What would you think if you contacted a company and their email address was something like johndoe1988@gmail.com?
Chances are you wouldn’t trust them, so it’s about time you get your professional business email address with one of these cheap email hosting providers.
Using a professional business email (i.e., one with a custom domain) to communicate is one of the best ways to show you’re a legitimate business and exhibit professionalism.
When you’re just starting, you might not think accumulating expenses is the best thing to do – especially in the early stages, but don’t worry! In this post, we will look at the best cheap and free email hosting providers available.
Table of contents
Cheap email hosting providers at a Glance
Right before we dive in, let’s also take a look at our email hosting providers at a glance.
| Service | Rating | Review | Get started |
| 1. Zoho Workplace | 4.5/5 | Read more | Get started now! |
| 2. A2 Hosting | 4/5 | Read more | Get started now! |
| 3. Office 365 | 4.6/5 | Read more | Get started now! |
| 4. SiteGround | 4.7 / 5 | Read more | Get started now! |
| 5. RackSpace | 4.1/5 | Read more | Get started now! |
| 6. G Suite | 4.6/5 | Read more | Get started now! |
| 7. Greatmail | 4/5 | Read more | Get started now! |
| 8. 1&1 IONOS | 4.1/5 | Read more | Get started now! |
| 9. Namecheap | 4.4/5 | Read more | Get started now! |
Reasons You Should Separate Website and Email Hosting
Indeed, many web hosting providers integrate free email hosting in their plans, allowing you to create unlimited email accounts. You might be wondering why anyone would suggest you invest in a separate business email account when your hosting provider gives you access to a branded business email as part of your hosting plan.
Great question – here’s why:
Migrating Email is a Pain
Most web hosts offer hassle-free site migrations, which is great. But when transferring an email from one host to another, things get tricky. Not only does this service often come with a price tag, but there’s also a chance your email will experience some serious downtime, which is bad for business.
Plus, if you used your old hosting provider’s email account, you will have to set up an entirely new one with your new web host, which can also cause downtime (but this is something we’ll get onto later).
Do you use a free email service such as Gmail or Yahoo?
Migrating to an official email hosting provider will still be a pain. You’ll have to tell all your customers that your email has changed and hope everyone gets the memo. If not, people will continue to send emails to your old email. This means double duty for you or lost emails – you’ll have to choose the lesser of two evils.
What happens when your server goes down?
If you have a separate email host, you can at least send out a campaign to your loyal subscribers that your site is down for now. You can also keep them up to date on when things will be back up and running. While you can’t prevent all site downtime, having a separate email can help offset the loss in sales downtime that is sure to cause.
You Risk Ending Up in Spam
If you use shared hosting for your website hosting and someone on your shared server gets caught sending spam emails, you might get caught up in the blacklisting, blocking, or shutdown consequences.
After all, you share a server, and sometimes it’s tough to pinpoint who is in the wrong when these things happen.
This means people cannot communicate with you until the issue is resolved, which can take days or weeks. Plus, emails sent your way may bounce and disappear, which hurts the user experience when your site visitors don’t receive your response.
The Lack of Features
Don’t be surprised if the email account you get with your website host lacks features, even if it is a premium add-on.
Basic sending and receiving of emails might indeed work for some small businesses or bloggers. But if you rely on lots of email communication to field questions, provide technical support, or even send promotional material to subscribers, your web host’s basic email hosting might not cut it.
No Email Support
Even web hosting providers that charge a small fee for their hosting customers to have a business email often come up short regarding email support.
Most web hosts seem to feel email hosting is a side service that website owners can handle. This will not help when you have a problem, and your site visitors can’t contact you.
What You Should Look for in a Cheap Email Hosting Provider
Hopefully, you realize that investing in a separate, cheap email hosting provider is probably best for you.
But now what?
Here are the things I considered when choosing the best hosted email providers out there for your check out:
- Ease of Use: A simple, user-friendly email hosting service with good support.
- Custom Email Domains: A professional and personalized email address with your domain name.
- IMAP and POP Support: A flexible and accessible email hosting service that works on any device.
- Anti-Spam Measures: A secure and clean email hosting service that filters out unwanted and harmful messages.
- Security: A reliable and encrypted email hosting service that protects communication and data.
- Domain Privacy: A private and anonymous email hosting service that hides your contact information from public databases.
- Customer Support: A helpful and responsive email hosting service that offers various ways to assist you anytime.
- Price: An affordable, value-for-money email hosting service that fits your budget and needs.
So, let’s see which of the cheap email hosting providers made my list and why, so you can make a better decision for your email needs.
Note: According to EmailToolTester, small businesses’ average email hosting price ranges from $1 to $10 per user per month, depending on the features and storage space. So, $5/usr/mo puts us right down in the middle.
Top Cheap Email Hosting Providers
1. Zoho Workplace
Zoho Workplace is one of the best cheap email hosting providers, and it has everything you need to create, collaborate, and communicate in one convenient location. It’s best for businesses looking for a secure and cheap email hosting provider and productivity and collaboration tools to help the team. Zoho Workplace integrates the Zoho Mail package, which provides many powerful features for small businesses.
Standard features for Zoho Mail include:
- Collaboration tools like a calendar, cloud document sharing, notes, tasks, and instant chat
- Ad-free emails
- Professional, branded email domain
- Two-factor authentication and custom login URL
- 24/7 email, chat, and phone support
- POP/IMAP access to use email clients
- Integration with Zoho CRM for turning inbox into CRM solution
Below, we’ll list other notable features of Zoho Mail.
Other notable Zoho Email Hosting Features Include
1. Spam Protection
With Zoho Workplace, you can quarantine emails that need authentication so nothing suspicious gets through. You can also white and blacklist email addresses after authentication. Lastly, check out the spam reports for monitoring bounced emails and spam categories.
2. Security
Zoho Workplace takes your email hosting security seriously. To start, trust that email servers are protected 24/7 with video monitoring, biometric access, and advanced fire, flood, and theft monitoring systems.
Next, enjoy a 99.99% uptime guarantee thanks largely to the latest encryption and intrusion detection systems and prevention technologies implemented across the entire network.
You can set up groups, assign moderators, and monitor email content to protect what goes on inside your email inboxes.
3. An Intuitive Dashboard
With Zoho Workplace, you can manage your email accounts’ settings, configurations, and customization from one convenient dashboard.
In addition, enforce strict user passwords, configure spam protection, set up restrictions, and customize user information. Plus, forward any emails to another email address and manually import users from your old email service or by importing a .csv file.
Zoho Workplace has two cheap email hosting plans:
| Mail Only Plan | Standard Plan | |
| Price | $0,8/month/user | $3,2/month/user |
| Storage/user | 5GB | 30GB |
| Attachment Size | 30-250MB | 30-500MB |
| Email Forwarding | Yes | Yes |
| Spam Protection | Yes | Yes |
| IMAP/POP Access | Yes | Yes |
| Calendar | Yes | Yes |
| Tasks, Notes, Bookmarks | Yes | Yes |
| Custom Email Domains | No | No |
| Multiple Domain Hosting | Yes | Yes |
| 15-Day Free Trial | 15-Day Free Trial |
To benefit from a custom domain, you must purchase the WorkPlace Professional pricing plan for $5.6 /per user.
And there’s also a very limited Forever Free Plan. The free plan is great for up to 5 users, includes 5GB/user of storage, and has a 25MB attachment limit.
2. A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is also well-known for its WordPress hosting performance and equitable price. This platform is also an email hosting and web hosting. So, your work will be easier, and you won’t have to face more control panels.
Features that A2 Hosting offers:
- Unlimited email addresses
- Unlimited storage
- Email Spam protection
- Webmail Software
- Email Forwarders
- Auto-responders
Other notable A2 Hosting Include
1. No limits
A2 HosA2 Hosting provides unlimited storage and data transfer for your emails. You can store your email messages on your account as much as possible. Now, you can delete them when you want. You won’t have to worry about insufficient space for your emails.
2. Compatibility with email software
Take advantage of all these email hosting features and have fun with the integrated software of A2 Hosting. Here you will be able to create contact forms and send email newsletters.
3. Office 365
Microsoft Office 365 provides effective tools like Office applications, online file storage in OneDrive, Skype, and hosted email for Business. Office 365 is a Microsoft feature that integrates dynamic email hosting and collaboration tools for businesses. It is centered around its email hosting solutions. Moreover, it also provides the latest Office tools and advanced solutions for your business.
Features that Office 365 provides for businesses:
- Up to date with the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more
- Desktop versions of the Office package
- Shared calendar
- Create and delete email addresses easily
- Connect with customers and coworkers using Outlook, Exchange, and Teams
- 1 TB of cloud storage on OneDrive per user
- An email hosting provider with 50 GB mailbox
- Help you keep data from being accidentally shared
- Help you keep iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac devices safe and up to date
Other notable Office 365 Email Hosting Include
1. Microsoft Office Package
Office 365 Business Premium provides you the whole Microsoft package. Besides email hosting, you will benefit from Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and many more. Moreover, you will automatically get access to all new updates of the Office software.
2. Travel and work
You can download all these tools of Microsoft Office and work from anywhere because you won’t need an Internet connection to use them. Of course, this rule doesn’t only apply if you want to email someone.
3. Collaboration tools
Moreover, you can share documents directly and work with your team on the same materials. You don’t have to send the files to your coworkers and make hundreds of changes. Microsoft’s collaboration tools make your work and communication with your team easier.
4. SiteGround
First of all, SiteGround is a web host that provides a lot of functionalities. Moreover, it has some email hosting features as well. If you want to create and manage unlimited personalized email accounts for your business, SiteGround is your best solution.
Features of SiteGround for users:
- Unlimited email accounts
- Email address customization
- 2000MB inbox
- limit of attachment – 500 MB
- 400 emails/hour sent
- 40 recipients/email
- 20 emails/minute received
- Automatically retry for undelivered mails after 11 hours
- SpamExperts is enabled by default
Other notable SiteGround Email Hosting Include
1. Automatic WordPress setup
Siteground is one of the most popular choices for WordPress hosting because it offers great support, fast performance, and affordable prices. It comes with full WordPress integration and also controlled web hosting.
2. Performance
SiteGround has the best performance for its price. Their support is absolutely high-quality, and SiteGround has the best performance for its price. Their support is absolutely high-quality, and they guarantee you a secure, spam-free, and lightning-fast email experience and affordable email hosting services. Here you can find quality email hosting and web hosting as well.
5. Rackspace
Rackspace is widely known for being a web, app, and email hosting provider for those needing extreme reliability because of their constant contact with customers. They have an impressive 100% uptime guarantee that will garner extra cash should you ever experience downtime.
Features that Rackspace provides email hosting customers include:
- Custom email domains branded to match your business name
- Built-in spam and virus protection
- Outlook, webmail, and mobile access
- Unlimited domain aliases, group lists, and email forwarding
- 50MB attachments
- Deleted email recovery
- Mobile syncing on iOS, Android, and Windows devices
With this business email hosting provider, you can access the power of Microsoft Exchange. You can also try Microsoft Exchange with Rackspace Technology support, free for 14 days.
Other Notable Rackspace Email Hosting Features Include
1. Easy Email Migration
Rackspace makes it easy to migrate from your old email service to theirs. There’s no charge for email migration from Microsoft Office 365, Exchange, Gmail, Lotus Notes, and Zimbra. Additionally, you can have Rackspace migrate your emails, contacts, calendars, tasks, notes, and more, or do it yourself.
And since uptime is their signature feature, Rackspace follows a strict process during an email migration:
Plan > Test > Migrate > Go Live > Additional Migration > Complete
2. Support
With over 13 years of experience in email hosting, Rackspace knows what it takes to provide stellar customer service to its clients. For instance, you can access an expert 24/7/365 via chat, ticket, or phone. You can also read expert-level articles if troubleshooting on your own is more your style.
Rackspace has two affordable email hosting plans available:
| Basic Plan | Plus Plan | |
| Price | $2.99/month/user | $3.99/month/user |
| Email accounts | 1 | 1 |
| Storage | 25GB | 25GB |
| Attachment size | 50MB | 50MB |
| Custom, Unlimited Email Domain Aliases | Yes | Yes |
| 24/7/365 Support | Yes | Yes |
| Free and Easy Email Migrations | Yes | Yes |
| Spam Protection | Yes | Yes |
| IMAP/POP Access | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud Storage | 0GB | 30GB |
| Shared Calendars | No | Yes |
| Instant Messaging | No | Yes |
| 14-Day Free Trial | 14-Day Free Trial |
6. Google Worksapce (G Suite)
Although G Suite comes in at $1/month more than my preferred criteria, I had to include it on this list of cheap email hosting providers anyways. As one of the world’s best email hosting providers, its email service is perfect for people of all skill levels, even beginners.
G Suite, also known as Google Workspace, offers a unique, hassle-free, and cloud-based solution for any sized business needing a simple email hosting solution and tools to help run a business more effectively.
The top features of G Suite email hosting include:
- 30GB cloud storage and 25GB attachment sizes
- Unlimited email addresses
- Custom email domain (not the free Gmail service that allows you to create a free email account!)
- Real-time notifications
- No internet access is needed to read and draft messages.
- Easy migration from old email service
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Automatic backups
- Shared calendars
- Zero ads
- 14-day free trial, then $6/user/month
Other Notable G Suite Email Hosting Features Include
1. Ease of Use
One of the most appealing things about using Google Workspace email hosting is its ease of use. The uncluttered interface makes customizing the look, managing the inbox, and sending/receiving emails a cinch. Plus, you can access any of the Google Workspace tools from the main screen by clicking on a few cool-looking icons.
2. Built-in Security
When it comes to security, G Suite has you covered. Enable two-step authentication for your team members, add or remove users, and monitor storage usage to ensure no overages.
Plus, you can send password resets, wipe devices remotely, and even receive alerts whenever something suspicious happens in your inbox. And if you ever need help, support is just a chat, email, or phone call away.
3. Access to Additional Tools
When you choose G Suite out of all the cheap email hosting providers, you also get access to more G Suite apps than are available with a free Gmail account.
For example, you can take advantage of Google Docs, Sheets, Hangout, Chat, and Slides, in addition to your professional-grade business email.
7. Greatmail
This is an affordable solution for any business or organization that needs a full-featured and highly secure email hosting provider.
You can expect Greatmail to come with features like:
- High availability
- POP and IMAP access to use email clients
- Syncing and sharing of calendars and contacts
- Online ticket, phone, and email support
- Nightly snapshot backups
- Pay-as-you-go storage
- No daily sending limits
- Domain name registration to match your site domain with your email domain
Other Notable Greatmail Email Hosting Features Include
1. Superior Security
Greatmail is one of my list’s most secure cheap email hosting providers. For example, it’s built on a private cloud infrastructure to guarantee reliable email services. It also has all the latest spam, virus, and malware protection and SSL and TLS encryption for POP3, IMAP, and SMTP protocols.
It also comes with built-in firewall security and failure detection, separate server clusters to handle requests for incoming/outgoing mail, client connectivity, webmail, and diesel engine backup generators in case of an outage.
2. Control Panel
With Greatmail, you can manage your account to create vacation responders, set up email forwards, create domain aliases, and even change passwords. You can also give your team access to their account settings through webmail to change passwords, spam settings, and white/blacklisting email addresses.
Greatmail has two cheap email hosting plans for you to pick from:
| Standard Edition | Groupware Edition | |
| Price | $1/mailbox/month | $3/mailbox/month |
| Storage | 10GB | 25GB |
| POP/IMAP Support | Yes | Yes |
| Calendar and Contact Syncing | No | Yes |
| Attachment Sizes | No Limit | No Limit |
8. 1&1 IONOS
1&1 IONOS is one of my list’s most modest business email solutions. It’s great for startup businesses and freelancers that need a no-frills solution to their business email needs. You can also take advantage of their web hosting services.
As one of the oldest and most reliable cheap email hosting providers, this one boasts over 30 years of experience and 12 million domain names.
With 1&1 IONOS, you get features like:
- Built-in spam protection
- Free domain email name for your email
- Moderate storage
- Custom email domain (and a free web domain to match)
- Multi-device access
- Email aliases
- Forwarding addresses
- Attachment sizes of up to 70MB
- Zero ads
- IMAP support
Other Notable 1&1 Email Hosting Features Include
1. Advanced Security
With 1&1 IONOS, you’ll get top-level anti-virus and spam tools, blacklisting capability, and whitelisting of mislabeled “spam” emails, so you don’t have to deal with fake emails. You’ll also be happy to know that your email hosting comes with private registration, so your contact information is not displayed in the WHOIS database.
This has five secure data centers located in 5 different countries, complies with all data privacy regulations, and automatically protects all emails with SSL/TLS encryption. And to make sure everything is working right, you also have access to detailed spam reports.
2. Unique Support
It comes with traditional support, such as 24/7 phone support and an online help center with information about the products and services available. But more interestingly, you can have a dedicated customer support representative assigned to you that you can reach via phone, email, or chat whenever you have a problem.
You have your choice between 2 email hosting plans with 1&1 IONOS:
| Mail Basic | Mail Business | |
| Price | $1/month for the 1st month, ($2/month after) | $5/month/user |
| Email Accounts | 25 | 1 |
| Storage | 2GB | 50GB |
| Free Web Domain | Yes | Yes |
| Spam Filter | Yes | Yes |
| Virus Protection | No | Yes |
| Webmail | Yes | Yes |
| Sync Across All Devices | Yes | Yes |
| Team Collaboration Tools (Calendar, Contacts, Tasks) | No | Yes |
9. Namecheap
Like Zoho Mail, this is also one of the best cheap email hosting providers. If you’re looking for business email hosting, this one may suit your needs. Namecheap is our list’s cheapest email hosting provider regarding pricing/user.
It starts with a 60-day trial for any pricing plan, so you have more than enough time to set up and test. Namecheap is also a web hosting provider that will get you a free domain name registration and a fine variety of feature-full hosting packages you can pick up on the cheap.
So, let’s see what you get with Namecheap:
- Robust anti-spam protection
- Free forwarding addresses
- Email aliases
- 5 GB email storage
- 2 GB file storage
- Secure Webmail
- 2-factor authentication (U2F & TOTP)
- SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 access to use email clients
Other notable Namecheap Email Hosting Features Include
- Private Email
Your business email hosting may need this feature. Customers appreciate how collaborative and cloud-based this feature is. It features a modern UI that works on various platforms, including tablets, desktops, mobile phones, and notebook computers, allowing users to connect whenever and wherever they want. You can even build a public space with shared files, create and manage work schedules, and more with Private Email.
Moreover, users can easily set and control tasks. When planning meetings and breakout sessions, everyone in your company can instantly see who is available. As an admin, you can share data and control who can access files.
2. Seamless control
With Namecheap, you can organize your email hosting to meet your company’s objectives. Emails, appointments, calendars, and tasks may all be shared and synchronized with your contacts.
You can access all your professional and personal email accounts in the portal view, even if you own a Windows, Android, or Apple device. Moving email from one host to another can be challenging, but with Namecheap, you can migrate your emails easily and in no time!
| Starter | Pro | |
| Price | $0.91/mo ( + 0.66/mo for each additional mailbox) | $2.24/mo ( + 1.66/mo for each additional mailbox) |
| Mailbox Included | 1 | 3 |
| Email Storage | 5GB | 30GB |
| Free Domain | Yes | Yes |
| Anti-spam protection | Yes | Yes |
| File Storage | 2GB | 15GB |
| Webmail | Yes | Yes |
| Sync Across All Devices | No | Yes |
| Team Collaboration Tools (Calendar, Contacts, Tasks) | No | Yes |
So, Which Cheap Email Hosting Provider Is for You?
Et voila! These are some of the best email hosting services out there! The truth is, plenty of cheap email hosting providers are available for you to choose from. Most of them only differ in price by a dollar or two, making price a non-issue. So, when choosing which email hosting services are best for you, you must look at the features.
Need to send large attachments back and forth between clients? Go with Rackspace or Greatmail. Looking to boost productivity amongst your team? I suggest an email host like 1&1 IONOS, Zoho Workplace, or Google Workspace.
It comes down to what you need your email to do to build a better business that generates your desired revenue.
As mentioned before, custom domain email addresses are extremely important to make your business look legitimate.
If you’re looking for another surefire way to boost the reputation of an online business, try collecting and displaying testimonials on your website as a form of social proof.
Just ensure you have your business email in place first, so you can send out email campaigns to those who recently purchased from you and ask them to leave some feedback for you, which you can use as testimonials for your product & sales pages.
Do you use any of the above-mentioned cheap email hosting providers for your online business?
If so, we’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!
