8 Best Email Products for Small Business

Exploring the best email hosting for small business is essential in today’s digital era where effective communication is key to success. The average office worker sends around 40 business emails and receives 121 emails every day, highlighting the immense role that communication plays in the modern professional landscape.

This statistic underscores not just the prevalence of email in daily work routines, but also its significance as a communication tool. Emails remain a vital form of communication for businesses across all industries, serving as a cornerstone for interactions both within companies and with external stakeholders such as clients, suppliers, and partners.

For many small businesses, email is not just a convenience but a necessity. Its instant nature allows for swift exchanges of information, making it a critical tool for time-sensitive communications. Additionally, the flexibility and versatility of email make it suitable for a variety of purposes – from formal contract exchanges to casual internal updates.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, the ability to send detailed messages, attach documents, and reach multiple recipients simultaneously gives email an edge over other forms of communication.

Moreover, email serves as a vital record-keeping tool. It provides a traceable, time-stamped record of conversations and decisions, which can be invaluable for reference, compliance, and accountability purposes.

For small businesses, this is particularly important as it helps maintain transparency and organization without the need for extensive physical documentation.

Our Methodology: How We Chose the Best Email Hosting for Small Business

For small businesses, selecting the right email hosting service is crucial for reliable communication, data security, and professional branding.

In guiding small businesses towards the best email solutions that balance functionality, cost, and ease of use, we use the following criteria, rated on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 indicates the highest level of importance and 1 the lowest.

1. Ease of Use and User Interface
   • Importance Scale: 9/10
   • Rationale: An intuitive and user-friendly interface is essential for efficient email management, especially for businesses with limited technical expertise.
2. Integration Capabilities
   • Importance Scale: 8/10
   • Rationale: The ability to integrate with other business tools and software (like CRM systems, calendars, etc.) is crucial for a streamlined workflow.
3. Cost-Effectiveness
   • Importance Scale: 8/10
   • Rationale: Affordable pricing, including free or low-cost options with essential features, is important for small businesses with tight budgets.
4. Reliability and Uptime
   • Importance Scale: 9/10
   • Rationale: High reliability and minimal downtime ensure consistent business communication without interruptions.
5. Security and Privacy Features
   • Importance Scale: 9/10
   • Rationale: Robust security measures, including encryption and spam filters, are vital to protect sensitive business information.
6. Storage Capacity
   • Importance Scale: 7/10
   • Rationale: Adequate storage space is important to accommodate growing email archives without frequent cleanups.
7. Customer Support
   • Importance Scale: 7/10
   • Rationale: Accessible and responsive customer support is essential for troubleshooting and assistance.
8. Scalability
   • Importance Scale: 7/10
   • Rationale: The ability of the email service to scale with the business’s growth, offering more advanced features as needed, is important.
9. Mobile Access and Compatibility
   • Importance Scale: 8/10
   • Rationale: Mobile access and compatibility with different devices allow for managing business communications on the go.
10. Additional Features (like calendar, task management)
    • Importance Scale: 6/10
    • Rationale: Additional productivity features can enhance the overall value of the email service for a small business.

By applying these criteria, we aim to provide small businesses with a comprehensive guide to selecting email products that not only meet their communication needs but also align with their operational capacity and budget.

Best Email Hosting for Small Business

With a range of different email hosting providers available, how do small businesses choose the best email platform? To give you a helping hand, take a look at the following eight best email hosting for small business.

Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials

If your business relies on the sending and receiving large email attachments, Microsoft Office 365 Essentials could be the right email server for you. Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials offers support for 150MG attachments, which is three times the size compared to many of their competitors.

Business Essentials also provides 50GB of storage per user meaning your team will be able to keep old, important emails for a long time, so you don’t lose important business emails. And it quickly integrates with other Microsoft Office tools, making it an easy-to-use solution for many businesses.

Gmail’s GSuite

Google’s Gmail prides itself on being an ultra-reliable server for businesses, which guarantees 99.9% uptime. As well as using GSuite for sending and receiving business email, you can use it for video conferencing, cloud storage and file sharing, all invaluable tool for greater team efficiency and collaboration.

One of the best features of Gmail is its Undo Send feature, where you can recall emails that have been miss-sent, providing you act quickly.

GMX Mail

One of the best parts of GMX Mail’s free email account is that you can define how long your messages are stored in the server, so that you have control of when messages in specific folders get trashed.

GMX Mail has a spam protection feature, helping your business email inbox stay uncluttered and spam-free. With a virus protection feature, you’ll also have peace of mind your business emails are well protected from hackers.

iCloud Mail

iCloud Mail has some advanced email features that can be useful for small business users, including auto responder for when you or members of your team are unable to respond to emails. Providing email senders with an automated response can boost the professionality of your business, though it has to be said, auto responder is a feature available on most email servers.

Lycos Mail

There are times when small businesses need to block nuisance email addresses and specific domain names, so they don’t waste any time reading or responding to unproductive emails. With Lycos Mail you can block specific email addresses and domain names so precious company time isn’t wasted and inboxes unnecessarily clogged up.

Lycos Mail includes 500MG of storage, as well as virus checking and spam filtering features, to help keep your business emails protected.

Rackspace Email

Rackspace provides a host of email products aimed at catering for the needs of small businesses. Rackspace’s Plus Plan provides 30GM of cloud storage, along with advanced features like instant messaging, ActiveSync support and Office-compatible apps, costing $3.50 a month.

The server’s extended Plus account brings an unlimited storage space via archiving, which can be useful for businesses that send and receive large numbers of emails.

AOL Mail

With advanced spam filters and virus protection for added security, AOL Mail is another good choice for business email users. If your business stores a hefty amount of business emails, you won’t have to worry about running out of space and the AOL Mail feature comes with unlimited storage space.

Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail is a reliable and secure business email solutions, which can be customized to cater for your business’s communication needs. Zoho Mail provides custom domain-based email addresses for your employees. You can also set up different email groups for different teams and departments. Zoho Mail also provides a highly reliable 99.9% email uptime guarantee. Zoho Mail isn’t free and its Professional package costs $6 per user per month.

Key Features of Top Email Hosting Options for Small Businesses

• Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials: Ideal for businesses that deal with large email attachments, offering 150MB support and 50GB storage per user.
• Gmail’s GSuite: Known for its reliability (99.9% uptime) and unique ‘Undo Send’ feature, making it a solid choice for businesses seeking versatile email solutions.
• GMX Mail: Offers customizable message storage duration and robust spam protection, ideal for businesses looking for free yet effective email hosting.
• iCloud Mail: Features like auto responder enhance professionalism; suitable for Apple ecosystem users.
• Lycos Mail: Ability to block specific email addresses/domains, useful for managing productivity and inbox clutter.
• Rackspace Email: Offers a comprehensive Plus Plan with 30GB cloud storage and various business tools, suitable for businesses needing advanced email features.
• AOL Mail: Unlimited storage and advanced spam/virus protection, a good option for businesses with high email storage needs.
• Zoho Mail: Customizable, secure email solution with domain-based addresses and group setup, perfect for businesses needing a tailored email experience.

Comparing the Best Email Hosting for Small Business

To summarize the key features and benefits of the top email hosting services for small businesses, the following table provides a quick overview. This comparison will help you choose the most suitable email hosting service for your business needs, based on factors like storage capacity, unique features, and pricing.

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This article, "8 Best Email Products for Small Business" was first published on Small Business Trends