The 10 Best Email Hosting Services Compared for 2023

Ryan Clancy

Ryan Clancy

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Ryan Clancy is an engineering and tech freelance writer and blogger, with 5+ years of mechanical engineering experience and 10+ years of writing experience. He's…

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Last updated: 20 September, 2023

Using one of the best email hosting services on the market will ensure you have a smooth, reliable email experience. Doing this will give you access to a world of possibilities with a dependable, efficient service at your disposal.

Many internet hosting companies provide web hosting services and email hosting as a package. Email hosting is more important than ever today, and many providers offer it as an independent service. This guide will go through the 10 best email hosting services and provide the information you need to make an informed decision on the right one for your business.

The Market’s Top 10 Email Hosting Providers Ranked

Here’s our pick of the top 10 email hosting providers in 2023:

1. Domain.com – $6/month – Reliable, easy to use, and provides a ton of free Google storage and a great mobile app. If you already use applications like Gmail and Google Docs, this could be the perfect fit for you.
2. DreamHost – $1.67/month – Best business email hosting provider on the market. There are many useful features like domain registration and cloud services to choose from that will suit every business, big or small.
3. BlueHost – $3/month – Perfect for rapidly expanding businesses. It also has several subscription packages, so it’ll suit any stage of your company’s expansion.
4. Liquid Web – $2.25/month – Top pick for medium to large businesses. Companies needing to handle large email attachments will find this service excellent, and it comes with no additional fees or hidden costs.
5. A2 Hosting – $1.59/month – Great for marketing your business. It can help you craft a unique brand identity and offers robust email migration and webmail software.
6. InterServer – $2.50/month – Secure option for businesses focusing on security. If you’re an enterprise dealing with sensitive information, this is the company for you.
7. IONOS – $1/month – The most affordable email hosting provider on the list. It’s perfect for companies with a tight cash flow, but that want a reliable service with a wide range of features.
8. NameCheap – $1.24/month – This service is perfect for small businesses as it not only organizes and manages your emails, but it comes at a low price and offers a free trial, as well as various branding options.
9. HostPapa – $2/month – If you’re looking for a hosting provider for self-employed people and sole traders, this is a great pick. It provides secure emails and various features, like ecommerce integration plus a site builder, which are crucial when entering the world of entrepreneurship.
10. Name.com – $2.06/month – The best choice for freelancers. It has features like Wix collaboration tools, which are perfect for any freelancer who’s communicating with multiple clients at once.

Email Hosting vs. Web Hosting — What’s the Difference?

Web hosting and email hosting are two different web-based services. Web hosting gives company owners space on a server to store files and information for a website, which can be accessed via the internet. Website storage space and bandwidth are key for web hosting.

Email hosting enables full management of emails and everything associated with them. You can send and receive messages from custom domains rather than a generic one that you might get with a free email account. For example, you could use [email protected] rather than an @gmail.com address.

Email hosting also logs information like the time and date messages were sent and recipient information. Important details for email hosting include the number of email accounts offered with the plan, storage space included, and email attachment capabilities.

Your Email Hosting Options

Email hosting is offered in different formats, depending on your needs and the features that are useful to you. There are three hosted service options to choose from:

Shared Web and Email Hosting

While this is easy to set up and cost-effective, using the same space for your website and email hosting can eat away at your website storage space, which may not be ideal for medium to large businesses.

By having web hosting with email on the same servers, you increase the slight possibility of a complete blackout or shutdown.

Self-Hosted Email

This is an email service that runs on your own email server or hardware. This could be a server in a physical location or a virtual server in the cloud.

The advantage of this system is that only you can access your data, and you can decide what features you need. It could be an unreliable service with a lot of downtime, though, and will require a commitment of time and money to ensure it’s functioning correctly.

Third-Party Email Hosting

This service is the most reliable way to add professional email hosting to your business. For a small monthly fee, a third party takes care of maintenance, back-ups, and other time-consuming activities. If your data is backed up on multiple servers, your information will be safe even if one fails.

Most third-party hosting companies offer features like virus, spam, and malware protection, which you would have to set up and pay for yourself if you self-hosted.

Overall, implementing third-party email hosting is an excellent solution for your company as you get a great service that protects your information for just a small monthly fee.

This article explores the best third-party email hosting providers on the market and what they have to offer you.

Comparing the Best Email Hosting Services

Below is a comparison table of the best email hosting services. It provides a concise overview of the key attributes that each company brings to the table.

In-Depth Reviews of the Best Providers for Email Hosting

Let’s get into what each of these industry-leading email hosting providers offers, what they’re best suited for, and which would be the best choice for you and your business.

1. Domain.com – Best Email Hosting Service Overall

Domain.com provides some of the best web and email hosting for small businesses and individuals. The platform’s email hosting is provided via Google Workspace. This allows you to use Google-based apps such as Google Calendar and Google Docs alongside your Gmail email hosting service.

You also get a custom email domain. You’ll receive instant email domain verification, and if you encounter any problems or issues, customer support is available 24/7.

There are lots of beneficial features provided with Domain.com, including 30GB of free storage and a mobile app that allows you to access your emails anytime.

Furthermore, you can integrate your email hosting with a wide range of Google apps so your business communications will be streamlined and efficient.

And that’s not to mention the fact that we rate it as the best domain hosting with email, and you can combine the two services for a single, convenient package.

Pricing

Domain.com offers three Google Workspace options for you to choose from, depending on your company’s needs:

2. DreamHost – Best Email Hosting Provider for Businesses

DreamHost is known as the best email and website hosting for businesses, large and small. It allows companies to personalize their email hosting by implementing custom settings and company branding, and its affordable price will appeal to businesses of all sizes.

Thanks to its user-friendly mobile app, you can keep up with your messages quickly and easily. You can use both IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP-compatible (Post Office Protocol) email clients to retrieve or sync emails to compatible devices, giving you lots of flexibility.

Along with having excellent security features, you can also build a personalized “Allow” or “Block” list to keep your confidential information safe.

DreamHost comes with a generous 25GB of storage, and you can attach up to 30MB of files to every email you send. It also includes built-in monitoring software to ensure your inbox is free of email spam, malware, phishing emails, and viruses.

To prevent accounts from being used for spam, many email hosting services put a limit on SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), used for sending and receiving mail.

DreamHost’s limit of 100 recipients per hour via regular SMTP authentication is slightly lower than its competitors, and you could quickly hit this even with a personal account if you contacted everyone in your address book.

Pricing

DreamHost offers one package that you can pay for monthly or annually:

3. BlueHost – Best Email Domain Hosting Provider for Growing Businesses

Used by over 5 million customers, BlueHost prides itself on providing a service with unlimited email account creation, allowing expanding businesses to scale their communications.

The number of email accounts you can create is only limited by your storage capacity. It’s an extremely easy-to-use email hosting service that will provide the same hassle-free experience you expect from Google or Microsoft.

If any problems occur, round-the-clock customer support is waiting to help. The service also offers support for POP3 and IMAP4. When you become a user, you can choose from three different applications to host your emails – Horde, RoundCube, and SquirrelMail.

BlueHost’s intuitive interface makes organizing and managing your communications easy, and with features such as an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate and file encryption, you can ensure your information is secure when it is being stored and sent.

There are also plenty of integrations, and you can easily use all your favorite Google Apps, like Google Docs and Google Sheets. BlueHost also provides a comprehensive web hosting service.

It doesn’t come with any tricks or frills that will dazzle you, but what it does do is provide your business with a simple, reliable email hosting service.

Pricing

There are three subscription plans that you can choose from, including:

4. Liquid Web – Top Option for Medium-to-Large Businesses

Liquid Web provides premium email hosting, especially for medium to large businesses. There are no hidden costs in its subscription packages like domain charges or additional fees for large email attachments – so you can rest assured there will be no costly surprises.

The platform provides you with a communication service for business or personal use, and as your needs grow, it can expand with you.

It has 25GB of free storage and allows for 50MB of email attachments, which is generous and sufficient for almost all requirements. Your mailbox can be accessed from mobile, webmail, and mail clients.

The provider includes enhanced spam control and has excellent security measures to customize your inbound and outbound mail.

The easy-to-use interface makes it a breeze to access the service from a simple homepage. There are also many additional tools that help with productivity, like calendars and notes apps.

Pricing

There are two subscription plans you can use:

Users can add on email archiving for an extra $4 per month per mailbox.

5. A2 Hosting – Great Choice for Building a Brand

This customizable email hosting service is great for helping businesses create a unique brand identity. It’s a straightforward service to migrate, and it can help your brand build strong relationships with customers and suppliers.

You can maintain and access all of your email accounts in one place to improve the speed and efficiency of your business communication.

Once you choose a plan, you can upload all your existing contacts and emails so they’re available in one place. Your contacts can be stored and shared when needed, and if you send an email accidentally, there are tools that can be used like unsending and revising emails.

A2 Hosting has a number of valuable features, such as webmail and a mobile app that you can use to access your mail. It also has integrated apps that allow you to add calendars, contacts, and various email accounts so all your important information is stored securely in one place.

If you encounter any difficulties, customer service operatives are available 24 hours a day to help solve any issues you might have.

Other helpful features include email scheduling, follow-up reminders, being able to see when your messages have been viewed by their recipients, and saving frequently sent responses as templates to save you time in future.

Pricing

There are two subscription plans – Professional and Pro Plus. Here are the features of each plan:

6. InterServer – Robust Email Security on Offer

Intersever is one of the best and most secure email hosting services on the market. It provides end-to-end encryption that ensures private information isn’t intercepted and shared with a third party.

Unlike other companies, no personal data is needed to set up an email hosting account, so your information stays private. They also don’t keep IP logs, so your data can’t be collected or sold. Intersever clearly thinks about the privacy of its customers first.

As well as being safe and secure, InterServer is excellent at stopping spam and viruses from infecting your information and devices using a specialized filtering system. To ensure high-level security is maintained, it limits SMTP to 200 emails an hour.

You can access your emails through a mobile app, webmail, and Outlook, and the service includes email archiving and file storage for an extra fee, as well as 25GB of storage for free

Along with an affordable, secure email hosting service, InterServer offers its users a range of additional features with the “Cloud Web Hosting” package.

This includes having access to tools like the InterShield security solution, InterServer’s free website builder, and Inter-Insurance, which will clean up hacked or compromised accounts.

Pricing

InterServer’s subscriptions start at $2.50 per month. Once you’ve chosen a plan and selected additional features, you’ll get a custom quote based on your choices.

7. IONOS – First-Class, Cheap Email Hosting Provider

IONOS is the best cheap email hosting provider, and we also rate it highly for its cheap website hosting. This service comes with a ton of features, including personalized business branding to ensure your business is presented professionally.

It also includes free domain names and the option to purchase several domain extensions, including a “.com” extension. It also sets small businesses on the path to success by having all their information in one place, making it easier to manage over time.

IONOS can sync instantly across all your devices, so vital information is received in real time. It has excellent antivirus and spam tools, including SSL/TLS (secure sockets layer/transport layer security) encryption, so sensitive data is protected from infiltration.

As your business grows, you can easily change plans to suit your needs. This service has thought of everything – and you can turn off advertisements for a small amount.

The service allows email attachments for up to 70 MB per email. You can also customize your security settings by creating blocklists and allowlists to ensure the right people can contact you.

Customer support, meanwhile, is available on all plans 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so you can rest easy that you have help when you need it.

Pricing

You can choose from three different plans based on their features.

It’s important to note that the price will increase on the Mail Business plan based on the number of users you need.

8. NameCheap – Great Choice for Small Businesses

NameCheap is a secure and robust email hosting service that can bring a professional, cohesive look to your business. It has options to add your branding to any email correspondence from your company.

It also caters to smaller businesses that may have a tight cash flow by providing a two-month free trial so you can ensure it’s right for you before committing. However, it’s also suitable for larger enterprises, with bespoke plans available that cater to large teams.

NameCheap allows you to manage all your professional email accounts in one place, driving teamwork by allowing you to share appointments and tasks with your contacts and create email aliases to further support your business.

The service prioritizes security and offers two-factor authentication and a specialized anti-spam tool called “Jellyfish” that neutralizes harmful emails. Several subscription plans are available so you can scale up easily as your business grows and develops.

NameCheap can be accessed through a portal compatible with Windows, Android, and Apple. From this portal, you can access all your email accounts and receive social media responses, news, and messages, and organize scheduling.

Pricing

There are three subscription plans for users to choose from:

Additional mailboxes cost extra but are significantly cheaper to set up. Bigger businesses that need over fifty mailboxes or private emails for more than twenty domains can contact NameCheap directly for a bespoke quote.

There is also a 60-day free trial that businesses, especially small businesses, can use to ensure the product is the perfect fit.

9. HostPapa – Strong Option for Self-Employed People

HostPapa is the perfect option for small teams looking to drive collaboration. It’s great for sole traders, small teams, and self-employed individuals.

Its interface is easily accessible, and it offers a reasonable email attachment limit of 35MB. All plans include unlimited mobile and IMAP connections plus features like a calendar, contacts, and file sharing that promote collaboration.

It has excellent security settings that offer anti-spam, anti-malware, and antivirus protection. Storing your information with a professional email address means you don’t run the risk that your data may be sold to a third party, as with generic email providers.

HostPapa’s email services can be accessed on a variety of devices, including mobile, tablet, smartwatches, computers, and more. You can create a custom email for your business and custom greetings and logos for your messages. This service also comes in eleven languages, which is great for international businesses.

Pricing

There are several plans for you to choose from depending on your needs:

10. Name.com – Great Email Service for Freelancers

Name.com provides solid email hosting for freelancers. It has several plans to choose from, and if you’re a part-time freelancer or self-employed individual with a variety of clients, it has everything you need to ensure effective and efficient communication, collaboration, and teamwork.

You can choose from a complete productivity suite that houses the best web and email hosting or standalone business email hosting, which comes with multi-functional features, such as being able to draft emails to send later and follow-up reminders.

The independent email hosting service can provide custom email domain hosting and professional mail hosting, depending on your company’s needs.

You get free storage and daily sending limits that scale with the plans. It also comes with a calendar, phone app, web and mobile access, email signatures, and the ability to import contacts.

Other features include a priority inbox, which ensures no crucial emails are missed, and the “add a follow-up” reminder, which is great for ensuring important emails are sent on time.

You can also draft emails and schedule them to be sent at a later time, and you have the option to unsend messages so you can correct your mistakes.

Pricing

There are two different categories of independent email hosting available – Titan email and Google Workspace. Each category has several plans to choose from.

Titan email is a subscription plan for established businesses.

Google Workspace is a service that’s more suited to small businesses and self-employed people.

Key Factors to Consider When Comparing Email Hosts

Choosing the right email hosting service is crucial to your success. It may seem daunting when you first start to research and see the number of plans and features each company provides.

However, following this checklist will ensure your chosen service provider has all the key features you need. So, what should you expect from the best email hosts?

The Size of Your Business

By keeping your company’s size in mind, you can sort through the email hosting options for the ones that are relevant to you and your enterprise.

Features Needed

You should consider what functionality you need on your email hosting plan for efficient communication.

Having features like analytics and reporting, automation, and app integrations will help make managing your emails more manageable and less time-consuming. You might also consider if you want tools like a website builder or web hosting to run alongside email hosting.

Plan Caps

Some plans have caps on certain metrics, like how many emails you can send an hour, limits on the size of email attachments, and a total storage capacity for your emails.

Before committing to a plan, ensure you’ve checked all the essential features for your specified plan and are happy with any caps that it comes with.

Deliverability/Ease-of-Use

If the email hosting interface is hard to use, it will slow you down and make it harder to get through your tasks. Some people will even skip using it entirely and look for alternatives rather than spending time learning how to make the most of it.

Choosing a service that delivers the desired results and is easy to use will ensure you get the most out of your subscription.

Security

Another vital feature to include in your decision-making process is the level of security provided with your email hosting service. If your business works with sensitive or confidential information, then a higher level of protection, like email hosting with InterServer, may be applicable.

With most email hosting providers, a good level of protection is already in place, so you don’t have to worry about virus and malware infiltration.

Customer Support

Customer support is a vital part of email hosting. If a server goes down, you want to minimize downtime, and having customer service available 24 hours a day will ensure that problems are fixed promptly and that you are minimally affected.

Budget

The last factor to consider is your budget. As with everything to do with business, you should have a specified budget allocated for this service. From this budget, you can determine which provider is the best fit for your business.

Are Free Email Hosts Worth It?

A free email service may be a suitable option for a new, less financially established business.

However, when paying for business email hosting, you can decide what features you need, including the size of email attachments and how messages are sent. What’s more, most private email hosting services are fairly inexpensive to purchase.

While free email hosting can work for you on a short-term basis, there are many reasons why investing in a private email hosting provider is the best option for your company on a long-term basis.

More Hosting Resources

If you’re looking for more information about the best hosting solutions on the market, check out our other hosting guides:

• Best Website Hosting
• Best Website Hosting for Small Business
• Best SEO Web Hosting
• Best VPS Hosting
• Best Cheap Website Hosting Services
• Best WordPress Hosting Providers
• Fastest WordPress Hosting
• Best Enterprise WordPress Hosting
• Best WordPress Hosting for the UK
• Best Web Hosting for Australia

Conclusion – What is the Best Email Hosting Service to Use in 2023?

In this guide, we’ve established that there’s an email hosting service out there to suit everyone, whether you have a newly established startup, are in a larger corporation, or are looking for personal email hosting.

Overall, the best email hosting service is DreamHost. Every business can use Dreamhost and its features like automatic delivery filters, multi-device syncing, a mobile app, and a smart spam filter which are offered at an affordable price.

It comes with 25GB of storage space per mailbox and will work with any domain you own. And there are no ads, so you don’t have to worry about annoying pop-ups distracting you when you’re trying to write an important email.

There are several plans to pick from, and unlike many competitors, you can pay for email hosting from DreamHost on a monthly basis.

If you want to learn more about DreamHost, click the button below and start your journey toward streamlined, secure communication.

Email Host FAQs

Ryan Clancy

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Ryan Clancy

Ryan Clancy is an engineering and tech freelance writer and blogger, with 5+ years of mechanical engineering experience and 10+ years of writing experience. He's passionate about all things engineering and tech, especially mechanical engineering, and bringing engineering down to a level that everyone can understand. Ryan lives in New York City, and writes about mechanical and all other types of engineering and tech, at sites such as Engineering360, Electronics360, All About Cookies, EngineeringClicks, Clinked, Bricsys, FinanceBuzz, Mechanical Engineering HQ, and many more.

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