Best (Cheap and Reliable) Email Hosting Providers in 2021

Email hosting may sound straightforward, but the truth is that many services impose unreasonable limits on the number of addresses you can create or the amount of storage space on your account.

Some email hosting providers will lure you in with attractive base prices only to charge you for services that are free with most other hosts. For instance, you shouldn’t have to pay for a basic spam filter.

I’ve tested the best email providers so you don’t have to. Throughout my analysis, I prioritized security, affordability, and ease of use.

What We Look For in the Best Email Hosts for Business

As I was researching the best email hosting, I looked for services that offered:

• Email security. Because it often communicates critical business information, email is commonly targeted by malicious third parties. Some form of account protection from attacks, spammers, and viruses is mandatory.
• Ease of use. You should be able to create and manage email addresses easily. Integrations with mobile-friendly clients is preferred, since a significant portion of correspondence is read on mobile devices.
• Affordability. Just because it’s a business expense doesn’t mean you need to spend a fortune on it. My list only includes the best-value email hosts.
• Sender reputation. It takes just one account to be flagged as malicious to blacklist all emails sent from the shared IP. I looked for hosts that maintain an acceptable sender reputation.
• Number of email accounts and mailbox size. The more email aliases and storage space you get, the better. You don’t want to have to pay more every time you add a new member to your team.

See our step-by-step guide to setting up your email account once you’ve decided on the right email hosting provider for you!

1. InterServer – The Email Host with Unlimited Storage and Accounts 

InterServer takes the first position on my list thanks to its unlimited resources and ease of use. You can access your inbox from any device – desktop or mobile – as long as it has a browser and an internet connection.

In addition, you can configure the email client to use your preferred mail agent – Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook, Gmail, Horde, and more. This makes it easier to manage multiple accounts from one interface without having to switch accounts.

With InterServer’s email hosting, your onboarding experience will be handled by the customer support team. This is particularly useful if you already have a domain name or if you want to switch over from another email hosting provider.

Another big plus with InterServer is the full-featured shared hosting plan you get with your email hosting. With it, you can build a sleek portfolio website to serve as your business card.

The downside with InterServer is that you’ll have to purchase a domain name separately, since one isn’t included. Read more about InterServer in our expert review.

Features:

• Anonymous email. You don’t need to provide any sensitive personal information to create a secure email account. In addition, the company does not keep IP logs that can be traced to your email.
• Advanced spam filtering. InterServer’s firewalls check incoming emails for suspicious content. The host’s algorithms cross-check spam lists with external databases, including IP and domain reputation, before flagging an email as potential spam.
• Free managed migrations. Changing email hosting providers can be daunting, but InterServer makes the process as easy as possible. The company provides managed migrations free of charge; all you need to do is tell it where your domain is currently registered.

2. Hostinger – The Most Affordable Email Hosting Provider

In addition to being affordable, Hostinger’s professional email includes a lot of valuable features. The company uses Flock’s powerful email tool to deliver a lot of useful apps that complement email communication, such as calendar scheduling and video calls.

There’s also a search function you can use to find a particular topic or person, conversation threads, integrated video calls, read receipts, and more.

Hostinger is one of the few companies that let you purchase email hosting without also having to buy a web hosting plan.

But if you do want a web hosting plan with Hostinger, you can choose one of its cost-effective  shared plans, most of which come with unlimited email accounts.

If you need serious storage or you work with Google Apps a lot, the company has a Google Mail plan that integrates Hostinger’s dashboard with G Suite. The downside is that you’re limited to Flock, Outlook, or Gmail. If you want a different webmail client, you’ll have to configure it yourself.

Find out more about Hostinger in our expert review.

Features:

• Advanced integrations. Hostinger’s Titan email client gives you access to premium features. Start video calls with one-click meeting links or integrate your email with the most popular productivity apps, including Asana, Google Drive, and more.
• Antivirus and anti-spam. Your Hostinger email accounts have spam filters and antivirus automatically activated. These will prevent emails sent from malicious sources from ever reaching your inbox.
• Calendar management. With an embedded calendar function, you can keep track of your project goals and set reminders to bring back conversation threads at the optimal time.

3. A2 Hosting – Email Hosting with Auto-Responders

A2 Hosting doesn’t have specific plans for email hosting – but email addresses are included with all of its web hosting plans. Like InterServer, there’s no free domain name, unfortunately.

If you’re often away for extended periods of time, A2 Hosting’s auto-responder feature is a great plus. With it, you can set up a customized reply to incoming emails, so people know when you’ll be back or if there’s another way to get in touch.

While you can configure the server to handle emails via the IMAP or POP3 protocols, it’s best if you use IMAP.

With POP3, there’s a good chance that your emails will be deleted from the server when you download them. In addition, POP3 doesn’t support multiple simultaneous connections, which can be a problem if more than one person needs to use the email account.

Features:

• SpamAssassin and Barracuda spam filtering. Apache’s SpamAssassin is included by default, but you can also purchase Barracuda’s advanced spam filter with any of A2 Hosting’s plans. This is a premium solution for protecting your business against spam, phishing, malware, and DDoS attacks.
• One-click installer for email hosting software. The dashboard lets you install email clients and newsletter or mail list managers, which make your marketing campaigns easier to manage.
• Whitelist filtering. With the help of BoxTrapper, you can set whitelists for your email accounts. This feature greatly reduces spam and phishing, as people who aren’t on your whitelist have to complete a short verification process before their email gets to your inbox.

Read more about A2 Hosting’s features in our expert review.

4. SiteGround – Email Hosting with Easy-to-Use Control Panel

As is the case with most hosts on the list, SiteGround offers email solutions as part of its shared hosting plans. Although slightly more expensive than the previous companies on my list, SiteGround’s email hosting comes with a proprietary control panel (Site Tools), which is intuitive, modern, and easy to use.

SiteGround’s standard hosting plans come with built-in spam protection, unlimited email accounts, and unmetered data transfer. Unfortunately, total disk space and individual mailbox size are limited, from 2GB to 6GB per account, depending on your plan.

Higher-tier SiteGround plans include collaborator features. This lets you easily create individual accounts for your team, so they can connect to your dashboard with their own login details. A nice advantage of Site Tools is that collaborators don’t have access to your entire email communication, as they do with cPanel.

Features:

• Spam Experts. SolarWinds Spam Experts is a solid email security solution used by some of the biggest hosting companies. Its software processes roughly 2.5 million active domains every day, which makes its filtering system highly accurate.
• In-depth email hosting tutorials. If you don’t know where to start with professional email hosting, SiteGround has you covered. The knowledge base contains tutorials on everything from creating new mailboxes to setting up your business email on iPhones or Android devices.
• Delivery status notifications. SiteGround lets you set up your email client to send you a notification when your recipient reads the message you’ve sent, like a “Seen” feature from IM, but for email.

Find out more about SiteGround’s features in our expert review.

5. FastComet – Mobile-Friendly Email Hosting

FastComet includes email accounts with its hosting plans – but you can’t get email without the hosting. The feature list is comparable to what you can get with SiteGround, but the mail quotas are significantly smaller – from 0.5 GB to 2GB, depending on your plan.

FastComet offers unlimited email accounts and a lot of email security features. You get SpamExperts and SpamAssassin, as well as the benefit of ClamAV’s virus scanning. This open-source software is regularly updated and maintained by the tech gurus at Cisco.

Aside from being highly affordable, FastComet’s mail tutorials help you gain access to your business email on any mobile device. This is useful if you often check and respond to your emails on the go.

Features:

• Free virus scanner. The antivirus engine ClamAV has a decent virus database that will filter malware and known threats before they get to your inbox.
• Spam security. FastComet uses Spam Experts and SpamAssassin to filter email communications to and from its servers.
• Free managed migrations. If you’re switching from another email host, transferring to FastComet is incredibly easy. Just ask the tech experts to move everything for you. The best part about this service is that databases and websites are included.

Read more about FastComet’s features in our expert review.

Which Business Email Hosting Is Right for You?

Choosing the best email provider for you depends on your needs. Some services help you transfer your emails and databases, and most include web hosting as part of the package. The downside is that email plus web hosting is usually more expensive.

InterServer is the overall best email hosting service on my list because of the value it packs in its email hosting plans. The service has unlimited emails and storage, excellent security, and anonymous email.

Hostinger offers the best low-cost email hosting, as it is one of the few companies that has plans for email hosting only. As with InterServer, the shared hosting plans give you plenty of email accounts. You get a free domain name to set up your professional email if you buy at least one year of hosting.

To get started with your new email account, you can follow our step-by-step guide to setting up email in hPanel, cPanel, and Plesk.

I’ve summarized the best features of the email hosting services on my list in the table below:

FAQ

What is the best email hosting for business?Any host on my list would be a great choice, but figuring out the best email host comes down to the needs of your company. For instance, InterServer is the best overall solution for businesses. You can create aliases for everyone in your company, not to mention that you’ll never have to worry about attachments crowding your inbox. If you want to keep expenses to a minimum, Hostinger has affordable email hosting plans that do not come with web hosting included. A big pro with Hostinger is that you can also host video calls and integrate your business email with other apps, such as Gmail, Asana, and more. Because of the importance of professional email, most web hosts include email hosting in their web hosting plans. If you’d like to compare some of the top hosting providers and their email solutions, check out our list of the best hosting services.What is email hosting?Email hosting is a service wherein a hosting provider stores all your emails on one of its servers. Professional email hosting is better than free email hosting for several reasons:

• You can use your own domain name for the email address (e.g., [email protected]).
• You benefit from additional security.
• You can tailor your email experience to your (and your organization’s) needs.
• You can integrate the mail client with other applications and productivity tools.
• You get access to advanced support.

Do keep in mind that some of these features vary in complexity and availability across email providers.What does domain mean in email setup?The domain is the part that comes after the @ in an email address. Free email providers get to slap their own domain on your email (e.g., [email protected]), which isn’t the most professional look. If you’d like a custom domain in your email setup, you have to register a domain name with a domain registrar (e.g., Hostinger, SiteGround, InMotion Hosting), and then purchase email hosting to go with it. Since domains are public property, you have to renew them by paying a fixed amount every year – it’s a lease rather than a purchase. If you don’t renew your domain, you’ll lose rights to it and someone else can buy it, which means you won’t be able to use your custom email address.How do I set up business email?If you’re using an email hosting service, you can create a business email account from your hosting dashboard. The process is usually straightforward. For example, on Hostinger’s dashboard, there’s an Email Accounts section under Emails. There, you fill in the details and click Create New Account. It’s that easy. If you want additional functionalities or access from mobile devices, there are numerous free email clients you can use, such as Thunderbird, Horde, or Roundcube, among others. For a step-by-step guide, see our how to guide for setting up your business email using cPanel, Plesk, or hPanel.