Featured Partners
1
IONOS
$1 per month
Yes
Yes
2
Wix
$17 per month
Yes
Yes
3
Bluehost
$1.99 per month
Yes
Yes
4
Hostinger
$2.69 per month
10% off w/ code: FORBES10
free domain, free email, free website backups
The Best Email Hosting Services of 2025
Forbes Advisor Ratings
Methodology
Our evaluation of the best email hosting services began by identifying nine of the top contenders in the category. We eliminated four services that focused on email marketing or reselling. To determine our top five, we rated the remaining email hosting services by applying 25 different metrics in four categories:
| Decision Factor | Scoring Weight | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer Sentiment | 40% | Our dedicated data team collected thousands of feedback points on the providers on our list to get a fuller picture of real-world experiences over time. |
| Value | 31% | The per-user, per-month cost of the product when purchased month to month and bought annually each accounts for half of the score in this category. |
| Features | 21% | Inbox size is the most important feature, representing 10% of the overall score. Encryption, phishing defenses, 2FA and calendars each are 5% of the service’s rating. |
| Service and Support | 8% | Offering support by telephone and live chat each account for 3% of the overall score. Being able to reach support using email and providing a knowledge base are each 2% of the rating. |
Read more: How we test web hosting services
What Is Email Hosting?
Email hosting refers to the technology that stores your email messages, files and other information on a remote server. Email hosting services also make it easy to set up and deploy individual email accounts for your employees. Whether it’s your personal email address, such as a Gmail account, or a work account, all email activity is hosted in some way.
How To Choose the Best Email Hosting Service
Before you start looking for the best email hosting service, assess what you absolutely need from your email hosting service and how it fits in with the rest of the technology that drives your business, and balance it against your budget and IT resources.
What kind of features are must-haves? If you were to deploy a given email hosting service, then would your IT team be able to deploy and manage it? Would employees resist adoption or take a long time to get up to speed? Do you even need to pay for email? These are the kinds of things that you need to take into consideration before you can begin comparing providers.
Essential Features
There is no universal checklist of essential email hosting services features. What’s best for one business might be a detriment to another. But with that said, there are some basic factors that everyone should take into consideration.
- Inbox size: Optimizing storage is crucial for effectively managing your emails, while minimizing IT costs. If your inbox size is too small, you may constantly run out of space, rendering your email useless. If you choose an inbox size that is much larger than what is required, then you’ll be paying for capacity that goes unused.
- Attachment size: Take into account the size and frequency of file attachments in your emails. If your business frequently sends or receives large files, then you might need an email hosting service provider that supports oversized attachments (you will need to take this into consideration when determining which inbox size you require).
- Security tools: Protecting your emails and data is not an option—it is a necessity. At the very least, your email hosting service should offer end-to-end encryption, spam filtering, malware scanning and integration with multifactor authentication platforms. But depending on the industry you work in, you might require additional features to keep secure data and comply with regulations.
- Calendar functionality: Email and calendar functionality have been vital components to enabling effective collaborative working environments. When you are considering your next email hosting service provider, make sure its calendar functionalities meet your needs or integrate with your workforce management platform.
- Mobile apps: Nearly half of all emails are opened on a mobile device. Before you commit to an email hosting service, make sure its mobile app supports your must-have features and works with the mobile platforms that your employees use to get the job done.
Support and Ease of Use
Comparing features and pricing is easy. Determining if an email hosting service provider supports a feature or not, or if it’s more or less expensive than a competitor, straightforward. The hard part about finding the best email hosting provider is finding the system that feels right to employees and isn’t too complex for your IT team.
If the system is difficult for employees to adopt and master or too difficult for your IT team to deploy and manage, then it will lead to inefficiencies that can cut into or completely wipe out any expected ROI.
Before you buy the platform that can fulfill your needs, explore how it looks and feels in your environment. Read reviews from reputable technology experts and watch demos online to see the platform in action, and take advantage of free trials so you can drive it before you buy it.
Free vs. Paid Services
Once you’ve defined your needs and start exploring options, you might come to think that you can get by using a free email hosting service. And sure, that might be true. You might be able to get by on the limited features, inbox storage and attachment size that comes with free email hosting services, and save a few bucks every year. And if your business is small, you can always upgrade to a paid plan as your needs and requirements change.
But skimping on email might be like reaching over a dollar to pick up a dime. Email is a relatively inexpensive IT service, and paid packages unlock a bounty of productivity-enhancing features and seamless integrations that might pay for itself. And if you’re already paying for web hosting, you might be able to add email to your package for a small upcharge.
Relying on the free version can leave your business vulnerable to serious cybersecurity threats. After all, many cybersecurity events start when someone opens an email. Free email hosting services won’t come with additional protections offered in paid packages that can prevent your business from becoming the next victim of a cyberattack.
Featured Partners
1
IONOS
$1 per month
Yes
Yes
2
Wix
$17 per month
Yes
Yes
3
Bluehost
$1.99 per month
Yes
Yes
4
Hostinger
$2.69 per month
10% off w/ code: FORBES10
free domain, free email, free website backups
How Much Does Email Hosting Cost?
| Low-Tier Price per Mailbox per Month (month to month) | Top-Tier Price per Mailbox per Month (month to month) | Discount for Annual Contract | Free Trial | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DreamHost | $1.99 | N/A | 16% | No |
| Fastmail | $4.00 | $10.00 | 10% to 25% | 30 days |
| Microsoft 365 | $7.20 | $26.40 | 16% | 30 days |
| Google Workspace | $7.20 | $21.60 | 16% | 14 days |
| Zoho Mail | $1.00 (annual contract) | $4.00 (annual contract) | N/A | 15 days (Premium only) |
Email hosting services are priced per user (or mailbox) per month and can usually be purchased by the month, or at a discount of 10% to 25% for an annual contract. However, some email hosting services, such as Zoho Mail, require an annual contract. The free version of Microsoft 365 includes Outlook, but it’s designed for individuals rather than businesses. Google Workspace Essentials Starter is available for free, but the product is intended as a way for people who use their business email to collaborate with Workspace users.
The lowest-priced email hosting service in our evaluation, Zoho Mail, costs as little as $1 per user per month (billed annually) but limits storage and lacks features many small businesses need, such as third-party integrations and enhanced security. Companies that bundle email hosting with other business services, including web hosting, productivity apps and team and project management, can expect to pay between $7 and $25 per user per month.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do I need hosting for email?
You don’t have to pay someone to host your email for you. You can host email on your own servers. However, that means you have to purchase, configure and maintain an email server and register your domain on your own. Using an email hosting provider will save companies a lot of time, money and frustration.
What kind of security measures do email hosting services use?
Similar to web hosting sites, email hosting services use several layers of security to protect the integrity of your email communications. These include end-to-end encryption, which obscures your data when its sent or received; two-factor authentication (2FA) or multifactor authentication (MFA), which means whoever accesses your email account must know certain information or have access to certain things, such as a mobile device or email address, to get into the account; and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption, which keeps email communications secure even when the network, such as a public network used in a library or cafe, is not.
Does my email and web hosting provider need to be the same?
There is nothing preventing a business from hosting their website with one provider, and their email on another. Keep in mind that many web hosting companies typically include a free email domain for customers.
What are some important features to look for in an email hosting provider?
Some essential features you will want to have include spam protection for your emails, such as spam filters; the ability to create and have an unlimited amount of email addresses for yourself and your employees; email forwarders for those times when you are away from the office; autoresponders, which can be used when you are unable to answer your emails and can also be used to supply informational responses to any general email addresses that you set up; and webmail software, which allows you to send emails using a web browser. You also want to have large mailbox sizes―preferably unlimited.
Are there free web hosting services available?
There are a few web hosting services available that allow you to send and receive emails at no charge, usually through webmail or POP clients and email or IMAP clients. Some examples of these include Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail. While these sites are free and generally offer a decent amount of storage space for individuals or small businesses, they offer limited cloud storage space that might be needed by medium or large businesses. They usually also have limited security measures in place, limited customer support options and no way to personalize your email address to represent yourself or your business.
Can I host my own email server?
You can host your email server. But in many cases, it’s not worth the hassle, especially with so many low-cost hosted email hosting services available. You have to purchase, deploy and look after your own server on top of managing your email platform, and you’re subject to outages if the server goes off-line.
How do I change my email hosting provider?
Changing your email hosting provider can be a bit of a pain. You’ll need to sign up with the new provider and configure your domain name with it. Next, set up the new email addresses in your new platform, forward emails from the old addresses to the new ones and configure the email tool to behave as required.
