Email is the backbone of business communication. For small businesses, it’s essential to have the right email hosting service. The email hosting services market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 18.76% between 2022 and 2027. (Source)

In this blog, we’ve made it easy for you by listing the ‘Best Small Business Email Hosting Services in 2024. Selecting the right email hosting service can improve your business’s communication. Let’s explore the top choices and find the one that suits your needs.”

Table of Contents

1. Why do you need Email Hosting
2. Factors to consider when choosing Email Hosting Services
3. Best Small Business Email Hosting Services in 2024
  3.1 Microsoft 365
  3.2 Google Workspace
  3.3 Zoho Mail
  3.4 IceWarp
4. Conclusion

1. Why do you need Small Business Email Hosting

Email hosting is crucial for individuals, businesses, and organizations because it facilitates communication, organizes data, and provides security.

• Professionalism: Using a custom email address (e.g., [email protected]) instead of a generic one (e.g., [email protected]) conveys professionalism. It reinforces your brand identity and shows that you’re a legitimate and established entity.

• Credibility: Custom email addresses instil trust and credibility in your recipients. People are more likely to engage with emails from recognized and professional domains.

• Branding: With email hosting, you have control over your email domain. This means you can align your email addresses with your website domain, reinforcing your brand and making it easier for people to remember how to contact you.

• Security: Email hosting services often have enhanced security features, such as spam and malware filters, encryption, and robust data protection. It is crucial to safeguard your business from cyber threats and data breaches to ensure its security and integrity.

• Reliability: Most email hosting providers offer high uptime guarantees, ensuring that your email services are available and reliable around the clock. Downtime can be costly in terms of missed opportunities and disrupted communication.

• Customization: Email hosting services typically provide various features and tools for customizing your email environment. You can set up rules, filters, and automated responses to manage your email efficiently.

• Scalability: As your business grows, your email hosting service should be able to scale with you.

• Collaboration: Many email hosting solutions include collaboration tools like shared calendars, address books, and file storage. These features help your team work together more effectively.

• Data Control: With email hosting, you can control your email data. This is especially important for businesses with sensitive information. You’re not reliant on third-party services to manage your data.

• Support: Reputable email hosting providers offer customer support to help you with any issues or questions. This ensures that you have a lifeline when encountering problems with your email service.

So, email hosting is crucial for maintaining a professional image, ensuring email security, and facilitating effective communication. Choosing this option provides numerous benefits, making it a wise decision for businesses and organizations of all sizes.

2. Factors to consider when choosing Small Business Email Hosting Services

When selecting small business email hosting services, it’s vital to weigh factors such as reliability, security features, scalability, and user-friendliness. Also, integration with other tools, customer support, cost, data backup, compliance, and user feedback. These considerations ensure you choose a service that meets your business needs, provides robust security, and supports efficient communication and data management.

3. Best Small Business Email Hosting Services in 2024

Let us delve deep into the best small business email hosting services in 2024.

3.1. Microsoft 365

Microsoft offers Office 365. Office 365 includes Word, Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and everything else you need to run your business efficiently. It is the best small business email hosting. You’ll also be able to use Microsoft tools for working together, such as Teams.

• Key Features of Small Business Email Hosting- Microsoft 365:

Monitor emails in real time and look for online threats all the time.

It works effectively across a variety of platforms and devices.

The packs come with Skype and MS Suite.

Video editing choices with Clipchamp.

You can use 1 TB of online storage.

• Pros and Cons:

You get more space with 1 TB of cloud storage than most services.

Microsoft is built on Azure, which is an excellent and stable platform. So, you can keep using the services with the most minor risks of disruptions.

The pricing structure is essential when considering how many people need email hosting services. Price changes can help more small businesses that want cheap email options.

Always connected to the internet, which limits many benefits when you’re not online.

This software is big, and older devices may have trouble running MS 365.

• Price:

$6 a month for online apps that work on phones, like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams.

$12.50 for tools that you can download for your computer, plus web and mobile apps (plus Publisher and Access).

$22 to improve security, limit access to data and systems, and protect against cyber threats

Just the apps cost $8.25; that’s it. It doesn’t include Microsoft Teams or Exchange business-class security for email.

You can pay every month too, but it will cost more.

3.2. Google Workspace

One of the best small business email hosts is Google Workspace. Google Workspace includes productive tools like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Drive, making it easy for people to work together and talk to each other in the cloud. It gives companies official email names and robust storage options to make their work more efficient.

• Key Features of Small Business Email Hosting – Google Workspace:

Business Starter users get 30 GB of shared storage, Business Standard users get 2 TB, and Business Plus and Enterprise users get 5 TB (extra storage is possible).

Users can have up to 30 email names and as many group email accounts as they want.

Google Names or another registrar can set up custom names.

Connectors: The Google Workplace Marketplace has a lot of third-party connections, such as Trello, DocuSign, Evernote, and Wrike. Protection against spam, viruses, and scams; two-factor authentication (FA); data encryption while it’s being sent and stored; context-aware access controls; rules and alerts to stop data loss

Help for customers: Standard support gives four-hour SLO for priority cases 24/7; you can buy improved support or get it as part of an Enterprise subscription.

You can get the Google Admin app for both Android and iOS.

• Pros:

Email works with other Google tools for working and running a business.

Each person gets 30 GB to 5 TB of shared storage.

Two-factor authentication and context-aware access controls are security features.

Gives you a 14-day free trial

• Cons:

Standard support packages don’t come with many choices.

Large and medium-sized businesses have to pay a lot for per-user rates.

It doesn’t give users a single Google Workspace mobile app; they have to download different Google apps separately.

• Price:

Business Starter costs $7.20 per user per month or $6 per user per month if paid yearly. Business Standard costs $14.40 per user per month or $12 per user per month if paid yearly. Business Plus costs $21.60 per user per month or $18 per user per month if paid yearly. Enterprise costs depend on a quote from the company.

3.3. Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail is a safe and easy-to-use small business email hosting service that is good for businesses that need professional email solutions with built-in schedules and task management. It gives you special email addresses for your domain and protects your data with strong encryption and spam filters.

• Key Features of Small Business Email Hosting- Zoho Mail:

Email Suite

You can use the Tasks module to create schedules and divide your work into manageable chunks.

The friends module lets you organize your friends into a single, simple address book.

You can add virtual sticky notes in any colour in the Notes section.

The Calendar section helps you keep track of all the meetings and events that are coming up.

Simple Migration.

It would help if you didn’t take this option for granted regarding your email provider. Moving all your files over is usually a pain, and you might even lose essential emails, contacts, and papers.

Luckily, Zoho Mail says it will make this process simple, easy, and straightforward. It has a helpful tool that lets you move your email from famous services like Office 365 and G Suite with just one click.

Safety and privacy. Safety of the building. Protection from threats.

1. Safe: Encryption at rest and while in transit

2. Two-factor authentication

3. Report of strange behavior

4. Zoho Mail is entirely in line with GDPR.

• Pros:

Up to five people can use the free plan.

Fee-based plans start at $1 monthly for each user with a yearly contract.

Zoho Mail Premium can be tried for free for 15 days.

With Zoho Mail Premium, you can attach files up to 1 GB in size. With Zoho Mail Lite, you can only connect 250 MB.

• Cons:

It does not offer monthly plans for email hosting.

Zoho Mail Premium is the only way to get email backups and eDiscovery.

• Pricing:

Zoho Workplace can be used by up to five users for free.  It has 5 GB of storage for Zoho Mail and Zoho Drive. Zoho Mail Lite costs $1 per user per month for 5 GB of storage and $1.25 per user per month for 10 GB of storage (billed annually); Zoho Mail Premium costs $4 per user per month (billed annually); Zoho Workplace starts at $3 per user per month (billed annually) and comes with secure business email.

3.4. IceWarp

IceWarp is another excellent choice for storing emails for small business email hosting. Like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Zoho Workspace, it has many tools for getting work done and a crazy amount of room for storage. It might be a good choice if you need a lot of space for your files and are happy with IceWarp’s Microsoft Word and Google Docs options. The only restriction is that at least ten people must use it.

• Key Features of Small Business Email Hosting- IceWarp:

Email Hosting:

Support for custom domain emails.

Reliable and secure email delivery.

Collaboration Tools:

Calendar sharing and scheduling features.

Task management and collaboration tools.

Security:

Advanced security measures such as spam filtering and antivirus protection.

Encryption for secure communication.

Mobile Accessibility:

Users can access emails and collaboration tools on their mobile devices.

• Pros of IceWarp:

A meagre monthly fee gets you a lot of cloud and mail store space.

It comes with a good set of office apps.

• Cons of IceWarp:

The all-in-one computer app might try to do too much.

At least ten users

• Price:

The small business email hosting’s price – IceWarp – The Startup plan for IceWarp costs $1.50 per user per month and comes with 200GB of email, 1TB of cloud storage per user, and IceWarp’s all-in-one web app. The Desktop plan for IceWarp costs $7 per user per month and comes with desktop office apps. For all plans, you need at least ten people.

4. Conclusion

It can be hard to pick an email hosting service because the wrong choice could affect how well your emails work and other marketing tasks you do. These are some of the best services out there. There is a broad selection of features and deals available for you to choose from.

Also, each business is different, and so are their needs. To help you make a choice, think about your company, the IT system you already have, the size limits for your inbox and attachments, the features you need, and other factors.