The best email hosting for most small teams is Google Workspace Business Starter ($7 per user a month on an annual plan, 30 GB). Pick Microsoft 365 Business Basic ($7 yearly, 100 GB mailbox) if your office runs on Outlook and Teams. Zoho Mail is the cheapest real option: free for up to 5 users, or $1 per user on Mail Lite.
Disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through them we may earn a commission. It never changes the order of this list. How we make money.
Show me today’s Google Workspace price
There’s like a billion email hosting providers and platforms out there, so how can you even decide who to go with? Start here: email hosting is not the same as an email marketing provider. Email hosting is when you need to set up email for your company domain, for either yourself or your whole team.
Why bother? Well, you look 10x more professional when emailing people from [email protected] than from a free webmail address. You also get a lot more control over the email settings, such as managing your employee’s email accounts, and other settings that can improve your experience overall.
Email is the lifeblood of your business. Any problems, delays, glitches, spam, etc can set you back some serious money and wasted time. So while it may seem like email hosting should always be free, there’s a reason why real professionals take it seriously. If you’re anything like us you’re in email all day long, so it’s worth taking just a little bit of time to get it set up right the first time.
Setting up email hosting is relatively simple, and there are plenty of options for cheap email hosting on the market. That makes cutting through the noise to find the best email hosting for small business a bit of a challenge in its own right, though. Some companies provide email server hosting exclusively as their business models. Others offer a mixture of web-focused solutions, and email is just one of them.
Prices below are list prices in US dollars (Tuta bills in euros) and were checked on September 24, 2026. Email hosting prices moved a lot in the last 18 months. Google folded Gemini into its plans and raised prices in early 2025. Microsoft raised Business Basic and Standard on July 1, 2026. If an old review quotes $6 for Microsoft Business Basic, it is out of date.
Which email host costs what? The comparison table
| Provider and plan | Price per user/month | Billing term | Storage per user | Custom domain | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace Business Starter | $7 (annual) / $8.40 (flexible) | 1-year or month-to-month | 30 GB pooled | Yes | Gemini included since Jan 2025 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $7.00 (paid yearly) / $8.40 (monthly) | Annual or monthly | 100 GB mailbox plus 50 GB archive, 1 TB OneDrive | Yes | Up to 300 users |
| Zoho Mail Lite | $1 (5 GB) or $1.25 (10 GB), billed annually | Annual | 5 GB or 10 GB | Yes | Free plan for up to 5 users |
| Proton Mail Essentials | $6.99 (billed yearly) | Yearly or monthly | 15 GB | Yes, up to 3 | Proton labels mail end-to-end encrypted |
| Tuta Essential | EUR 6 (yearly) / EUR 7.20 (monthly) | Yearly or monthly | 50 GB | Yes, up to 3 | Billed in euros |
| Fastmail Business Standard | $5 (12 months) / $6 (monthly) | Monthly or annual | 50 GB mail | Yes | Email, calendar, contacts, files |
| Namecheap Private Email | Base plan: check cart (extra mailboxes $8.88/yr to $39.88/yr) | Annual | See plan page | Yes | Plans now named Launch, Expand, Scale |
| Rackspace Email | $10/mo per mailbox (Email Plus add-on: $2 more) | Monthly, no contract | 25 GB mailbox, 30 GB files | Yes | 24×7 phone support |
Sources for every number are linked in each entry below and listed under Sources at the end of this page.
1. Google Workspace: best for most small teams
Best for: a team of 2 to 300 people that wants Gmail on its own domain plus Docs, Drive and Meet.
Pricing: Business Starter is $7 per user a month on a 1-year commitment, or $8.40 on the Flexible (month-to-month) Plan. Business Standard is $14 annual or $16.80 flexible. Business Plus is $22 or $26.40. Flexible costs exactly 20% more on every tier, per Google’s own billing help page. Google’s own January 2025 post confirmed the Business Standard price of $14 after it bundled Gemini, “only $2 more” than before.
If you’ve used the internet at all, you’ve likely seen plenty of email accounts from the gmail.com address. Google Workspace (the product once called G Suite) is Google’s business offering that includes a wide range of collaborative functions like conferencing, file sharing through Google Drive and Gmail, on a domain name you own.
Strengths: Gmail is the interface most new hires already know. Google Workspace is very user-friendly. If you’re not a web admin with decades of experience setting up email server hosting, it’s a great way to get a ton of features without facing a massive installation process. Storage is generous above Starter: 2 TB per user on Standard and 5 TB on Plus, pooled across the company. Gemini features ship in the base price, so there is no separate Gemini add-on to buy. Google says a Business Standard customer who paid $32 a user with the old add-on now pays $14.
Watch-outs: Starter’s 30 GB is shared between mail and Drive. A busy sales inbox with attachments can fill that in a couple of years. You also pay for Gemini whether you want it or not.
Verdict: The default choice. Skip it if your company already lives in Outlook and Excel desktop, or if you need end-to-end encryption.
Start my Google Workspace trial
2. Microsoft 365 Business Basic: best if you run on Outlook and Teams
Best for: offices that already use Outlook, Teams or SharePoint and want email managed in the same tenant.
Pricing: Microsoft lists Business Basic at $7.00 per user a month paid yearly, or $8.40 on a monthly subscription. That $7 is new. Microsoft announced in December 2025 that list prices would change on July 1, 2026, and partner summaries put Basic’s move at $6.00 to $7.00 and Business Standard at $12.50 to $14.00. Business Premium stayed at $22 (Microsoft lists it at $22.00 paid yearly today). Existing customers keep the old price until their first renewal after July 1, 2026.
There is a second trap. Since April 1, 2025, an annual commitment billed monthly costs 5% more than the same commitment paid up front. So “annual” at Microsoft now means two different prices.
The business world has been dominated in many ways by Microsoft for the last three decades, and that means many enterprises and small businesses have Microsoft 365 and Exchange software built right into their processes. The system integrates with the company’s other products, such as Excel, SharePoint, PowerPoint and Power BI, too. While it might be easy for the company to coast on the lock-in effect of so many of its business products, Microsoft keeps adding to the plans, and the mailbox upgrade below is a good example.
Strengths: A 100 GB mailbox per user plus 50 GB of archive, and 1 TB of OneDrive per user. Microsoft doubled the Business Basic, Standard and Premium mailbox from 50 GB to 100 GB at no extra cost, in a rollout that ran June to September 2026, per its Exchange Team blog. Its Exchange plans page now lists the 100 GB figure for Business Basic. Admin tools cover up to 300 users.
Watch-outs: Basic gives you web and mobile Office apps only. Want desktop Word and Excel? That is Business Standard at $14. What keeps Microsoft from being the top dog among the best email hosting services is the difficulty of use. If you don’t know your SMTP from a stamp, the admin side can be especially tricky to set up. On the other hand, hardcore admins who know their stuff and work for companies that demand heavy integration will be amazed by how much power they have.
Verdict: Pick it if you are a Microsoft shop. Do not pick it just for email if nobody on the team uses Office: Zoho or Fastmail is cheaper for plain mail.
Show me Microsoft 365 Business pricing
3. Zoho Mail: cheapest paid business email
Best for: a very small business or side project that needs [email protected] and not much else.
Pricing: The Forever Free plan covers up to 5 users on one domain with 5 GB each. Mail Lite is $1 per user a month billed annually with 5 GB, or $1.25 with 10 GB. Mail Premium is $4 per user a month billed annually with 50 GB of mail plus 50 GB of retention storage. All figures are from Zoho’s pricing page.
Strengths: The price. A five-person team can run on real domain email for $0, then $60 a year on Mail Lite. Premium adds email retention and eDiscovery for $4.
Watch-outs: The free plan covers one domain only and leaves out IMAP, POP and ActiveSync, so no Outlook or Apple Mail. And 5 GB fills quickly once attachments pile up.
Verdict: Best value per dollar. Not for teams that live in shared docs all day; the Zoho office suite is a separate buy.
4. Proton Mail (Proton for Business): best for privacy
Best for: lawyers, journalists, security teams and anyone whose threat model includes the email provider itself.
Pricing: Mail Essentials is $6.99 per user a month billed yearly ($83.88 a year), with 15 GB, 10 addresses per user and up to 3 custom domains. The full suite, now sold as Workspace Standard (it replaced Business Suite, and existing Business Suite customers get a free upgrade), is $12.99 per user a month billed yearly or $14.99 month-to-month, with 1 TB per user. Workspace Premium is $19.99 yearly or $24.99 monthly with 3 TB. The older Mail Professional plan is deprecated.
Strengths: In Proton’s own words, “we use end-to-end encryption to prevent hackers or anyone else (including us) from accessing your data on our servers.” Basic VPN access on one device per user comes bundled even on Essentials.
Watch-outs: Read Proton’s documentation on what the encryption covers when you write to people on Gmail or Outlook, since that mail leaves Proton’s system. And 15 GB is thin for $6.99.
Verdict: Buy it for confidentiality, not for storage. Teams that need heavy shared-doc collaboration should look at Google or Microsoft.
Show me Proton for Business plans
5. Tuta: most storage for encrypted mail
Best for: EU-based teams, or anyone who wants encrypted email with more room than Proton gives.
Pricing: Tuta bills in euros. Essential is EUR 6 per user a month paid yearly (EUR 7.20 monthly) with 50 GB and 3 custom domains. Advanced is EUR 8 yearly or EUR 9.60 monthly with 500 GB and 10 domains. Unlimited is EUR 12 or EUR 14.40 with 1,000 GB and unlimited domains. Catch-all works on every business plan.
Strengths: 50 GB on the entry plan is more than three times what Proton Essentials gives. Two-factor authentication comes on every business plan, along with an admin console with multiple admin roles.
Watch-outs: Currency swings change what US buyers pay. Check whether your team’s preferred desktop mail client is supported before you commit.
Verdict: Great for a small privacy-minded team that needs room. Wrong pick if you want an office suite in the same bill.
6. Fastmail: best independent email without an office suite
Best for: people who want clean email on their own domain and no office suite bolted on.
Pricing: On Fastmail’s pricing page the business plans are Basic at $4 per user a month with 5 GB of mail, Standard at $6 with 50 GB and Professional at $10 with 100 GB. Pay for 12 months and they drop to $3, $5 and $9.
Strengths: Fastmail says Standard and Professional work with third-party apps such as Outlook or iPhone Mail, and include Snooze and Scheduled Send. Professional adds an email retention archive for legal compliance.
Watch-outs: No Docs or Sheets equivalent. It is email, calendar, contacts and a little file storage. Nothing more. You won’t get the collaborative tools, but you can just host email on your domain whether or not you have a full website. It’s aimed at people who just want webmail, IMAP and a calendar without all the other fuss. If you just want a respectable amount of email storage without having to break your piggy bank, there’s a lot to be said for Fastmail Standard.
Verdict: The pick for a small team that already uses other tools for files. Skip it if you want end-to-end encryption labels (Proton, Tuta) or an office suite.
7. Namecheap Private Email: cheapest add-on for a domain you already own
Best for: a solo owner who registered a domain at Namecheap and wants one or two mailboxes without a second vendor.
Pricing: Namecheap’s help article on extra mailboxes (updated August 28, 2026) lists the current plans as Launch, Expand and Scale, with extra mailboxes at $8.88, $25.88 and $39.88 a year. The older Starter, Pro and Ultimate plans carry the same rates. Namecheap’s email product page blocked our browser, so check the base plan price in the cart.
Strengths: A very low per-mailbox price, and one bill for domain and mail. See our Namecheap review for its hosting side.
Watch-outs: No office apps, and a much smaller feature set than Google or Microsoft.
Verdict: Fine for a freelancer. Namecheap is a good option if you own a domain there anyhow and want to grab cheap email hosting along the way. A growing team will outgrow it within a year.
Show me Namecheap’s email plans
8. Rackspace Email: hosted mailboxes with phone support
Best for: small offices that want plain hosted mailboxes and a human on the phone, and will pay extra for it.
Pricing: Rackspace Email is $10 per mailbox a month on a monthly commit with no long-term contract, per its pricing page. Each mailbox gets 25 GB plus 30 GB of file storage. The Email Plus add-on (ActiveSync, Office-compatible apps) is $2 more per mailbox, and archiving is $6 more.
Strengths: 24×7 human support and no contract. Read our Rackspace review for the company background.
Watch-outs: A 25 GB cap is half of what Tuta and Fastmail Standard give, and a quarter of Microsoft’s new 100 GB mailbox. Ask Rackspace how mailboxes are backed up and how fast a restore takes before you move.
Verdict: A fair choice for a support-first office. At $10 a mailbox it costs more than Google Workspace Starter or Microsoft 365 Business Basic, which both give more storage.
Show me Rackspace Email pricing
How to pick the right email host for your business
The biggest issue that small business users need to address upfront is figuring out what their current software ecosystems are. If you’re already heavily locked into the Microsoft ecosystem, for example, there’s a pretty good argument that you’ve cut the list down by more than half right from the beginning.
You should also assess your company’s technical capabilities. A heavily customized Microsoft setup isn’t for people who don’t have access to at least intermediate-quality technical support. If you’re running a lean start-up that has no tech DNA or a company that just can’t afford to fork over money for IT support calls, you may want to explore the more user-friendly options from Google, Zoho or Fastmail.
For the tech-savvy
Companies that have immense in-house technical capabilities may elect to rebel against the system altogether. They might set up Amazon Lightsail instances and operate with their own packages. Conversely, many settle into using hosted mail solutions because taking on massive support overhead is a bad business model even if you have the chops for providing your own support.
A word on pricing
Price also matters. Per-user seat licenses for products like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 can start to add up quickly. There’s a reason Google and Microsoft are worth trillions of dollars, and they count paid users before they even think to count their money. What to you looks like a fairly cheap option when it’s you and two employees paying $21 a month for a collaborative email suite (three seats at $7, our math) can become serious cash as you expand and have to buy a license for every employee with a phone, workstation and laptop.
Per-mailbox and per-user pricing structures are the dominant paradigms in this sector, and they’re not going anywhere, either.
Do you need a dedicated email host?
As you can tell by the number of combined email and web hosting services out there, there are definitely scenarios where the answer is no. There are, however, a couple good reasons to consider having an email host that’s independent of other server functions:
- Having everything on one server means more things go down when there’s a crash.
- Resource consumption by highly active email users, such as marketers, may slow down your other services.
- Keeping a few more ports open for SMTP, IMAP and POP3 means adding potential targets for hackers.
- Managing email on a separate control panel simply reduces headaches.
Unless your small business is operating on a raggedly thin budget for both email and web hosting, there’s a pretty solid argument for treating them as separate items.
Even with a default pick, there isn’t a clear-cut winner that everyone can be told to use. You will need to take stock of the software your company uses, how much storage space you require, how many licenses you’ll need and the features your business requires. With these issues in mind, you can then decide which email hosting option meets your needs.
How we chose
We did not run our own speed or deliverability tests for this update. The ranking is editorial: price per user from each vendor’s pricing page, storage, whether you can use your own domain, and the security features each vendor documents (2FA, encryption labels, admin controls). We quote encryption claims in the vendor’s own words. “Encrypted at rest” and “end-to-end encrypted” are different promises, and only Proton and Tuta make the second one in their plan copy.
We cut IONOS from this list. Its Mail Basic mailbox offers 2 GB, and we could not confirm its current US price from IONOS directly.
Do I need SPF, DKIM and DMARC for email hosting?
Yes. Every host above lets you add them, and you should on day one.
SPF lists the servers allowed to send mail for your domain. DKIM signs each message so receivers can check it was not altered. DMARC tells receivers what to do when SPF or DKIM fails, and sends you reports. Without them, spoofers can send mail that looks like it came from you, and your real mail lands in spam.
Google (from February 2024) and Yahoo (from the first quarter of 2024) began enforcing authentication rules for bulk senders, including SPF, DKIM, DMARC and one-click unsubscribe. Gmail’s rules apply to anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail addresses (Google, Yahoo). Even a five-person company sending invoices benefits from the same setup. For why this matters, see our cybersecurity and hacking statistics.
FAQ
What is the cheapest email hosting with my own domain?
Zoho Mail’s Forever Free plan: up to 5 users on one domain, 5 GB each, $0. The cheapest paid option is Zoho Mail Lite at $1 per user a month billed annually.
Is Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 better for email?
Both are $7 per user a month on an annual plan in September 2026. Microsoft gives a bigger mailbox (100 GB, against 30 GB pooled across mail and Drive on Google Starter). Google is simpler to run. Pick the one whose office apps your team already uses.
Can I use my web hosting’s free email instead?
You can, and many shared hosting plans include it. The catch is that mail and website share one server and one IP reputation. If the site gets hacked and starts sending spam, your invoices go to spam too. A separate email host avoids that.
Which email host is most secure?
For confidentiality from the provider, Proton and Tuta, which both describe their mail as end-to-end encrypted. For everyone else, the security you control matters more: turn on 2FA for every user and publish SPF, DKIM and DMARC records.
Why did my email hosting bill go up?
Google raised Workspace prices when it bundled Gemini in 2025. Microsoft raised Business Basic and Standard from July 1, 2026, and charges 5% more for annual plans billed monthly since April 2025.
Sources
Prices were checked September 24, 2026.
- Compare Flexible and Annual/Fixed-Term payment plans, Google Workspace Help (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Google Workspace pricing (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Google Workspace Blog: Google Workspace enables the future of AI-powered work for every business (Jan 15, 2025) (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Compare Business editions, Google Workspace Help (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft Exchange Online plans and pricing (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft Exchange Team Blog: Understanding the new 100 GB mailbox entitlement for Microsoft 365 Business suites (Aug 19, 2026) (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft 365 Blog: Advancing Microsoft 365, new capabilities and pricing update (Dec 4, 2025) (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Red River: Microsoft 365 Price Increase 2026 (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- VGM Forbin: Guide to Microsoft 365 pricing changes for 2025 (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Zoho Mail pricing (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Proton for Business: business email plans and pricing (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Proton: Introducing Proton Workspace (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Proton for Business plans explained (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Tuta business email plans (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Tuta: choosing the best email plan for your organisation (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Fastmail pricing (Business tab) (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Fastmail: 2024 pricing and plan updates (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Namecheap: prices for additional Private Email mailboxes (updated 8/28/2026) (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Rackspace Email pricing (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Rackspace Email FAQ (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Google: Gmail introduces new requirements to fight spam (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Postmaster @ Yahoo: More Secure, Less Spam (retrieved 2026-09-24)
Related
Update log
- : Rewrote and fact-checked the page. Kept Joe’s original writing where it still holds.
- : Prices and facts checked against the cited sources, read September 24, 2026.
