. For that reason, you should avoid email hosts with a reputation for getting domains on blacklists. Why? Because you may end up with a blacklisted recycled IP.

You can check an email host blacklist status on MxToolbox.

7 best email hosting providers to consider

Here is a list of 7 best email hosting providers that you can choose from:

1. Google Workspace

Price	Attachment size limit	Storage
Depending on the package, $6 to $18 per user per month	25 MB	30 GB to 5 TB

Pros and Cons

✅ Easy integrations with the other Google Workplace suite like Google Drive and Sheets.

✅ Smart reply and compose features help you write emails faster and with fewer errors.

✅ IT support is not required to backup files.

❌ Higher per-user license costs.

2. Dreamhost

Price	Attachment size limit	Storage
Starting at $1.67 per mailbox per month	Not applicable	25 GB

Pros and Cons

✅ Low cost most suitable for small businesses.

✅ Large inbox size.

✅ Offers free inbound spam filtering.

❌ The pricing structure of different plans can be unclear.

3. SiteGround

Price	Attachment size limit	Storage
$4.99 to $14.99 per month	Not applicable	Unlimited

Pros and Cons

✅ Unlimited inbox size.

✅ 24/7 customer support.

✅ Amazing customer reviews.

❌ Doesn’t provide email hosting exclusively.

4. A2 Hosting

Price	Attachment size limit	Storage
Shared hosting to Dedicated server – $2.99 to $129.99 if you opt for a 36-month plan	Not applicable	100 GB to unlimited (depending on the package)

Pros and Cons

✅ Unlimited inbox size.

✅ Complete protection against email spam.

✅ Offer a money-back policy.

❌ Email hosting is available only in combo with web hosting.

5. Zoho Mail

Price	Attachment size limit	Storage
$1 to $4 per user per month	250 MB to 1 GB	5 GB to unlimited

Pros and Cons

✅ Send attachments up to 1 GB in size.

✅ POP and IMAP access.

✅ Easy integration with Zoho’s optional business productivity apps.

❌ Spam filtering is limited.

6. Hostinger

Price	Attachment size limit	Storage
Business email – $0.99/month USD	Not applicable	10 GB
Enterprise email – $2.49/month USD	Not applicable	30GB

Pros and Cons

✅ Inexpensive and best suited for small business email hosting.

✅ Unlimited email accounts & forwarders.

✅ 30-day money-back guarantee.

❌ No traditional cPanel.

7. Bluehost

Price	Attachment size limit	Storage
Basic – $4.95/month	Not applicable	100 MB per account
Plus – $7.45/month	Not applicable	Unlimited
Choice plus – $7.45/month	Not applicable	Unlimited

Pros and Cons

✅POP3 and IMAP4.

✅24/7 support.

❌ Poor backup options.