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If you’re responsible for overseeing the communication tools at your organization, it’s essential to do some homework before deciding on an email hosting provider. While it’s possible to utilize free personal email platforms such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail, doing so can give your organization an unprofessional image and erode your credibility with customers, vendors, donors, and even your own employees.
While some email hosting providers offer free packages, they’re often restrictive; providing minimal storage for your emails and insufficient security features for sensitive emails. In general, you should only consider these if you’re on a tight budget and have no other choice.
Fortunately, there are several cheap professional email hosting options, some of which offer free trials, that can help you manage your emails, showcase your domain name, and provide other useful features as well.
Let’s review some of the best cheap email hosting providers on the market today. Below we’ve listed a side-by-side comparison chart of your best options, followed by a more detailed analysis of what each provider offers. Keep in mind that some of the best cheap email hosting providers are website hosting companies that include email hosting and storage as part of their packages. We’ve included them in this list so you have a full view of all your options.
Best Cheap Email Hosting Providers
| Rating | Provider | Monthly Cost | Storage | Inbox Usability |
| 1 | Google Workspace | $6.00 | 30 GB | Excellent |
| 2 | Bluehost | $2.95 | 10 GB | Fair |
| 3 | Zoho Mail | $0 to $4 | 5 GB | Good |
| 4 | HostGator | $2.75 | 10 GB | Fair |
| 5 | Namecheap | $0.91 | 5 GB | Good |
| 6 | Microsoft 365 | $6.00 | 1 TB | Good |
| 7 | GoDaddy | $0.99 | 10 GB | Fair |
| 8 | Rackspace | $2.99 (must buy 3+) | 25 GB | Fair |
1. Google Workspace
Google Workspace is arguably the most trusted email provider on the planet. Signing up for email hosting services with them makes integrating with their other platforms and tools completely seamless. If you already use Gmail for personal email, you may find it difficult to use any of the other providers on this list, as they easily have the most intuitive and feature-rich email system.
As with many other providers, Google guarantees 99.9% uptime on their servers for business email, including advanced spam filters to minimize time sifting junk email in the inbox. They offer standard security protections to keep data secure and to manage lost or stolen devices. Google plans start at $6 per user per month for one email, including 30 GB of cloud storage, although you can save 10% if you use promo codes.
Their second least expensive package is the Business Standard plan which costs $12 per user with all the same benefits plus 2 TB of storage per user for files. Features of the basic plan include:
- $6 per user, per month
- 30 GB cloud storage per user
- The user-friendly Gmail inbox
- Video conferencing for up to 100 participants via Google Meet
- Seamless collaboration with your team using Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Drive, and Google Calendar
Visit Google Workspace to learn more
2. Bluehost
Bluehost is a well-known and trusted provider of hosting for those on a tight budget. They offer 24/7 customer service, industry-standard speeds, the requisite security options, and a money-back guarantee.
Bluehost offers 3 tiers of accounts that all include email and website hosting. They range from $2.95 to $5.45 per month, depending on the length of the package you select. Once you’ve signed up, you can use any of their webmail tools, which you access via a web browser just like Gmail or Yahoo Mail and lets you send and receive emails using your custom domain email address. The email tools provided by Bluehost are not rich with fancy features or beautiful dashboards, but they get the job done and are easy to navigate. If you sign up with Bluehost just to use them for email hosting, you are not obligated to use their website hosting services as well.
If you want a more professional email inbox that comes with other productivity tools, you can also just configure your Bluehost account to work with a different provider like Google Workspace or Office 365, whichever you prefer. This will allow you to still use your custom domain email address, but you’ll get access to a ton of great features for organizing your calendar, managing your documents in the cloud, and working collaboratively with your team.
- $2.95 to $5.45 per month
- 24/7 Customer Support
- Unlimited email accounts
- 10 GB email storage
- Webmail
3. Zoho Mail
Zoho offers a privacy-guaranteed encrypted email service free from ads. They claim the highest security and email surveillance, with the standard 99.9% uptime guarantee. For regulated businesses or those dealing with sensitive information, it’s an appealing feature.
The Forever Free plan is free for up to 5 users and includes 5 GB of storage per user with an attachment limit of 25 MB, which is not enough for most people unless you plan to clean out your inbox every week. The plan also includes one domain but excludes the popular email formats IMAP/ POP mail configurations. That means you cannot use this email hosting package with Gmail or Office 365.
That said, Zoho Mail has a great app that’s available for iOS and Android devices and lets you manage your email, calendar, contacts, and files all in one place.
The next level package, Mail Lite, costs $1 per user per month. It includes 5 GB of storage per user, |IMAP/POP access in all email clients, email hosting for multiple domains, email routing, and tons of other great features for managing your inbox.
The most popular plan offered by Zoho Mail is called Mail Premium and costs $4 per month per user. It includes 50 GB of storage per user and allows email attachments of up to 1 GB. They also offer a 15-day free trial so you can try it out before you sign up as a paying customer.
If you are set on only using a free email provider, this is probably your best option, though you can change your mind at any time and upgrade.
It’s worth noting that in the past, we have graded the Zoho inbox as “fair.” However, members of our loyal community of readers have made us aware of impressive upgrades to Zoho Mail over recent months, so we’ve upgraded their scores accordingly. This makes them an affordable email hosting provider that sacrifices nothing in terms of usability or storage space when it comes to their $4 per month Mail Premium plan. However, if you want to bundle an email plan with other business productivity tools like collaboration apps, spreadsheets, etc.., Zoho is not quite there yet, and you’re better off using Google Workspace.
- Free for up to 5 users
- 5 GB of storage per user
- 5 inboxes
4. HostGator
HostGator is a low-cost web hosting provider that includes webmail when you sign up for a hosting account. This will allow you to use emails with your custom domain name. The email hosting and webmail tools provided by HostGator come with a variety of helpful tools for managing your inbox and day-to-day communication. Included with each package are unlimited email accounts, several webmail platforms for you to choose from, IMAP support (for getting emails on your phone), spam filtering tools, autoresponders, mailing lists, and unlimited email aliases.
For an extra fee, you can also configure your account to work with Google Workspace if you’d like to gain access to their business tools, but that is completely optional.
HostGator’s claim to fame is that their disk space and bandwidth are “unmetered,” which means they don’t limit users to a set amount of storage space each month. But that’s not exactly, true. If you check the fine print, only their more expensive Business Plan comes with unlimited storage. If you sign up for the Hatchling Plan, you’ll receive 10 GB of space. As far as bandwidth is concerned, it is not truly unmetered. They require customers to comply with their terms of service, including a limitation on excessive traffic.
Like others, they also offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a free SSL certificate, WordPress installs, and a free domain for a year. Also, they advertise a 45-day money-back guarantee.
First-year pricing for their basic Hatchling Plan is $2.75, which then goes up to $5.95 per user per month.
- $2.75 per month
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited email accounts
- Money-back guarantee
5. Namecheap
Namecheap offers a basic, no-frills email plan at a low cost with easy-to-understand pricing and options and a fair amount of storage for the price.
All plans begin with the first two months free with full functionality. The lowest cost package they offer, the starter plan, costs just $0.91. You can add more users for $0.66 per month each. For that price, you receive 5 GB email storage and 2 GB file storage, which won’t get you very far but might be ok if you’re just getting started.
Their next-level Pro Plan starts at $2.16 per user per month and comes with 3 mailboxes, 30 GB of email storage, and 15 GB of storage for files.
Namecheap’s inbox is powered by Open-Xchange, a cloud-based software for the management of email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and document storage. It’s more or less comparable with the Outlook platform platform offered by GoDaddy.
- $0.91 first user, per month
- $0.66 for each additional user, per month
- 5 GB for emails
- 2 GB for files
6. Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is a widely used set of business productivity tools that includes email, calendars, communication tools, and much more. If you choose to use them exclusively for business email, that’s fine, but you will quickly find yourself enjoying some of their other features.
Plans start at $6 per month and include 1 TB of storage, far more than anyone else. Their email inbox is managed through Outlook, which is fine, but hard to adjust to if you’re used to using the significantly faster and more user-friendly Gmail inbox.
If you choose to upgrade beyond their Business Basic plan, you’ll get access to desktop versions of their Office apps such as MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and others.
- $6 per user, per month
- 1 TB cloud storage per user
Visit Microsoft 365 to learn more
7. GoDaddy
GoDaddy has more than 18 million users, and as such, it’s one of the most popular domain, email, and web hosting providers globally. Their Email Essentials plan is the entry-level GoDaddy email hosting plan. It starts at $0.99 per email account per month and goes up to $5.99 after one year. With the Essentials plan, you receive online calendars and syncing across all your devices as well as 24/7 expert support.
They offer one-click email backup, advanced security, and email archiving to help keep regulated businesses in compliance by storing emails in a secure, easily searchable database.
The second tier Email Plus plan starts at $6.99 per user per month and includes 50 GB of storage. Your inbox with both of these plans is managed through the Microsoft Outlook web application. It’s user-friendly and comes with lots of features, though still pretty far behind Gmail in terms of usability and convenience.
- $0.99 per user, per month
- 10 GB storage space
- Outlook email web application
8. Rackspace
Rackspace offers the prerequisite email and calendar tools, and they claim a 100% uptime guarantee with 24/7 support 365 days a year. They offer premium spam and anti-virus protection and a strict ad-free policy.
The basic plan is free for the first 14 days. After that, it costs $1.99 per user per month with 25G of storage. After the first 90 days, it goes up to $2.99 per user. However, Rackspace requires a minimum monthly spend of $10 (3 user accounts).
Rackspace Email Plus includes Mobile Sync capabilities and 30 GB of online cloud storage for $3.99 per user per month. You can access Rackspace Email via a web application or MS Outlook.
Email Archiving and Microsoft Office costs extra.
- $2.99 per user per month with a minimum spend of $10
- 25 GB storage
Summary
With so many affordable and (almost) free email hosting providers on the market with similar features, the provider you choose will ultimately come down to how much you can pay, your storage needs, the number of email accounts you need, and how picky you are regarding which inbox interface you use. Consider the cost over time versus the entry-level pricing when deciding. Ensure it will have space and the features you’ll need to grow and will allow you to manage your business or organization effectively.
Good afternoon
I would like to know how much to register a domain and business email for to secure them ? Currently im busy to save a money for website design
In that case, I would sign up with HostGator to host your new website. Their plan is inexpensive and includes free domain registration for 1 year + email via webmail.
Consider the time and annoyance of spam email for yourself and your employees. Google and Microsoft have the best spam filters.
A fair point. All major providers have spam filters these days, though Google and Microsoft are by far the most reliable.