Best email hosting providers in 2024

Whether you’re a small business owner, a freelancer, or a startup founder, a professional email address is a must. A generic @gmail.com or @yahoo.com email just doesn’t cut it when you want to represent yourself in a professional and credible manner in your communication with clients and contacts.

A domain-based email – often referred to as a business email, that matches your company or brand’s domain – is a much better solution to instill trust. For this, you need reliable email hosting services. However, with all the choices on the market, finding the best provider for the job can be daunting.

To make your search easier, I’ve reviewed 50 providers to find the best email hosting solutions. To help you pick a cost-effective, streamlined, and comprehensive solution, I focused on providers that offer free email hosting with their web hosting packages. Continue reading to find my top web hosts with included email services.

5 best email hosting services by Cybernews

1. Hostinger – our #1 overall choice for email hosting service
2. Bluehost – best small business email hosting
3. DreamHost – secure email hosting service
4. HostGator – user-friendly email hosting service
5. SiteGround – email hosting service with easy setup

Best website and email hosting – detailed list

To help you find the best email hosting services, I joined a team of professionals to test and evaluate 50 of the top hosting providers. I primarily focused on such criteria as storage capacity, features, and pricing.

1. Hostinger – best website and email hosting in 2024

Email service:	Hostinger Email
Email accounts:	Up to 100
Email storage:	From 1GB/user
Current deal:	Get up to 78% OFF Hostinger + 3 months free!

Visit Hostinger

Hostinger takes #1 place as the best email hosting provider in 2024 on our list. Its custom email service, Hostinger Email, is included in all hosting plans, including Premium – Hostinger’s starter plan. In this regard, Hostinger beats DreamHost, which doesn’t offer free email hosting with its cheapest plan.

With Hostinger Email – which is included in the cheapest hosting plan – you can create up to 100 email addresses, each with 1GB of storage – that’s plenty for business emailing activities. A few other limitations exist – you can send up to 300 messages daily, each outgoing email is capped at 35MB, and email attachments must not be bigger than 25MB.

As for features, you can set up automatic replies, import emails from a different provider, view email logs, and create up to 5 forwarders. When I tested the service, I had no trouble navigating and using these benefits.

Email Alias is one of the top Hostinger features. You can use it to create an additional email address that is linked to with the same mailbox as the original address. This way, you can manage two different types of business emails (e.g., sales and marketing) using one single mailbox. You can even use Email Alias to create temporary email addresses.

Another great Hostinger feature that pushed it to the top of the list is Catch-All. It guarantees that you receive emails even when the sender makes an error in the email address. Catch-All redirects incoming emails sent to a misspelled or non-existing email address to one central mailbox.

More advanced users will also find it very useful that they can configure custom DomainKey Identified Mail (DKIM) to improve protection against phishing and scams. Fortunately, Hostinger is very user-friendly and is perfect for beginners, too. All thanks to hPanel.

Setup is quick and easy – make a few simple clicks and fill in the necessary details. I really enjoyed using hPanel because it provides useful guides and tips on setting up an email domain, which is especially useful when dealing with DNS records and other aspects that most beginner users find challenging.

I also found the interface clean and intuitive, with essential functions easily accessible from the main dashboard. Composing and managing emails is very easy thanks to user-friendly features like drag-and-drop file attachments, spam filtering, and customizable folders and labels.

Although there’s no dedicated Hostinger Email mobile app, the service works with Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, Samsung Mail, and other popular email apps. Hostinger’s plans start at $2.54/month (Premium) and include a 30-day money-back guarantee.

2. Bluehost – best email hosting for small business

Email service:	Bluehost custom email
Email accounts:	5
Email storage:	100MB/user
Current deal:	Get up to 75% OFF Bluehost!

Visit Bluehost

Bluehost offers an affordable custom email hosting service with all its web hosting plans, including the entry-level Basic plan.

If you subscribe to Bluehost’s Basic plan, you can create up to five mailboxes with 100MB of storage each. Using Bluehost's cPanel email settings, you can do a fair bit of configurations like creating, deleting, and managing email accounts as well as setting mailbox quotas. Email forwarding and autoresponders are available, too.

For me, Bluehost is one of the top email hosting providers because it includes effective email filters to organize incoming messages, gives access to SpamAssassin to filter unwanted emails, enables configuring SSL/TLS settings for secure communication, and offers an Email Disk Usage tool to monitor and clean up storage.

For Bluehost email, the only available email client is Roundcube. While functional and reliable, Roundcube’s interface is somewhat clunky and seems outdated or less intuitive than other modern email clients. If you’re looking for a more contemporary experience, you can integrate your Bluehost email with third-party clients like Gmail or Outlook.

Bluehost hosting is free for the first three months and renews at $2.49/month. Bluehost’s plans are available from $1.99/month with Basic and include a 30-day money-back guarantee for payments made using a credit card.

3. DreamHost – user-friendly and secure email hosting service

Email service:	Dreamhost custom email
Email accounts:	Unlimited
Email storage:	1GB/user
Current deal:	Get DreamHost, now 79% OFF

Visit DreamHost

DreamHost offers an easy-to-use email service with robust security features as part of its Shared Unlimited hosting plan.

With the Shared Unlimited plan, DreamHost provides you with 1GB of storage for each email address, up to a total of 25GB. You can create unlimited addresses with POP/IMAP/SMTP accounts, set autoresponders, and configure filters. DreamHost also takes security seriously by employing advanced spam, malware, and phishing filters that are regularly updated to protect your inbox from online threats. Something that providers like SiteGround cannot offer.

DreamHost’s interface is clean, well-organized, and intuitive. I found it very similar to Hostinger’s. One of the greatest perks is that the interface is free from ads, allowing you to focus solely on your communications. Like the majority of providers, DreamHost also allows seamless synchronization across devices, making it easy for you to stay on top of your emails even when you’re on the go.

DreamHost’s email hosting service is available if you opt for its Shared Unlimited plan, which costs $2.59/month. While email is not included in the entry plan, there’s an extended 97-day money-back guarantee for an extra-long risk-free trial.

4. HostGator – easy-to-use email hosting

Email service:	HostGator email
Email accounts:	Unlimited
Email storage:	Not specified
Current deal:	Get up to 62% OFF HostGator!

Visit HostGator

For a no-fuss and user-friendly email hosting service, HostGator is a great option. The provider includes a basic email service in all plans, starting with the entry-level Hatchling.

Using HostGator, you can create unlimited email accounts. However, email storage depends on your hosting plan’s overall capacity. Some key features include SpamAssassin to filter out unwanted emails, 25 mailing lists for easy management, and unlimited email aliases, autoresponders, and mail forwards.

Setting up your email is a breeze using cPanel. Clean and organized, cPanel makes it easy to manage email tasks such as creating new accounts, accessing webmail, and setting up email clients. There’s also an option to create, manage, and access email accounts through webmail or configure them on various email clients like Outlook or your mobile devices.

If you prefer the familiarity and reliability of Google’s services, you can add Google Workspace to your hosting plan starting from $6/month per user (from 30GB of storage per user). This way, you can access Google’s suite of tools and robust spam filtering.

HostGator’s email hosting service is included in all its shared hosting plans, including the cheapest – Hatchling, which costs $3.75/month. A 30-day money-back guarantee is also included.

5. SiteGround – best email hosting service with an easy migration tool

Email service:	SiteGround email
Email accounts:	Unlimited
Email storage:	10GB/user
Current deal:	Get up to 83% OFF SiteGround + FREE TRANSFER!

Visit SiteGround

Affordable and reliable, SiteGround is another solid candidate for the best email hosting service. The provider includes free email access even with its cheapest hosting plan, StartUp.

You can create unlimited email addresses with SiteGround and use up to 10GB of storage per account. One of the provider’s most helpful email features is its Email Migrator Tool, which lets you quickly and easily migrate your mailboxes. Other basic features like autoresponders and forwarders are available, too.

The default email client for SiteGround is Roundcube, the same one that is used by Bluehost. If you prefer a more classic and function-focused interface, this might be the perfect fit. However, beginners and those looking for a more modern experience likely will find the interface clunky and outdated. In that case, you can integrate your Siteground email with third-party clients like Gmail.

All of Siteground’s shared web hosting plans come with email integration and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Its cheapest plan is StartUp, which costs $2.99/month.

Best email hosting services compared

Provider	Pricing	Email service	Email accounts	Email storage
Hostinger	$2.54/month	Hostinger Email	100	1GB/user
Bluehost	$1.99/month	Custom Bluehost email	5	100MB/user
DreamHost	$2.59/month	Custom DreamHost email	Unlimited	1GB/user
HostGator	$3.75/month	Custom HostGator email	Unlimited	Not specified
Siteground	$2.99/month	Custom Siteground email	Unlimited	10GB/user

How we tested and ranked best email hosts

At Cybernews, we follow a comprehensive and transparent hosting testing methodology to help you understand how we review and rank our top lists. I first assessed market leaders and eliminated providers that did not offer appropriate email hosting services. I then compared the top contenders to pick providers that include email hosting services and ranked them according to such aspects as email accounts and storage per user, features, ease of use, and pricing. Here’s the summary of my findings.

1. Number of email accounts and storage. I first checked how many email users each host supports. Additionally, I assessed each provider’s storage capacity. Ideally, each email account should offer at least 1GB of storage to accommodate both emails and file attachments.
2. Features. I also reviewed the providers’ email hosting features. Basic features like autoresponders, filters, and mail forwards are non-negotiables and should be included in their services. Beyond that, I also looked for more advanced features such as SpamAssassin for spam filtering and custom DKIM for enhanced email security.
3. Ease of use. I paid close attention to the providers’ email setup and management processes. The setup should be quick and straightforward, even for total beginners. Ideally, the providers should include a migration tool to help you quickly transfer your mailboxes from your previous provider. As for the interface, it should be clean, organized, and easy to navigate. Plus, all the necessary features should be readily available and within reach.
4. Pricing. Good email hosting doesn’t have to cost a fortune. So, I compared the providers’ prices as well as their price-to-value ratios. All providers on this list have plans that are available for less than $5/month, ensuring that you have cost-effective options as well as plenty of room to scale.

Based on how well the providers did in terms of email accounts and storage, features, ease of use, and pricing, I compared and ranked them to provide you with well-rounded and credible recommendations for the best email hosting services.

Do I need email hosting?

@gmail.com, @yahoo.com, and other free, generic email addresses often lack credibility. A business that wants to attract and not drive away customers should employ a reliable email hosting service to use domain-based email addresses. This applies not just to large companies, but also small businesses, professional individuals, nonprofit organizations, and freelancers. Essentially, anyone trying to come across as a professional.

Email hosting is also essential if email communication is a significant part of your brand or business operations. This includes newsletter platforms, eCommerce businesses, and event organizers. On the other hand, you might not need email hosting if you’re just using your emails for personal communication or small passion projects. In that case, you can turn to free services like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo.

Of course, if you have your own server and are comfortable managing and configuring it, you don’t necessarily need third-party email hosting services. Ultimately, whether you need email hosting depends on your specific requirements.

Final thoughts

A domain-based email is vital if you want to project professionalism and credibility, whether you’re an online business owner or a freelancer. Fortunately, you can get free email service as part of web hosting plans with most providers.

However, it can be tricky to find the best email hosting solutions that meet your needs. After all, there are hundreds of options out there. And comparing them all can be a challenge.

To simplify your decision-making process, I’ve evaluated, tested, and ranked the top hosting providers in the market. Hostinger stands out as the best email hosting solution. It offers an affordable, feature-packed email service with generous storage alongside its website hosting service, easily outperforming other providers.

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