5 Best Cheap Email Hosting Providers
As one of the most important online services, email is the leading form of online communication. While standard webmail and desktop clients like Gmail or Microsoft Outlook may be suited for most communication needs, a custom email account connected to your own domain can give both you and your business more credibility. Free email services are simply a no-go, especially that they can be a dead giveaway that your business is not taking itself seriously, or worse yet, it’s on a shoestring budget. Whether you’re a freelancer looking to establish a personal brand or you’re a business owner who is looking for a reliable infrastructure and professional means of communicating with customers, email hosting is a good solution to make your email communications more credible, secure and efficient.
Email hosting providers usually have plans that offer hosting for unlimited email accounts and even provide unlimited resources along with spam filtering tools, virus protection and other important tools to manage your personal or business communications. Even the most basic of hosting types – shared hosting – can include unlimited disk space and the possibility to host unlimited email accounts. If you own a simple personal blog, website or even a small to medium traffic business website, and you need a reliable email hosting, several hosting companies provide shared hosting plans with unlimited email hosting.
How to Choose an Email Hosting?
If you’re not a large organization with a separate IT department, opting for in-house email management is simply not feasible, and it may even not be feasible if you do have the necessary hardware, infrastructure and manpower, as you could still face more downtime than simply opting for an outside service. Therefore, you’re better off finding an email hosting provider to unburden you from the hassle of hosting your email communications. Since email can have a significant impact on your business, you need to put some effort into finding a reliable email hosting provider, even if you’re not willing to invest too much in such a service.
Given that you’re looking for an email specific hosting, apart from server infrastructure, resources, speed and uptime, you should look for email specific features as well. These include webmail access, unlimited email accounts, spam filtering and virus protection, email forwarding tools, autoresponders, POP and/or IMAP support, and 24/7 server monitoring. Some hosting providers will also include a free domain name with their plans, and other features like free marketing credit and marketing tools, which come in handy if you want to advertise a new website. All these won’t cost you an arm and a leg, and even cheap hosting can come with good email hosting.
To make your search for a cheap email hosting provider a smoother process, we’ve compiled a short list of the 5 best email hosting providers that you should consider when looking for an affordable hosting solution for your personal or business emails.
Review of Best Cheap Email Hosting Providers
All hosting companies reviewed in this article feature free domain registration and unlimited email hosting plans with all the email-specific features you may need.
iPage
iPage offers a single shared hosting plan at the promotional introductory price of $1.99/month. The regular price is $11.95/month, which is still a budget-friendly price considering the many features this hosting provider includes with its shared hosting plan.
iPage is a top budget host with an arsenal of features that exceeds expectations. iPage offers everything you need to get started and grow your business: free domain name registration, free search engine and marketing credit, free drag and drop website builder, ecommerce tools, free security suite, virtually unlimited everything (unlimited disk space and email addresses, scalable bandwidth, unlimited domain names allowed, unlimited MySQL databases), load balanced servers, 24/7 network monitoring and plenty of other features that will make your hosting experience as enjoyable as possible.
By analyzing the email specific features of this hosting provider, you’ll find that it provides both web-based email (accessible via WebMail) and POP3 email (accessible through Outlook, Mac Mail, etc.), customizable email addresses with your domain name, possibility to set up email forwarding and autoresponders, customizable spam filters (helpful in reducing spam and blocking certain email addresses from contacting you), virus checking, POP3/IMAP email accounts.
If you’re searching for a cheap and feature-rich email hosting provider, iPage should definitely be among your top choices.
FatCow
FatCow was established in 1998 and since then it has positioned itself as an affordable personal and small business web host thanks to their budget-friendly and quality shared hosting plans. Their shared hosting plan costs $5 for an initial 1 year period, after which it renews to the $10.99 monthly plan. FatCow is a beginner-friendly hosting with all the features your personal or small business website may need from one-click installs to ecommerce and marketing tools, and unlimited professional email accounts to match your domain name.
The features included with FatCow’s shared hosting plan include a free domain name, unlimited storage and bandwidth, one-click WordPress install, free templates, free site builders, free SEO and ad credit, SSL secure server, online store and selling tools, 24/7 support, daily server backups, load-balanced platform, etc. In terms of email related features, FatCow offers unlimited email addresses (IMAP/POP), each with a storage capacity of 500MB or 10,000 email messages (whichever comes first), WebMail client, newsletter manager tool, spam filtering, possibility to set up email forwarding and autoresponders.
By signing up with FatCow, you’ll not only benefit from the advantages of an affordable shared hosting and unlimited email hosting plan, but you’ll also be supporting a green energy hosting, whose datacenters are powered by renewable wind energy.
JustHost
If you’re looking for a small budget shared hosting plan or an email hosting, JustHost provides an array of great features to meet your email and web hosting needs in a pocket-friendly way. For only $2.62/month (introductory price), you’ll be able to benefit from the following features: unlimited GBs hosting space, unlimited data transfer, unlimited domain hosting, free domain name, free site builder, FTP access, SSH access, cPanel, SSL secure server, ecommerce tools, 1-click installs (Drupal, Magento, WordPress, Joomla, osCommerce, etc.), free advertising credit, free scripts, unlimited email accounts, 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 support. If you decide to cancel your account after the 30-day money back guarantee, you’ll receive a pro-rated refund for the remaining period.
JusHost’s email hosting comes with unlimited POP/POP3 and IMAP/Secure IMAP email support, 3 different webmail solutions, email forwarding, Spam Assassin protection, etc. You can customize your email addresses to match your domain name and add credibility to your business.
JustHost provides an impressive set of features all the while maintaining a friendly pricing system. You can rely on their solid server infrastructure and responsive customer support to host your small personal or business website.
BlueHost
BlueHost is by far the most popular affordable hosting provider. A significant proportion of its clientele is made up of WordPress users, who have been opting for BlueHosts’ WordPress optimized hosting plans since at least 2005, when WordPress.org has decided to recommend BlueHost as the go-to WordPress hosting.
BlueHost offers two unlimited shared hosting plans that come with unlimited email hosting as well. The Plus and Prime plans cost $4.95 and $5.95 per month and include the following features: unlimited and unmetered everything (email accounts, domain hosting, email storage, website space, bandwidth), $200 in marketing offers, SpamExperts included, and Domain Privacy and SiteBackup Pro included with the Prime plan. Advanced email hosting related features include account filters, forwarding rules, secure POP3/IMAP support, spam protection, unique user account controls, third-party client compatibility, etc.
The enhanced cPanel, scalability, backups, free domain name included with their plans, as well as BlueHost’s smart resource protection technology (website performance defense system) makes BlueHost one of the most reputable shared hosting and email hosting providers.
InMotion Hosting
InMotion is a top hosting company that offers feature-abundant shared hosting plans that include free SSD, free domain, free data backups, 1-click installers for over 310 applications, SSH access, Google Apps integration, Max Speed Zone, cPanel, code in more languages, and 90-day money-back guarantee, which is way above the industry standard.
InMotion’s all business shared hosting plans are unlimited plans with respect to bandwidth, storage, email and even MySQL and PostgreSQL databases with some of the plans. The three shared plans offered by InMotion are priced as follows: Launch for $4.19/month, Power for $5.39/month, and Pro for $8.99/month. The plans are different in the number of websites they allow you to host on 1 account, the number of MySQL and PostgreSQL databases allowed, as well as the ecommerce readiness of plans.
If you decide to host your emails with InMotion, you can take advantage of their real-time spam filtering with Spam SAFE, an out-of-the box spam filtering system that is also configurable to meet your specific needs. Also, SpamAssassin is included for free with all their shared hosting plans. You can easily set up email forwarders and autoresponders in WebMail or cPanel. InMotion offers step-by-step video tutorials on how to set these up.
Conclusion
Cheap email hosting isn’t hard to come by, so it’s certainly worth to invest in such a service. The companies we’ve reviewed all offer email hosting with their shared hosting plans, which are available at highly affordable rates. An unlimited email hosting from any of these providers will enhance the efficiency of your email communications, and make sure that your emails are securely hosted in a spam-free environment. Plus, your customized email addresses will help in conferring your business more credibility and building trust with your customers.
