An email is your virtual address in the digital world, and it’s a direct way for people to message you online. No matter your business size or if you live in a remote area, an email address is very much needed for plenty of everyday tasks.
Email communication is among the most important in our era. From being a rudimentary means of communication back in the 90s, email is used everywhere today and is a helpful tool for many services and for ourselves. Governments now use email to communicate with civilians, while eCommerce uses it for marketing purposes.
Currently, there are tons of things an email can help us with. Most of us regularly check our emails but have you ever wondered if there’s a better email hosting provider service out there? Your needs might be fundamental – and changing an email address on every possible platform might seem like a chore, but it’s worth a shot.
In this article, we’ll discuss the best email hosting providers of 2023, the free and the premium ones, and give you our point of view.
Getting A New Email Service Provider: Things to Keep In Mind
When choosing a new email hosting provider, you should keep a few things in mind before making your next step.
- Price: Make sure the price is right for you. Some providers offer free accounts, while others charge a monthly fee. Those who are free might have other limitations, the most common being the lack of a personalized email address.
- Security: Your emails should be protected with strong security measures, such as SSL encryption, end-to-end encryption two-factor authentication while logging in. A secure email ensures all your data are kept safe from prying eyes and go-betweens.
- Storage capacity: How much storage do you need? Most providers offer a range of options, from a few gigabytes to unlimited storage, so you can rest assured that all your attachments will be saved.
- Spam filtering: Ensure the email service has robust spam filtering tools to keep your inbox clean from malicious attempts to steal your information – like phishing and spam emails.
- Ease of use: The provider should be easy to use, with a user-friendly interface. These and a carefully designed smartphone app are essential to always have your email with you.
- Customer support: If you have any problems with your account or need help using the service, ensure the provider has good customer support that can solve any issues and answer all your questions promptly.
Best Email Providers 2023
Several well-known email services, including Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail, offer plenty of features, even for free. So let’s get started and show you all the email service providers you want to know about!
Gmail by Google
Gmail is currently one of the most well-known email services, available in 105 languages. As of 2019, it dominated the market by having 1.5 billion active users. These numbers are due to the search engine’s popularity, meaning that many people around us have a Gmail account.
Gmail is one of the most popular email service providers and offers 15GB of storage capacity and up to 25MB of attachments per email in their free plan. It has robust spam filtering tools and a user-friendly search-oriented interface, keeping the usual design with the sidebar on the left.
Gmail isn’t end-to-end encrypted, even though Google has been working on it since 2014. It’s a webmail service with a smartphone app for iOS and Android devices and integrates particularly well with all the other Google services, like Google Drive and Google Photos. Another great feature is the ability to un-send email messages while it offers offline access to your emails.
The free plan is based on the @gmail.com domain, and it’s available to use by anyone with a Google account. Professionals looking to upgrade for more features can opt-in for a Workspace account.
This adds more accessible communication and shared calendars with your co-workers, effortless document editing in real-time, extended video conferences and much more. The Individual edition of Google Workspace starts from $7.99, while every option comes with two-factor authentication and TLS encryption algorithms.
Microsoft Outlook
What started as an Office suite program turned into personal information manager software. Microsoft is another popular email service provider and offers a variety of plans, including a free plan with limited storage capacity.
The once well-known Hotmail webmail rebranded in 2012 as Outlook to have a similar name to the email client in Microsoft Office.
The free account of Outlook offers a webmail interface at outlook.com and a fixed domain name @outlook.com. The free version won’t provide ads based on what you type like Gmail does, but it can sort your emails based on their importance with the Focused Inbox mode.
Outlook provides users with 15GB of free storage or 50GB for the paid plan and up to 20MB of attachments per email. Some valuable additions are the two-factor authentication and the TLS encryption for the free plans, while the paid plans offer more encryption options and more features.
The subscription-based options include the Microsoft 365 product range for Home and Business with the whole Office suite, starting from $69.99/year for personal use and $99.99/year for families of 2-6 people.
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail is another good option and one of the oldest free email service providers since it launched in 1997.
With a wide range of features and a user-friendly interface Yahoo! Mail is considered one of the good choices for a free email account, albeit it’s still surrounded by controversies that happened in the early years.
Users can easily access third-party accounts within Yahoo! Mail through a unified interface. It’s available both in a webmail format and in smartphone apps for iOS and Android. Yahoo! Mail follows other market standards by providing an easy search and newsletter subscription options. Still, it offers 1000GB of free storage space, which is well above the market average.
Even in the free account, Yahoo! Mail can scan for interesting bits in your emails, like trial periods, gift cards or deals that expire soon, creating reminders so that you can act in time.
The premium version of Yahoo! Mail costs $5/month. It removes ads, boosts the email storage to 5000GB, and offers up to 500 disposable email addresses to keep the real ones for yourself.
Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail is a lesser-known email service provider that offers an excellent service for businesses with features comparable to the Google suite.
It has many business features, including custom domains, 247 support, and hassle-free migration from other providers. It also comes with all the tools to collaborate with your co-workers effectively with an expansive apps suite.
Zoho Mail offers excellent security features, including two-factor authentication and TLS encryption. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses that want to secure their communications. Along with the security features, Zoho Mail aims at a clean inbox with filters, advanced search, and auto-reply to keep everything organized.
The free plan from Zoho Mail provides 5GB of storage and a custom domain. The paid plans start from $1/month/user and offer more storage, additional features such as collaboration tools, email attachments up to 250MB, and integration with other Zoho products.
Proton Mail
Proton Mail is one of the most secure email service providers, making it a good choice for those concerned about privacy.
Proton Mail uses open-source end-to-end encryption, which means your emails are encrypted before they are sent and can only be decrypted by the intended recipient. This makes it impossible for anyone to read your emails, even Proton Mail.
Protected by Swiss privacy laws and neutrality, Proton Mail aims at a privacy-driven email setup while offering a free email account. The free email account is more limited, offering 1GB of storage and a cap of 150 emails per day. It adds two-factor authentication and a medium-speed VPN connection for increased security.
With Mail Plus, you get 1 custom email address, 15GB of storage, up to 10 email addresses, unlimited messages and up to 20 separate calendars for 3.99€/month. Alternatively, you can opt-in for Proton Unlimited to get access to 500GB of storage, up to 3 custom email domains and 10 high-speed VPN connections.
Apple iCloud Mail
Apple iCloud Mail is a popular email service provider, especially among Apple product users. It is included as part of the Apple ID suite of services and provides 5GB of storage for free, and it leans toward better data encryption.
iCloud Mail offers a user-friendly interface and a wide range of features, including the ability to access your emails from any device. It also provides a wide range of integrations, including the Calendar app, so you can easily keep track of your schedule. iCloud Mail is free when buying an Apple device since you have to create an Apple ID to use it.
The paid version of iCloud Mail, dubbed iCloud+, starts at $0.99/month and gives you 50GB of storage. For 2TB of storage, you’ll need to pay $9.99/month, while a more balanced option is $2.99 offering 200GB of storage. Apple holds an extended pricing table regarding iCloud+.
Fastmail
Fastmail brings up the matter of privacy, and that’s its most prominent feature. It even compares it with Gmail to state that the latters’ privacy is not a primary concern.
This service comes with smartphone apps and offers a satisfactory webmail interface that’s easy to use and swift. Fastmail supports custom email domain addresses, agile spam blocking, and import tools to get started fast.
It also boasts a no-ad policy on all versions. It doesn’t come with a free plan, but instead, you start at a pretty cheap $3/month/user subscription with a 30-day trial that’s enabled even after you pay immediately.
Tutanota
Continuing this list of the best email providers, we find Tutanota. It’s a German email service provider that offers a secure email service.
This email service provider encrypts emails with AES-128 and RSA-2048, which makes them unreadable to anyone other than the sender and recipient. This service is all based on open-source code, while the Android app is free from the shackles of Google Play, and it’s offered on F-Droid, the free and open-source app repository.
Tutanota is a good choice for businesses that want to protect their confidential data. It also offers a free email service with limited storage but comes with no ads and no tracking. Tutanota or any other third party cannot read the encrypted emails.
The free version also boasts 1GB of storage and 25MB of attachment files, coming close to the popular alternatives on this list. Paid plans start from €1/month for a 12-month subscription and include more features, such as custom domains and more email aliases, than the free plan.
Titan
Titan is another email service designed for businesses with security in mind. It offers a range of features, including the ability to encrypt emails, set up rules for handling emails, and create contact groups. Titan has partnered with many email hosting companies like Hostinger, HostGator and WordPress, offering deep integration into their control panels.
The integrated email templates are a true time-saver as they ensure you always reply promptly and with a message that resonates perfectly with your recipients.
Titan offers a scheduled send, much like the one on Gmail, and offers read receipts so that you don’t miss the opportunity of a perfect follow-up email. Follow-up emails, though, are already present on Titan and can remind you to reply to that email if you have no response.
It offers a range of integrations, including the Calendar app, so you can easily keep track of your schedule. The paid versions of Titan aren’t that clear, with various sources saying it starts from $1.49/month for a 12-month subscription.
GMX Email
GMX Email (Global Mail eXchange) is a German email service provider offering free email services with 65 GB of storage. It also gives users a range of features, including the ability to set up auto-responders and create spam filters and rules.
The interface is clean and easy to use, and the service comes with a mobile app to access your emails on the go. GMX Email also offers email attachments up to 50MB in size and various integrations like a contact book and an organizer. It also has end-to-end encryption using the PGP (OpenPGP – Pretty Good Privacy) encryption standard.
It also offers a wide range of features, such as filters, folders, and auto-reply, to help you organize your inbox. The paid version of GMX Email starts at €3.99/month and includes additional features such as a custom domain, more storage, and priority customer support.
Benefits of Paid Email Service Providers
Paid email services offer several benefits over a free email provider. Some features, like better spam filtering, should be double-checked. Regarding storage and customer support, it’s almost certain that every email hosting provider in this article has a decent number of gigabytes for everyday use.
- Better spam filtering: Paid email services have more powerful filtering tools to keep your inbox clean and spam-free.
- More storage space: Paid providers typically offer more storage than free providers. This can be important if you have a lot of emails to store or use your email account for business purposes.
- Enhanced security: Paid email service providers typically have more robust security measures than free providers, such as SSL encryption and two-factor authentication. This can help keep your emails safe from hackers and other online threats.
- Better customer support: Paid providers typically offer better customer support than free providers. You can contact the provider’s customer support team for assistance if you have any problems with your account or need help using the service.
Some paid email service providers include Microsoft Outlook, Google Gmail, and iCloud Mail. These providers offer a range of features, such as filtering, storage capacity, and security measures. They also have user-friendly interfaces and offer good customer support.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to email providers, there’s definitely an option for every use case. Whether you decide to go with a paid or free provider, be sure to look for features that are important to you and that will make your email experience better.
Some email services offer increased security and privacy, sometimes for free, albeit with some ads. You might already use Gmail and Outlook as they’re the top free email services. Their features are plenty, considering they’re free, but they have been accused of misusing user data.
Paid email services typically offer more storage space, enhanced security measures, and better customer support than free providers. So, if these things are essential, then a paid email provider may be the right choice for you.
Keep in mind, though, that spam filtering is usually better on paid providers, so double-check their features and use every email provider’s comparison tables before making a decision.