Even solopreneurs can afford a custom email domain through affordable business email hosting services like ZOHO, Google Workspace or Microsoft. You just need to know how to get the best deal and what level of hosting to purchase.
Learn what to look for in email hosting and provide insights to help you manage your new email with ease.
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What is Business Email?
Business email is a dedicated email inbox for your business. Many small business owners appreciate having a dedicated email address to separate their personal and work interactions.
A business email address generally matches your website domain to instill confidence in your customers that they’re interacting with you securely and professionally. Professional email domains can help make your business look more legitimate and trustworthy.
According to research, 33% of consumers doubt the trustworthiness of generic business email addresses, such as Gmail addresses.
It’s quite simple to get a business email address. The easiest way is to look to your existing website host to add the service to your account. Since your billing and domain registration are already handled there, you’ll be able to add a professional email address with ease.
But you should also consider how you manage your new business email address. Once you have hosting, you’ll need a program to send, receive and organize your email. That’s where choosing the best email provider is helpful. Each email platform has its own benefits in speed, reliability, security and more.
Learn what to look for in a business email program and the best ones on the market in 2021.
What to Look for in a Business Email?
Before you can evaluate business email providers, you need to know the most important features to look for. Here’s how you can ensure you’re getting the best service for your money as you evaluate business email providers.
Security: Breaches can come from any technology within your business. Don’t allow your email to open you up to threats. Look for a service that includes anti-malware, anti-spam filtering and data loss prevention capabilities.
Affordability: Small businesses need an affordable solution that still helps them look professional. The total cost of an email service includes the domain, storage and additional services. If you have big plans for growth, look at the per email address cost and storage limitations so you know how well the plan will grow with you.
Administration: You should have control over your email environment to customize the experience to meet your needs. But also check on the level of assistance and customer support your plan includes to make sure you have the help you need when you need it. Look for services with 24/7 email, chat and phone support.
Compatibility and flexibility: You need access to your email from any device. Make sure your email service comes with web-based access and compatibility with mobile devices. While using native software on your devices is helpful for day-to-day management, you also want to be able to get to your email inbox on devices where you don’t have the software installed or configured. The more flexible the email service, the better for staying in contact with your customers.
Availability: Just like website hosts, email hosting providers can experience downtime. The trouble with email outages is that you miss out on timely communication with customers, vendors and business partners. Choose the best email hosting service with nearly perfect uptime and good availability from any operating system like iOS, Android, Windows or Mac.
Archiving and storage: You might need to archive messages for long-term reference. And while one email message doesn’t take up tons of storage space, you might be surprised how much storage one year’s worth of emails consumes. Be sure to purchase adequate storage and choose a service with good sorting and archival tools. This will make it easier to search for and reference old emails.
Cheap Business Email Providers
Just because an email provider is cheap doesn’t mean it’s a poor service. We’ve put together a listing of the most affordable email services that still provide the features you need to operate your business.
1. Best for Budget-conscious Businesses: Rackspace
Rackspace is among the most affordable business email offerings for small businesses. It’s a standalone service that provides 100% uptime with Outlook and a webmail application to make mobile use simple. With no ads and the ability to bring your domain with you, you’ll look professional at an affordable cost.
Pricing: Prices start at $1.99 a month per user. For more advanced features like shared calendars, Microsoft Office applications and instant messaging you’ll need to upgrade to the $3.99 a month per user plan.
Bundles: Bundle your Microsoft Office application with your email product for improved affordability. You can add other hosting services to your Rackspace account since it’s one of the leading cloud-hosting services for small businesses.
2. Best for All-in-one Business Applications: Zoho Mail
Zoho offers a variety of cloud-based apps to power your business from anywhere. And because Zoho also offers a CRM, you can integrate your efforts seamlessly and understand every touchpoint you have with a customer. You’ll have full control over your email configuration and customization through the control panel. With a mobile application, your email goes everywhere you go.
Pricing: Monthly per-user pricing starts at $1
Bundles: For just $3 a month, you can add an online file manager, word processor, spreadsheets, presentation software, chat and online meetings to your email plan. Get all your office software and tools in one place at an affordable cost.
3. Best for Free* Business Email Hosting: Hostinger
*When you purchase website hosting.
Hostinger is a trusted website host and when you purchase their shared website hosting service, you get business email accounts. But even if you’re not already a Hostinger customer, you’ll enjoy affordable pricing with an easy-to-use web client that includes calendaring and video meetings with up to 50 people. Mailbox sizes start at 10GB to give you the storage capacity you need for your business.
Pricing: Standalone email hosting starts at $.99 a month per mailbox.
Bundles: Hostinger provides many hosting services, including website hosting. You can get these services all in one place for a convenient way to manage your technology.
4. Best for Professional Gmail: Google Workspace
For businesses already familiar with Gmail and free Google productivity tools, Google Workspace is a great way to take your business’s appearance to the next level. You’ll get a fully-integrated suite of email, Google Docs, Hangout and Google Drive cloud storage.
Accessing the various services is simple from any device, which makes Google Workspace a great choice for companies on the go or with remote teams. With spam and virus protection, you’ll get peace of mind knowing that your email isn’t making your operations vulnerable. And you get 24/7 standard support with all plans.
Pricing: Prices start at $12 a month per user. Take some time to view the pricing plan comparison to learn what added tools and resources are available within each pricing tier.
Bundles: Get your cloud storage, video conferencing, chat, shared calendars, document management and more all in a single place with Google Workspace. The service is way more than just an email service but a full collaboration and communication toolset to help connect your team members.
5. Best for Exisitng Use of Microsoft Suite: Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 includes all Office desktop and online apps. You’ll get access to Outlook for managing your email. Storage plans start at 50GB, which should give you plenty of space for your email hosting. But you’ll also benefit from the many collaboration and storage tools that help power your business and connect your team.
Pricing: You can get started with the business basic tier for only $5 a month per user when you commit to an annual plan. You’ll have limited cloud services and office apps included, but it should cover your basic needs for a small business.
Bundles: Microsoft 365 is a bundled service that includes premium Office apps like Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You’ll also get cloud storage through OneDrive. If you host your email elsewhere, you’ll be looking at having to purchase these many services separately, which could really add up.
6. Best for Highly Custom Infrastructure: Amazon WorkMail
AWS is a top cloud-hosting service. WorkMail is an email service hosted on AWS, so you can ensure it’s reliable with good uptime and superb security.
And because it’s an AWS service, IT teams will love the customization you can make to meet your needs. The spam and virus protection is great and you’ll get 24/7 support via chat, phone and online tickets.
Pricing: Prices start at $4 a month per user.
Bundles: Bundle your cloud storage needs for the best pricing. You can host your website through AWS and your entire network if you’d like. You’ll need some technical resources though as AWS is certainly a more complicated service to navigate.
Overall Best Cheap Business Email Option
You cannot beat the price and bundled services Zoho Mail offers. Small businesses looking for a feature-rich, yet affordable and easy-to-use email option should look to Zoho Mail.
You’ll save time in training and configuration support as the cloud-based tools are simple and understandable for low-tech companies. The monthly per-user cost is extremely affordable for small businesses.
Find Cheap Business Email today
Review the full feature listings for several of these leading cheap email services. Weigh the pros and cons of each based on your company’s unique needs.
Ultimately, your internal technology resources and infrastructure will play a role in which service is best for you.
