Brendan Tully0 Comments
March 8, 2022
Email empowers you to connect with people from all over the world, and it is the quickest and most cost-effective means to communicate for business. Online banks, online business platforms, online stores – they all require a valid email for a verifiable connection. A good email hosting provider has become one of the most valuable tools that an entrepreneur can integrate. Considering these facts, it’s no surprise that email marketing is one of the most effective ways to market your products.
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When running a business in a competitive environment, having good email communication can be crucial for having an edge over your competitors, given that email gives you the ability to engage with customers on a group and individual level. But in order to be able to provide impeccable email service, you need to have good email hosting.
In this article, we will address the best email hosting providers for small businesses in 2024 by giving you a short summary of the types of email hosting services, the features that the hosting provides, the pricing, and the pros & cons of every provider.
When you’re shopping for email hosting, the first decision you will need to make is what kind of hosting you need for your email. There are three main options to choose from.
Email hosting is included for free with most of the web hosting subscriptions. If you don’t need a powerful email service and you have a modest budget, getting an email service from your web host is the way to go. But keep in mind that there are limitations in sending, receiving, and storing that come with this option.
This is a complex, but robust option that requires owning servers, technical expertise, and a team that operates the servers. Self-hosting is a reliable option and you can send and receive emails with ease, however, smaller businesses don’t have the resources nor time to fully implement this option. Especially if you consider that there are third-party email providers that specialize in hosting emails for small businesses.
Finally, there’s third-party email hosting. Although you will have to pay additionally for the cost of the email hosting, the email services that these third-party providers offer are easy-to-use and full of useful features that will make your business more functional. That is why most small, digital businesses choose this option.
G Suite is Google’s hosted email service that provides smart cloud search functionalities, top-of-the-line security layers, and administrative control. Getting started with Google email hosting is easy. All you need to do is input some information, such as administrator contact and size of the company, after which you will need to associate a domain to your account. When you get access to your email, Google will ask for some additional information: add a text (TXT), Mail eXchange (MX), or Canonical NAME (CNAME), so they can verify that you are the rightful owner.
Google is one of the most popular email services used and has over a billion active users. It’s cloud-based, advanced, familiar, and full of features, making it one of the best email hosting providers for small businesses.
G Suite offers three plans. The Basic plan is $6 per user per month, the Business plan will cost you $12/mo, and the Enterprise option is $25/mo.
Office 365 is a Microsoft hosting service on which you can run your organization in the cloud and let Microsoft take care of the information technology. When you subscribe to the email hosting of Microsoft, you will get a custom email domain extension that allows you to assign email addresses (in the following format: [email protected]). By purchasing their service, you also get enterprise-level of security with multi-layered authentication, state of the art calendars and contact lists, secure cloud storage accessible from anywhere, and professional customer support.
When you subscribe to Microsoft 365 Business, you will also get various productivity apps that will provide your business with tools for productivity, communication, cloud storage, and business apps that help you reach your customers. In addition to the features, Microsoft offers an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro from Windows 7 Professional or later. With this update, you get better security and access to your business devices.
There are 4 deployment steps to set up an account on Microsoft 365 Business. The initial step is acquiring a subscription and assigning Microsoft 365 Business licenses to the user. Then you use the set-up wizard to configure the account. Once you install the Office apps on your devices, the final step is to prepare your PCs by using the Windows AutoPilot.
Microsoft 365 Business offers three pricing plans. The cheapest plan is “Basic” – $5 per user per month. The second one is “Standard”, which is $12.50/mo, and the last one is the “Premium” which costs $20/mo.
Zoho Mail provides users with secure, encrypted, privacy-guaranteed, and ad-free email hosting for your business. Zoho business email is best suited for organizations and teams that run business communication. The business email is set up via the user’s custom domain and adds features that will add credibility and extra professionalism to your company. The business mail that this hosting provides comes with multiple mailboxes, group aliases, higher storage, dedicated migration support, and levels of management that will give you additional control over your email.
If you decide to migrate to this hosting, Zoho provides a simple solution for the migration of data. Before you start your migration, user accounts need to be created, and the domain has to be verified, after which the process of migration can start. Before the actual migration process, Zoho allows you to run a simple migration for around 2 to 10 users. Zoho mail offers a free plan for up to 5 people, however, when a 6th person joins the group, a paid license has to be purchased.
Zoho offers three paid plans. “Mail Lite” which is $1.01 per user per month, “Mail Premium” $4.05/mo, and “Workplace” $3.4/mo. Zoho Mail Premium also offers a 15-day free trial.
Fastmail is a simple, fast, and secure email provider that has no unwanted advertisement and provides the user with privacy features. The company operates on four core values. They will treat you as a customer, not as a product, and will spare you from the unnecessary advertisement. They believe that your data belongs to you and that you should be allowed to have complete ownership and control over it. They also pride themselves in being good stewards of your data and take privacy seriously. The last one is that they’re good internet citizens, therefore, they do not burden you with additional apps that will slow the customer down, but rather contribute to open source projects that move email forward.
By choosing FastMail, the host will allow you to email from an address that matches your business website. You can create up to 100 your own domains ([email protected]) and 600 aliases ([email protected]). FastMail will also allow you to use one inbox to send and read mail from every alias and if you encounter some problems, FastMail will deliver great assistance from their expert team. With FastMail, you can have administrative control that allows you to manage access levels and protect your sensitive data by giving insight into your emails only to trusted business partners.
If you don’t have your domain, you will need to choose a FastMail domain and select an email address. If you have your own domain, however, FastMail will provide you with the option to migrate. When opening a FastMail account you can choose from a variety of domains and create an alias as an alternative to fastmail.com. After you open the account you will be able to transfer your existing mailbox content, transfer your contacts, and your calendars.
The three pricing plans of FastMail hosting are the following. The first one is “Basic” and costs $3 per user per month, while “Standard” is $5/mo, and “Professional” is $9/us/mo.
ProtonMail is an easy-to-use, secure email service with built-in end-to-end encryption and state-of-the-art security features. ProtonMail put an emphasis on internet security and its goal is to build an internet that respects privacy and is secure against cyberattacks. They are a company committed to developing and distributing tools that are essential to the protection of our online data. They are constantly working on their practical interface that will guarantee encrypted communication.
ProtonMail for Businesses secures your data on the cloud and offers administrative functionality to manage email across an organization, including passwords, priority support, unlimited messages, and catch-all email. ProtonMail assigns 5GB of email storage for every user in the Business plan. However, if you have several users, then the combined capacity can be divided as the admin pleases.
Migration from your existing email over to ProtonMail is easy. After purchasing a ProtonMail account, you will need to update your DNS settings in order for your email to be redirected to their servers in Switzerland. Then their experts will assist you with setting up your inboxes and migrating the data.
With ProtonMail Business you get two price options. The first one is the “ProtonMail Professional” plan where you pay €8 per user per month. The second option is the “ProtonMail Enterprise” plan. For the pricing of this plan, you will have to contact their sales team.
Migadu offers email hosting for your own domains. This email hosting provider allows the user to host multiple email domains in a simple manner and at a reasonable price. Their services are not intended for large enterprises and they do not offer Service Level Agreements. This email hosting provider based in Switzerland, is a non-profit organization that’s always prepared to sponsor interesting projects that serve as educational, non-profit, and pro-open-source activities. This email hosting provider constantly works on making the experience of the user better and that’s why they’re in constant innovation of features, changes, upgrades, and optimizations.
All Migadu accounts are limited with a daily outgoing message quota that depends on the plan you’ve chosen. If you go over your quota, Migadu will politely ask you to upgrade or it won’t be possible to send any more emails until the end of the calendar date. Migadu uses Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3), which means that there are no supporting folders (no junk folder). Migadu is also not mobile-friendly, meaning that the email management is not optimized for usage of portable devices.
To register an account, you need to go to their website and enter the necessary information. Migadu does not offer a number of features and apps in the form of bells and whistles, which makes for a simple but functional service. Because this webmail is very simple, Migadu allows the user to use their hosted email address with GMail’s powerful interface.
Migadu offers one free plan and 4 premium plans that differ only in the allowed message quota. The “Mini” plan is $5/mo with up to 100 outgoing emails per day, the “Standard” plan costs $17/mo and allows for 500 outgoing messages, while the “MAXI” plan goes up to 2000 messages per day.
IRedMail is a free, open-source, self-hosted mail server with many features. With IRedMail, you have all the personal data on your own hard disk, which enables you to control your own emails and increases your security. All software used by iRedMail is open-source and the bug fixes and updates are serviced by Linux/BSD. This email hosting provider uses secure connections (POP3/IMAP/SMTP) and the emails are encrypted via TLS.
With IRedMail you manage emails, folders, and filters directly in the easy-to-use web interface. This email hosting also enables you to manage your calendars and address book not just on your desktop, but on your mobile devices as well. With IRedMail you can create as many mail accounts (domains, users, mailing lists, admins) as you want. This service also provides you with antispam and antivirus filters and will keep your emails safe and sound all the time.
There are three products offered by iRedmail. The first one is the iRedMail downloadable installer. To start with iRedMail you need to download the installer package, and after installation, you need to set up DNS records for your iRedMail server. After you have done these two steps, you will need to upgrade with additional installations. The second one is iRedMail Easy. This is an easily deployable web interface that will save you time and worries. The third one is the paid iRedAdmin-Pro – a product that provides you with many more options than the previous two.
The iRedAdmin-Pro Licence can be ordered for $499 for 1 year, $699 for 2 years, and $899 for 3 years.
Mailcow is a Dockerized, open-source, self-hosted email server that stands out from the other email hosting providers with their dedication and passion. The team of Mailcow offers friendly support and help for every project, no matter whether the project has private, educational or independent purpose. This email hosting provider meets all the requirements for careful data protection and insurance against hacker attacks, third-party property damage, data misuse, data loss, etc. Mailcow is easy to set up and supports all of the latest releases of Ubuntu and Debian.
Mailcow also provides the necessary communication standards, integration with anti-virus software, anti-spam, firewall, etc. Furthermore, Mailcow stores the data on a hidden server somewhere in Germany and they have a growing base of users. The data center of their servers is operated on 100% green electricity. Installing this easy-to-use email service takes several steps. First you need to create a new Cloud server, then you need to set up DNS, continue with the installation of Docker Compose, create the configuration, and start your Mailcow account. Mailcow is suitable for growing organizations that have 50 to 100 self-hosted inboxes.
Infrastructure costs with Mailcow are €12.00/month = €202.80/year.
As we said, the email empowers you to connect with people from all over the world and it is the quickest and most cost-effective business communication solution. There are varieties of good options for email hosting providers, so when it comes to choosing the best email hosting provider for small business in 2024, it is not an easy job. They all offer features to ease your communication and security to protect your data from potential misusers.
Some of these hosting providers are big corporations with a lot of resources and some are the opposite. The corporations will give you the benefits of multifunctional features, third-party implementation, and very good support, however, they do not offer what the smaller providers will – privacy of your email correspondence.
In the end, it all comes to what kind of services you prefer and how you plan to expand your small business. If you care about privacy, then definitely go with the likes of ProtonMail and Mailcow. However, if you just want to be productive and don’t care too much about the privacy of your data, then G Suite and Microsoft 356 are the right email hosting providers for you.
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