Creating a custom email address – or several of them – is a great way to look more professional and to better organize your email communication. At the same time, it’s also an added expense. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure that you’re not spending more than you need when it comes to email hosting.
The post 8 Best Budget-Friendly Email Hosting Providers (One Is Free!) appeared first on Themeisle Blog.
Creating a custom email address – or several of them – is a great way to look more professional and to better organize your email communication. At the same time, it’s also an added expense. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure that you’re not spending more than you need when it comes to email hosting.
Luckily, there are some great cheap options that can help you set up your own mailbox for as little as…$0. That’s not a typo. There is a genuine free option and it’s really good, but it’s not the only game in town. Each of the eight providers on this list have their own unique strengths and considerations that make them an ideal choice for different purposes. We’ll explore all of them in detail so that you can decide on the one that’s best for you.
⚡ Pro tip: Many hosting companies offer free email hosting alongside their web hosting plans, which is a great way to save money by bundling everything together. If you plan on doing this, then we recommend Hostinger. With our special deal, you’ll not only get hosting for your website, but also a free domain in your first year and up to 100 email addresses! All that for only $2.69 per month!
Our thoroughly researched roundup 📧
In a rush? Here’s a quick comparison table showing the entry-level plan details of each company:
ProviderPrice from (per month)Mailboxes(users)StorageEmail aliasesZoho$0 Zoho has a 100% free forever plan.55 GBPer mailbox.❌30 available in paid plans.IONOS$1Contract is month-to-month. IONOS also includes a free domain name for as long as you maintain a contract.12 GBUnlimitedPurelymail$0.83Based on an annual contract of $10 per year.UnlimitedUnlimitedThere is no cap, but if you are an extremely heavy user then you might be asked to switch to a resource-pricing model instead – which is still priced very reasonably.❌Although this feature is not available, you can emulate it by creating disposable users and routing them to your target address.Namecheap$0.99Based on an annual contract of $11.88 in the initial year. Renewal price is billed at $14.88 per year, which comes out to $1.24 per month.15 GB10Per mailbox. Higher level plans have higher amounts.Tuta *€3Based on an annual contract of €36.120 GB15FastMail *$4.67Based on a 3-year contract of $168. Lower time commitment contracts available at higher prices.150 GB615Plus an additional 15 for every extra mailbox added to the account.Proton Mail *$3.49Based on a 2-year contract of $83.76 in the initial period. Renewal price is billed annually at $59.88 per year, which comes out to $4.99 per month.115 GB10Hostinger$1.59Based on an annual contract of $19.08.110 GB50* Cheaper plans available, but with no custom domain support. All plans above reflect the cheapest possible option with custom domain support.
If you’re looking for email hosting for a team rather than only for you, then Zoho or Purelymail are good options to start with, since their entry-level plans support more than one mailbox. Depending on your needs, they might already be sufficient enough. However, if you require even more horsepower, then rest assured that all of the providers above are scalable and let you add additional mailboxes/users.
We’ll cover their plans in more detail below.
One potentially confusing aspect of choosing an email hosting provider is the interchangeable use of certain terms that may sound similar, but are technically different.
Common terms include usersUsersIndividuals who have unique login credentials to access specific services or email accounts., mailboxesMailboxesStorage locations on an email server where emails are received, stored, and managed., inboxesInboxesA specific section within a mailbox where incoming emails are delivered and displayed., email addressesEmail AddressesThe addresses used to send and receive emails, typically in the format username@domain.com., and email aliasesEmail AliasesAlternative email addresses that route emails to a primary email address’s inbox, without requiring separate mailboxes.. All five of those have their own distinct meanings, but in practice, the first three words are often used interchangeably (despite their differences). On the other hand, email addresses are also sometimes used in lieu of those first three words, but to make things more confusing, they can be used to refer to email aliases as well.
In the context of our write up here, we will use mailbox and user interchangeably, but just be aware that in certain cases the providers themselves will treat these differently. This is due to how they structure their accounts and plans, where they might offer one mailbox, but they’ll provide multiple user access to that same mailbox. It’s more of a rare exception than the rule, but it’s good to be aware of it. As for email aliases, we will never refer to them as email addresses. We hope this helps make it easier to navigate not only this article, but also the companies’ websites.
1. Zoho Mail
Free plan ✅ supports up to 5 users, with 5 GB storage per user, and integration with 1 custom domain.
Cheapest paid plan is $1 per user, per month (billed annually) and has the same 5 GB storage limit as the free plan, but unlocks over 20 other useful features.
Best choice for a wide variety of use cases and a strong contender for the overall cheapest option on the list thanks to its generous free plan. If the free plan is adequate for your needs then your only expense will be buying a domain name.
Overview 📧
Zoho Mail is first on our list of hosted email providers because it’s the only option that offers free email hosting with custom domain support. Depending on how much you end up spending on a domain name, it would make Zoho either the cheapest overall option on the list, or second (after IONOS, which is next on the list).
The downside of Zoho’s free email hosting plan is that it only allows for web access. This means you can’t connect it to your own preferred email client, like Gmail, and instead you have to use Zoho’s webmail. If that doesn’t bother you, then great. If it does, then you can always upgrade to one of Zoho’s paid plans, which are still extremely affordable.
For instance, the entry-level Mail Lite plan costs only $1 per user, per month. It gives you the same 5 GB per user limit that the free plan does, but you get a vast array of features stacked on top of it. Plus if you find 5 GB to be too limiting for your needs, then all you need to do is spend an extra 25 cents more per month to double that to 10 GB.
Included in the cheapest paid plan 📝
IMAP and POP3 so you can connect to external email clients
Email routing
30 domain aliases
Higher attachment limits (250 MB)
Email recall (for those “Oh crap!” moments)
Email and folder sharing in organizations
Dedicated mobile apps
Zia, an AI-powered email assistant powered by OpenAI
If you need more 💰
For a more heavy-duty plan, you can upgrade to Mail Premium for $4 per user, per month. With that you’ll get everything in Mail Lite, plus 50 GB of storage per user, a 1 GB attachment limit, email backup, encryption, and some other features.
2. IONOS
Free domain ✅ included for as long as you continue to pay for your service.
Cheapest plan costs $1 per month (billed month-to-month) and includes 1 mailbox with 2 GB of storage.
Best choice for individuals with lower storage requirements. If you only need email hosting for yourself and don’t have a domain purchased yet, then it’s hard to find a better deal elsewhere.
Overview 📧
IONOS is a very cheap option for individual email hosting for two reasons:
The Mail Basic 1 plan costs just $1 per month for 2 GB of storage
You get a free domain to use for your email address – you can choose from four domain extensions: .com, .net, .us, or .online
Given that a free .com domain is worth at least $10 per year (but usually goes for around $14 to $16), you might wind up paying less than you would with Zoho’s free email hosting. What’s more, you’ll still be able to use your own email client and sync your email on all devices. You can also stick with IONOS’ webmail if you prefer.
The downside is the 2 GB storage limit. To raise that, you can buy a 5 GB email archive add-on for $2.50 a month, which will bring your total space to 7 GB for $3.50 per month. While the 5 GB is an archive, meaning it will sit outside of your active inbox, you can restore any emails you need from that archive whenever you want. Alternatively, you can upgrade to a higher plan.
Included in the cheapest plan 📝
Free domain
Spam filter
No ads
Webmail access
IMAP, POP3, and SMTP support for use with external email clients
Email forwarding
Email synchronization across devices
If you need more 💰
For upgrades, you have a few options. You can go with the Mail Basic 1+ plan to expand your inbox to 12 GB for $4 per month.
If you’re part of a team, you can also use the Mail Business plan which ups the storage to 50 GB per user and gives you team collaboration tools, like shared emails and calendars. The price for the team plan depends on how many users you need:
1 user – $5 per month
5 users – $15 per month ($3 per user)
10 users – $25 per month ($2.50 per user)
Another option for teams which isn’t advertised on their website but you can ask about is the Mail Basic 25 plan. This plan supports up to 25 users for $3 per user, per month. Each user gets 2 GB of space. It’s a great choice for teams with lower storage demands that don’t want to spend a lot of money.
3. Purelymail
Only two plans to choose from, which keeps things really simple.
The plan most people will use is only $0.83 per month (billed annually) and doesn’t cap you in any way (unlimited everything). However, if you’re a very heavy user then you may be asked to move to the other plan.
Best choice for small to medium organizations that experience fluctuation in their users and resource demands. Since the main plan doesn’t cap your limits, you can adjust users without having to worry about plan thresholds.
Overview 📧
If we take total cost into account, meaning both the purchase of a custom domain and email hosting together, then Zoho’s Forever Free plan and IONOS’s Mail Basic 1 plan are cheaper than Purelymail’s simple $10 per year plan. That’s because both of those plans give you one half of the email equation for free. Zoho gives you free email hosting and IONOS gives you a free domain. Purelymail doesn’t freely give you either. However, it still gives both Zoho and IONOS a run for their money for a different reason.
The fact that you can add as many users as you want with no cap on storage space means you have one less thing to think about or monitor. If you need to add an extra user, you just do it. You don’t have to pay attention to see if you’re about to cross over the limits of your plan. You just pay your $10 every year and go about your business. Compare that to Zoho’s plan, where if you end up adding a sixth user, you’ll be bumped into their entry-level paid plan at $6 per month. That’s a lot more than $0.83 per month with Purelymail.
With that said, even though there aren’t any official “hard limits” on anything, if you or your organization end up putting a significant strain on the resources of your plan, then you might be asked to move into Purelymail’s advanced pricing plan. This plan is priced based on resource costs. You can also choose this plan up front.
Included in both plans 📝
IMAP and POP3 support if you want to connect to external email apps
Webmail option powered by Roundcube
2FA for security
At-rest encryption for all mail messages, using encryption cryptographic constructs
Spam filtering via Spam Assassin
Subaddressing
Advanced pricing plan details 💰
If you do end up moving into Purelymail’s advanced pricing plan or you choose it from the get go, then you can expect the following costs:
$4 annual account charge
$0.56 per compressed GB, per year
$0.03 per 1000 emails received, plus $0.04 per GB
$0.23 (if sent externally) or $0.03 (if sent within the same account) per 1000 emails sent, plus $0.18 per GB
There is no charge for using your own custom domain (which you need to buy separately).
If all that sounds like too much math for you, don’t worry. Purelymail has a calculator on their site where you can put in your anticipated usage needs and it will generate your approximate total cost.
4. Namecheap
Cheapest plan is $0.99 per month (billed annually) and renews at $1.24 per month (also billed annually). That gives you 1 mailbox with 5 GB. You can add additional mailboxes (each with another 5 GB) for only $0.74 extra per month.
Best choice for any size businesses, but especially those experiencing rapid growth who will want a way to easily add extra mailboxes to their plan while keeping costs low. Also a great option for those who think they might need additional web tools down the line (beyond email).
Overview 📧
In terms of per-user prices, Namecheap is one of the cheapest email hosting providers on this list if you only need two or three mailboxes. That’s because its Starter plan costs just $0.99 per month in the first year and each additional mailbox costs only $0.74 per month extra. On that cheapest tier, you have a fairly limited feature list, but it includes everything you need for a basic custom email service, including 5 GB of storage (per mailbox).
Included in the cheapest plan 📝
Spam protection
2FA
10 email aliases
Webmail access
IMAP and POP3 support for use with external email clients
Mild customization options (colors, logos, handwritten signature embeds, etc)
If you need more 💰
For more storage or features, Namecheap offers the Pro and Ultimate plans. These are also priced annually, but break down to the following monthly costs:
Pro – $2.50 for three mailboxes + $2.16 per additional mailbox and 30 GB of storage space
Ultimate – $4 for five mailboxes + $3.32 per additional mailbox and 75 GB of storage space
The prices above reflect the initial promo rate. The renewal prices are slightly higher ($3.49 and $5.99, respectively) but the additional mailbox and storage space costs remain the same. The Pro and Ultimate plans also offer collaboration features like shared emails, documents, spreadsheets, appointments, and more.
5. Tuta
Free plan ✅ gives you 1 mailbox with 1 GB storage, but does not support ❌ a custom domain connection. You can choose from one of Tuta’s five default domain extensions or upgrade.
Cheapest paid plan is €3 per month (billed annually) and is for personal use (they have a separate line of business plans). It gives you 1 mailbox with 20 GB of storage. Plus you get 15 email aliases, the ability to connect up to 3 custom domains, and other features like autoresponders.
Best choice for individuals or businesses who care about privacy and security. Tuta is obsessed with both and provides sophisticated encryption at every layer of your mailbox.
Overview 📧
Tuta (formerly Tutanota) is a German-based company that’s obsessed with data privacy and security. In fact, the original name of the brand was derived from the Latin words “tuta” meaning “secure” and “nota” meaning “message.” Semantics aside, the team at Tuta puts some serious encryption tech behind their mission. They were the first end-to-end encrypted email provider and to this day they encrypt more of your email data than any other provider. They even encrypt your email subject lines!
Aside from privacy and security, they also have some very attractive pricing. For personal use, if you don’t care about being able to use your own domain name and don’t mind having something like yourname@tuta.io for an email address, then you can go with their free plan. It comes with 1 GB of storage space.
If you do want to be able to use a custom domain with your email, then their initial paid plan, called the Revolutionary plan, supports up to three. It’s priced at €3 per month, paid yearly, and comes with 20 GB of storage.
Included in the cheapest paid plan 📝
25 MB attachment limit
15 email aliases
Web, mobile, and desktop apps
Password-protected emails (optional use)
Autoresponder
2FA
Unlimited folders
HTML signatures (customize with logos, links, etc)
If you need more 💰
For heavier users, they have an even higher personal tier called Legend. It costs €8 per month (paid annually) and ups your storage to a whopping 500 GB! Plus you can use up to 10 custom domains.
Tuta’s business options start with the Essential plan, which is priced at €6 per user, per month (paid annually). The features are very similar to the entry-level personal plan, with the exception being that you get 50 GB of storage instead of 20 GB. There are also two additional plans above this one, priced at €8 and €12 per user, per month (paid annually).
6. Fastmail
Cheapest plan is $2.80 per month (on a three year contract) and supports 1 user with 5 GB of storage. However, this plan does not support ❌ a custom domain connection.
Cheapest plan with custom domain support is $4.67 per month (on a three year contract) and supports 1 user with 50 GB of storage space. There’s a personal version of this plan and a business version. For the business version, each additional user is another $4.67.
Best choice for either individuals or businesses who want a robust set of email tools at a reasonable price. You’ll get access to things like email scheduling, the option to tag certain contacts as VIP, masked emails, notification customizations, and more.
Overview 📧
Fastmail isn’t the cheapest option on the list, which is also why it’s lower on the list, but for the extra cost it does offer a lot of features in return. Right off the bat, if we compare all of the companies’ lowest priced plans that support custom domains, then Fastmail has the highest storage limit by far – 50 GB.
Before you jump in and say that Purelymail has unlimited storage, while that’s true, if you look at their advanced pricing details, then you can see that they charge $0.56 per GB. In practice, this means that there’s no way they’d let you get even close to 50 GB on their $10 a year plan. You’d most certainly be asked to change to the advanced pricing plan well before then. Hence why Fastmail’s Standard plan is the true winner in the storage category.
Alongside the Standard plan’s impressive storage limit is an equally impressive set of features that any business or organization with more advanced email needs would appreciate. Think of it as having Gmail muscle but with way better privacy.
Included in the cheapest paid plan with custom domain support 📝
600 email aliases, plus 15 for each mailbox on the account
Masked email generator
Spam blocking and adjustable spam settings
Customizable inbox with theme choices and dark mode option
Schedule emails to be sent ahead of time
Automatically sort your mail with rules
Select VIPs to prioritize important contacts
Sync with Google’s suite of apps (Sheets, Docs, Drive etc), as well as Dropbox, iCloud, 1Password
Built on JMAP, the latest email standard
If you need more 💰
The Standard plan mentioned above is part of Fastmail’s business plans lineup. There is another business plan above it called Professional. This one costs $8.40 per user, per month on a three year contract with lower time commitments available at slightly higher prices. It includes a massive 100 GB of storage space per user, along with email retention for legal compliance. It’s probably overkill for most organizations, but useful for large corporations or for those who work in the legal, medical, or financial fields.
There’s also a separate line of personal email plans. These are called Individual, Duo, and Family and they support 1, 2, and 6 mailboxes, respectively. Each user gets 50 GB.
7. Proton Mail
Free plan ✅ gives you 1 mailbox with 500 MB of storage, but Proton states that you can unlock up to 1 GB along the way (whatever that means). It does not support ❌ a custom domain connection (you have to upgrade to paid).
Cheapest paid plan is $3.49 per month (on a two year contract) and renews at $4.99 per month (billed annually). It supports 1 user with 15 GB of storage and up to 10 email aliases.
Best choice as an alternative to Tuta. It’s also focused on security and privacy, but comes with its own unique set of benefits that you won’t get with Tuta (e.g., a VPN service).
Overview 📧
Proton Mail is part of Proton’s lineup of tools, which also include Proton Drive, Proton Pass, Proton Calendar, and Proton VPN. They offer a similar level of security and privacy to Tuta, but with an impressive suite of added tools on top of it. Unbelievably enough, Proton even gives you access to these tools on their free plan – with limitations of course. But still, how many companies are going to give you a VPN (just as one example) on a free account? Not too many.
Proton’s generosity extends over to their paid plans as well. The entry-level option, dubbed Mail Plus, costs $3.49 per month in your initial two-year contract (paid up front), and renews at $4.99 per month. It supports 1 user, gives you 15 GB of storage space, and a whole lot more.
Included in the cheapest paid plan 📝
25 MB attachment limit
10 email aliases
Password-protected emails (optional use)
IMAP/SMTP support for use with external email clients
Catch-all email, which ensures that if someone misspells your email, you’ll still get it
Automatic email forwarding
End-to-end encryption
HTML signatures (customize with logos, links, etc)
Limited use of other Proton tools
If you need more 💰
There are two additional personal plans – Proton Unlimited and Proton Family.
Proton Unlimited ups your storage to 500 GB is priced at $9.99 per month in the initial one-year contract period (paid up front). If you want an even better promo price, you can opt for a two year contract, which brings the per month price down to $7.99. Regardless of whether you opt for the one-year plan or the two-year plan, the renewal rate will switch to $12.99 per month (paid annually) once the initial contract term is up.
Proton Family gives you 3 TB, spread among 6 users. It’s priced at $23.99 per month in the initial one-year contract period (paid up front). If you go for a two-year contract, then it reduces it down to $19.99 per month. Either way, once it’s time to renew, the ongoing monthly rate will be $29.99 per month (paid annually).
Both plans also come with additional features and increase the limits on certain existing features.
Businesses and organizations have their choice of two plans – Mail Essentials and Business.
Mail Essentials costs $6.49 per user, per month on a two-year contract, or $6.99 for the same on a one-year contract. It gives each user 15 GB of storage, a free VPN connection, 10 email aliases, and support for up to 3 custom domains.
The Business plan costs $9.99 per user, per month on a two-year contract, or $10.99 on a one-year contract. It ups the storage to 500 GB per user, and the email aliases get bumped to unlimited.
8. Hostinger
Only two plans to choose from, which keeps things simple.
Cheaper plan is $1.59 per month (billed annually) for one mailbox with 10 GB of storage space and up to 50 email aliases.
Best choice as an alternative to Namecheap. It’s slightly more expensive on a per mailbox basis, but the storage space is twice as much, so it’s cheaper from that perspective. Overall, it comes with a robust set of email features and lots of other tools should you want more than email later on.
Overview 📧
Last on our list is Hostinger, which is an excellent choice if you’re looking for not only email hosting but also website hosting and a domain name. Basically, Hostinger is a great one-stop shop for all of these things and it has some of the lowest prices on the market for all of them – particularly in the initial promo period.
Having said that, even if you don’t want those other services and are only looking for email hosting, you can find it here at a reasonably low price – and without having to sift through numerous plans. In fact, Hostinger is similar to Purelymail in this regard, because they also only have two plans to choose from. The entry-level plan is called Business Starter. It costs $1.59 per month, billed annually, and it comes with 10 GB of storage inside of 1 mailbox.
Included in the cheaper plan 📝
50 email aliases
Webmail access
IMAP, POP3, and SMTP support for use with external email clients
iOS and Android mobile device synchronization
Advanced protection against spam, malware, and phishing attacks
Email forwarding (up to 10 rules)
Auto-replies
If you need more 💰
Hostinger’s second tier is called Business Premium and costs $3.99 per month, billed annually. It increases the storage limit to 50 GB and lets you send up to 3000 emails per day. It also lets you set up to 50 automatic forwarding rules to redirect messages to other email accounts.
Which one should I choose? 🤔
It really depends on what you’re looking to get out of the email hosting – besides the fact that it’s cheap.
For simple use cases where you only need email hosting for you (or a very small group of people) then the best options on the list are Zoho Mail, IONOS, and Purelymail. These will save you the most money.
If security, privacy, encryption and the ability to send password-protected emails is a crucial requirement for you, then you’re better off with either Tuta or Proton.
For those who need a more comprehensive solution that includes web hosting, a domain name, and email hosting lumped into one deal, you’ll want to check out either Namecheap or Hostinger.
Larger organizations who want more of a “Gmail experience” but without all of Google’s privacy issues will want to consider using Fastmail.
Of course, with all of these email hosts, you’ll still need a domain name to set up your custom email address. To help you with that, we have a guide on how to purchase your own domain name.
FAQs about email hosting
Email hosting refers to the service that allows individuals or businesses to create and manage their email accounts using their own custom domain name. It involves providing server space, infrastructure, and software to store, send, and receive emails. With email hosting, users can have professional-looking email addresses that match their domain (e.g., yourname@yoursite.com) and access their emails through email clients or webmail interfaces. Email hosting providers handle the technical aspects of email delivery, spam filtering, and security, ensuring reliable and secure email communication.
A hosted email service is a dedicated email service that operates email servers for you. You can use these email servers to send and receive email using your own custom email address – e.g. yourname@yoursite.com.
You can get cheap email hosting for less than $1 per month, or even free in some cases. Generally, around $1 per user, per month is a rough starting point for a budget hosted email service.
There are several different types of email hosting services depending on your needs and budget. On the budget end, most people will use shared hosting email services, which have you share resources on a server with other users. By sharing resources, you’re able to keep costs down. Another option is cloud email servers, which has you host mailboxes on an external cloud hosting service. Hostinger is an example of this. At the highest level, you have an enterprise email service. These are pricey, but they typically give you dedicated servers to host multiple mailboxes. Or, in some cases you can also host an enterprise email server using the cloud email approach. Most of the affordable email hosting providers in this post use the shared email server approach, though some use the cloud email type.
If you’re specifically looking for free email hosting with a custom domain name, Zoho Mail is usually your best option. While you can find lots of free email services that let you use the service’s domain name (e.g., @gmail.com), Zoho Mail is one of the few options that lets you use your own email domain name for free. You still have to pay for the domain itself, but the email hosting is free.
Do you have any questions about finding the best budget email hosting provider for your needs? Let us know in the comments!
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Updated on:
May 31, 2024
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