Explore top free business email services for startups and SMEs, offering secure, efficient, and cost-effective email solutions.
Alex Simmons | Jan 1, 2024 | 11 mins read
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If you’re a startup or a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME), you know that swift communication between you and your customers, partners, and stakeholders is key to success.
💡 One main aspect of keeping communication efficient is email and, in consequence, finding the right email provider for your business.
With budget constraints, security, and specific email features often being the main concern, finding the best free business email provider isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. In this article, we explore the 9 best email service providers that offer free email without compromising on quality and features.
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Although using a free business email comes with some limitations, it’s still a great solution for small and medium-sized businesses or entrepreneurs.
For starters, using a free business email provider is an easy solution to create an email address dedicated to your business instead of receiving your business communication on your personal email.
While the free email address will contain the name of the email provider of your choice (for example, @gmail.com or @outlook.com), you can still customize the first part of your address to match your brand name. However, if you want a fully customized email address, you’d have to go with a pro version of your chosen email service.
Aside from helping you keep your business communication organized in a dedicated inbox, free business email providers offer security features, such as spam filtering and email blocking. Moreover, many providers, like Gmail or Outlook, also come with mobile apps, making it easier for you to access your inbox on the go.
With non-business inboxes, emails can get easily lost or land in your spam folder, where you’ll likely never find them. A good business email provider should offer a smooth email experience that makes sending and following up on emails faster, more efficient, and stress-free.
When choosing your business email hosting provider, take into account the following features:
There’s an abundance of free business email providers on the market, and it can be challenging to decide which is the right one for you. To make the decision easier for you, here’s a list of the 9 best free business emails with their features, pros, and cons.
Gmail is the most popular free email service provided by Google, with over 1.8 billion active users worldwide. Gmail is part of the Google Workspace, together with other Google apps like Docs, Sheets, Calendar, Meet, and Drive. This is precisely the main benefit of using Gmail: it integrates perfectly with Google’s ecosystem and makes the email experience smarter and more efficient.
Anyone can create a Gmail account. However, if you need a custom email domain, you’ll need to opt for the Google Workspace subscription at a cost.
Gmail is renowned for its intuitive interface, ease of use, and mobile app that makes it easy to access your inbox on the go. Here are some of its features:
Gmail is free to use. However, for more advanced features and a custom email domain, you’ll need a Google Workspace subscription, which starts at $6 per user per month.
Capterra Rating: 4.8/5G2 Rating: 4.6/5
GMX Mail is a completely free email provider that comes with 65GB of storage and supports up to 10 alias email addresses, making it an ideal email provider for companies with several departments or teams. What’s more, it allows you to collect emails from various email providers into one inbox with its Mail Collector feature.
GMX Mail offers users quite a generous amount of storage, as well as some additional organization tools like Online Office and Organizer. Some of GMX Mail’s features include:
GMX Mail is completely free. Instead of charging its users a direct fee, it makes money from advertisements.
Capterra Rating: N/AG2 Rating: N/A
Outlook is a free email provider by Microsoft. Because it seamlessly integrates with other apps from the Microsoft Office 365 suite, it brings together email, calendar, contacts, attachments, and more handy tools. If you’re already using other Microsoft tools, Outlook will indeed be a great choice for you. However, if you aren’t using any Microsoft tools, you might not benefit from Outlook as much.
Outlook supports multiple accounts, and its built-in analytic engine automatically prioritizes important emails based on your communication patterns. Aside from that, it offers other handy features like:
Outlook is free to use. However, it has multiple plans for the Microsoft 365 subscription, starting at $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year.
Capterra Rating: 4.5/5
G2 Rating: 4.5/5
Yahoo! Mail is a free email service provided by Yahoo Inc., which you might know for its search engine and its news. Yahoo Mail has been around since 1997, and so far, it has gained over 225 million monthly active users. Its email service is completely free and focuses on making your email experience more productive, with features like one-click unsubscribes and free trial reminders.
Although it’s completely free, Yahoo! Mail offers a range of features that can make your email experience smarter and more efficient.
Yahoo! Mail is completely free to use. However, if you want more features and an ad-free inbox, you can subscribe to Yahoo Mail Plus for $5 per month.
Capterra Rating: 4.2/5G2 Rating: 3.8/5
ProtonMail is a business email provider based in Switzerland, known for its strong privacy focus. ProtonMail offers advanced end-to-end and zero-access encryption for your emails and keeps your email communication private and secure.
Overall, ProtonMail is available for free, but you can update to a paid version to access more features.
ProtonMail’s main focus lies on the security and privacy of your emails. But aside from its excellent security features, it also comes with other benefits, such as:
ProtonMail offers various pricing plans for individuals, families, and businesses. The pricing plans for individuals start at €3.99 per user/month (billed annually). The pricing plans for businesses start at €6.99 per user/month (billed annually).
Capterra Rating: 4.6/5G2 Rating: 4.4/5
AOL Mail is a free email service provided by AOL, which is part of the Yahoo Inc. company. AOL Mail has been around for a long time, but it’s still an active email service. Overall, AOL Mail offers a very basic inbox and a suite of features that you can get with other, better providers.
AOL Mail offers the standard features of any free email service with generous storage and some smart features. Here are some of the AOL Mail’s main features:
AOL Mail is completely free to use.
Capterra Rating: 4.1/5G2 Rating: N/A
Founded in 2006, Guerrilla Mail has so far processed 16,138,174,984 emails. Guerrilla Mail is an email provided by Go-Guerrilla, an open-source mini SMTP server. Guerrilla Mail is the perfect weapon against spam, as it offers temporary email addresses for privacy protection.
You can use Guerrilla Mail to prevent spam or if you don’t want to give out your real email address. The emails sent to your Guerrilla Mail inbox are only kept there for an hour. Guerrilla Mail is not intended for primary business use.
Aside from providing an anonymous, disposable email address, Guerrilla Mail doesn’t do much else.
Guerrilla Mail is completely free to use.
Capterra Rating: N/AG2 Rating: 4.4/5
Mail.com is another free email service suitable for businesses and entrepreneurs. It offers a wide range of domain names for your email address, such as @mail.com, @usa.com, or @engineer.com (and other names of professions).
It’s free to use, but there’s a premium version with more advanced features. The free version, however, lacks the modern features that other free email providers offer their users. What’s more, the free inbox is supported by ads, which can be a bit annoying to some users.
Mail.com offers a free business email with a variety of domain names you can choose from. Here are some of its features:
Mail.com is free to use. However, there is a premium version starting at $9.99 for 3 months if you want access to more advanced features, like an ad-free inbox, telephone support, and more cloud storage.
Mailfence is a privacy-focused email service provider based in Belgium, offering OpenPGP encrypted emails. It offers strong security features to protect your email privacy, with no ads, no trackers, and no government surveillance. It also has advanced spam filters and message encryption to prevent any privacy slip-ups.
Without a doubt, security and privacy features are Mailfence’s main focus. It also offers an integrated tool suite with calendars, documents, and groups on the free version. Aside from that, it offers the following features on its paid plans:
Mailfence is free to use. There are paid plans starting at $3.50 per month (billed yearly) if you need access to advanced features and more storage.
Capterra Rating: 4.3/5G2 Rating: 4.7/5
Selecting the right email service depends on your business needs. When choosing one, you should consider factors like storage requirements, security features, domain name options, and additional tools offered.
While using a free business email provider can often be enough, your business will undoubtedly benefit much more from a paid email provider that allows you to create your own domain name. For startups and SMEs, using a custom domain name that matches their brand name is key to presenting themselves as trustworthy businesses they are.
If you’re open to investing in a professional email service, consider Canary Mail.
Overall, choosing a free business email provider that is separate from your personal inbox can help you streamline your business communication. Each of the best free business email services we’ve reviewed in this article offers a different set of strengths and weaknesses you must take into account when selecting the right option for you.
❓What are the limitations of using a free email provider for business purposes?
Free email providers typically come with limitations such as limited storage space, fewer customization options, and sometimes ads within the inbox. Plus, customer support may be limited.
❓Can I use a free business email for multiple users in my business?
Yes, many free email providers offer options for creating multiple user accounts under a single domain, but there may be limits to how many accounts you can create. Larger businesses that require lots of email addresses under the same domain name will need to upgrade to paid mailbox.
❓Are free email providers secure enough for handling sensitive business information?
While free email providers implement basic security measures such as encryption and spam filtering, not all of them offer the same level of security and compliance features as paid options.
I have always been fascinated by the world of SaaS and technology. From a young age, I found myself drawn to the endless possibilities that email technology offers. The ability to connect with people across the globe and streamline communication processes is something that truly excites me. As a passionate individual, I am constantly seeking new ways to leverage SaaS and email technology to enhance productivity and drive innovation.
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