Email is a need of today’s generation for all formal or informal communications and so we all require the best email service providers for smooth and safe conversations. However, it is sometimes not easy to choose as there are many options available amongst the best free email service providers and best email service paid providers.
Choosing the best email service providers to depend on various factors when you are looking for the best email service for business. You will be needing the best email service providers for privacy, especially if you transact sensitive or confidential information from time to time.
But don’t worry, as you have come to the right place as we will help you find the best email service providers as per your need.
Now before we get into your various best free email service providers and best paid email service providers, let’s understand what makes the best email service.
What makes one the Best Email Service?
The companies that provide email services to their client, be it for marketing or bulk, are called email service providers.
Any email service provider can be claimed as best if it can successfully satisfy its clients’ needs and provide them with the best email service for privacy.
There are, in general, two types of email services, i.e. Email clients and Webmail.
An email client is a desktop application, such as Microsoft Outlook, that allows you to compose, send, receive, and read mails.
On the other hand, webmail, such as Gmail and Yahoo, is a web application for accessing emails using browsers.
Here are a few criteria to be considered before choosing the best email service provider for you:
- Choosing the best email service for business: You should choose the one based on features such as storage, maximum attachment size, security options, archiving capabilities, task scheduling, and cost.
- Choosing the best email service for personal use: You should choose the one with features such as spam blocking, virus and malware protection, storage, and ease of use.
- Choose the best email service paid providers: You should look for features such as huge attachments, storage, file recovery options, collaboration options, task management, multi-user support, and custom domains.
Now, let’s check the best free email service providers and best paid email service providers suited for your business, personal, and privacy concerns.
Best Free Email Service Providers
Here we have listed a few best free email service providers. Let’s have a look:
1. Gmail
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 25MB | 15GB (Free) | Basic plan ($5 per user/month), Business plan ($10 per user/month), and Enterprise plan ($25 per user/month) | It is the best email service provider overall |
It is a type of webmail providing the best email service with the trust of Google.
Although it seems like the obvious choice it occupies the second largest market share behind Apple iPhone’s native email app.
What makes it so popular, is it’s built into Google suite providing users with features like chat, video-conference.
Also, since YouTube and Chrome are popular, Gmail makes it easier to log in and manage those accounts thus making it one of the best email service providers.
Apart from these, Gmail offers 15GB free space storage space for your Inbox, Drive, and Photos for free.
You can also create your custom email address on your domain, e.g. yourname@yourcompany.com
The paid plans include a Basic plan at $5 per user/month with 30GB space, unlimited group email, 99.9% guaranteed uptime, and 24/7 support.
Other plans are Business at $10 per user/month and Enterprise at $25 per user/month. The G Suite plans start at $6 and provide a 14-day free trial.
However, instead of organizing messages into folders, you must filter them using a custom labeling system. This feature isn’t very popular with its users.
Pros:
- Accessibility from any device
- Undo send for emails and email forwarding
- Powerful search and security features
- Offline mode support
- Keyboard shortcuts
Cons:
- Slow loading
- Managing folders and labels difficult
2. ProtonMail
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 25 MB | 500MB (free) | Plus ($5.66/month), Professional ($9/month), and Visionary ($34/month) | It is the best email service provider for Privacy |
Launched in 2004, ProtonMail comes with the unique feature of encrypted mail thus making it the best email service for privacy concerned clients.
However, its disadvantage is that it provides just 500MB space, a limit of 150 messages per day, and a lack of organizational tools.
This is made up of extensively secure encrypted email conversations that nobody else can see, and which disappear after a month.
It is very easy to use on any device without the need for any encryption software and has a color-coded, easy to understand interface.
If you wish to go a step further, you can choose it’s $5 plan/month that gives you 5Gb storage, 1,000 messages per day allowance, custom domains, and support for folders, labels, filters, and contact groups.
It’s further professional and visionary plans are priced at $9 per month and $34 per month respectively.
Pros:
- End-to-end encryption
- Set expiry date for the email
- Paid plan features like autoresponder, email filters, and multi-user support
- Suitable for iOS and Android
- Security using encryption
Cons:
- Limited storage and support for the free plan
- No email encryption for free account
3. Outlook
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email client | 25 MB | 15GB | Office 365 Home ($99.99 per year) and Office 365 Personal ($69.99 per year) | It is best suited for multiple app integrations |
Provided by Microsoft, Outlook comes with a focused inbox, powerful events, calendar-related abilities, and a raft of app-based integrations.
It has a simple interface with folders and organizational tools on the left, contents, and current folders in the center, and a simple preview pane on the right.
The focused inbox feature automatically keeps important mails into a separate folder with no distractions and the events such as flights and dinner reservations are automatically added to your calendar.
If you are unhappy with the 15GB space provided, you can easily update it to 50GB using Office 365 which also gives you 1TB space on OneDrive.
Pros:
- Recover deleted messages
- Support for add-ins
- Search other mails from the same sender suing right click
- Hide email address using aliases
- Emails organized automatically
- Supported on both iOS and Android
- Easy to integrate with Skype and Outlook
Cons:
- Loading time
4. Yahoo Mail
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 25 MB | 1TB (Free) | $3.19 per mailbox per month, Yahoo Mail Pro ($3.49 per month) | It is best suited for Spam blocking |
Although Yahoo Mail isn’t very popular these days, its latest versions are tightening the competition. This was one of the best email service providers a few years back
Initially similar to Gmail, it also provides features to organize mails into custom folders and allows the layout to display a message preview in a couple of clicks.
The disposable email address and 1TB mailbox storage are it’s highlighting features.
Even though it doesn’t come with a Gmail like labeling service, Yahoo is still appealing in many ways.
The business plan for yahoo starts at $3.19 per mailbox per month with the prices dropping to $1.59 for 5, $1.19 for 10 months.
It also offers Yahoo Mail Pro plan at $3.49 with an ad-free inbox, priority customer support, and a host of additional features.
Pros:
- Excellent Spam Filters
- Finding attachments easier
- Search key information easily
- Create 500 disposable addresses without personal data
- Contacts from files, Facebook, Google, Outlook accounts easily imported
- Block senders
- Yahoo calendar integration
Cons:
- Fewer filters or rules
- No support for online attachment of files
- Inbox ads
5. Zoho
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 25MB | 5GB, 30GB, or 100GB depending on the plan | Mail Lite ($1/user per month with 5GB), Standard ($3/User per month with 30GB), and Professional ($6/user per month with 100GB) | Best email service for business |
It’s a lesser-known email account that is the best email service for business.
It is extremely user-friendly and can be integrated with Google Drive, Box, and other cloud-based file managers.
The unique feature of Zoho is its ability to customize the domain name for up to 25 connected email addresses along with the spreadsheet, word processor, presentation, and other tools.
With this, you can custom hotkeys to expand and replace abbreviations with full words and phrases as you type. It also comes with offline mode to solve your internet connectivity issue.
Though the free plan is very basic, the standard plan gets you IMAP and POP access, email forwarding, active sync, multiple domain hosting, domain aliases, 30GB storage, 30MB attachment size, and some other major improvements.
Apart from this you also have two other plan options: Lite for $1 and Professional for $6.
Pros:
- Features such as Expense Tracker, tag people, and sharing folders
- Create and manage your own incoming rules.
- Advanced searching with deleting and archiving feature
- Search emails from the same sender by a right-click
- Ad-free and easily accessible from Android and iOS
- Simple and clean design with more than 50 keyboard shortcuts
Cons:
- Social media import of contact not possible
- Made for small businesses
6. AOL Mail
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 25 MB | Unlimited | Free Service | People using email for most conversations |
This mail service provided by America Online (AOL), purchased by Verizon in 2015, is the best free email service provider available.
It delivers the users with a classic news-driven homepage, contemporary spam filters, and virus protection that the user expects from its email provider.
Apart from the feature of importing contacts from a CSV, TXT, or LDIF file, the AOL Mail provides you with unlimited storage, free of cost.
However, it doesn’t support attaching files from online storage.
Pros:
- Undo sent emails to AOL addresses
- Customize several settings and in-browser sound alert
- Virus protection and spell-check
Cons:
- Ads and no support for file attachment from online sources
7. iCloud Mail
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 50MB | 5GB | $0.99/month to $9.99/month | MAC users |
iCloud mail is the best free mail service provider for MAC users who wish to have everything in one system.
It provides its users with 5GB of storage to sync photos, files, or email. However, this space is shared between all your apps so it must be managed accordingly or you can upgrade your plan by paying anything between $0.99/month to $9.99/month as per your requirement.
Since it comes from Apple it trumps over other providers by its ease of integration between desktop and iPhone mail apps.
Some of its salient features include easy-to-use search functionality, easy-to-use rules, and an ability to label VIP senders so that their messages will automatically be filtered into a separate tab on the left.
Pros:
- Cloud storage for documents, photos, and music files downloadable on iOS, Mac, and Windows devices.
- Ease of access to products or services such as pages, numbers, and keynotes
- Allows file sharing up to 50MB and online storage up to 5GB
- Keyboard shortcuts supported.
Cons:
- Compatible with Apple devices only
8. GMX Mail
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 50MB | 65GB | Free Service | Multiple emails within one central inbox |
Launched in 1997, GMX Mail isn’t very popular, however, some of its features make it worthy of being the best email service provider.
It claims to allow you to keep nearly half a million messages in your inbox with its 65GB storage feature.
It also allows you to send files up to 50MB so that you can share a ton of presentations, photos, or other large files from your account.
The biggest disadvantage is that it is not the best email service for privacy as it has no two-factor authentication which means any unauthorized device can access your mail.
Its most salient feature is its ability to set up to 10 alias email addresses within one account. It also allows the creation of custom domains for businesses.
Pros:
- Spam filtering and multiple email account management
- File attachment size of 50 MB and free online storage of 2GB
- Attach a file from online storage
- Free online calendar and direct support from the company provided for any query
Cons:
- No two-factor authentication
9. Yandex Mail
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 30 MB | 10GB free cloud | Free Service | Anyone wanting additional storage capabilities |
Developed by a Russian web company, you can sign up to a free account on Yandex and easily link it with your Facebook, Twitter, or Gmail accounts, and personalize your inbox.
Similar to other providers, Yandex’s inbox can also be set to filter or prioritize emails from real people.
You are also given the feature that recognizes keywords in messages and subject lines and organizes the emails accordingly.
Apart from this Yandex offers free 10GB cloud storage to any user who signs up.
Pros:
- Protects against spam and fraud with built-in antivirus.
- Smart filtering feature of emails and also allows you to create tasks and lists
- Provides 10GB cloud storage
- The security feature of PIN or fingerprint provided for logging into the app
- Comes with a built-in translator
10. Mail.com
| Type | Attachment Size | Storage Provided | Paid Plan | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | 30 MB | 2GB | Free Service | Best email service for business |
As the name suggests, Mail.com is an email service provider that knows its audience and lets you select the domain name from a 200 names list.
It provides features such as Virus protection and spam blocker as well as more flexibility to its users.
However, the storage space of 2GB isn’t stellar and there is no two-factor authentication provided.
You can choose amongst 200 custom domains such as:
- Bartender.net
- Musician.org
- Columnist.com
- Engineer.com
- Accountant.com
- Toothfairy.com
Pros:
- Unlimited storage with a list of 200 custom domain names
- Online storage and mail collector feature allows you to collect emails from other accounts.
- ICS and CVS formats are supported for the import and export of data.
- Support for iOS and Android devices
Cons:
- The two-factor authentication feature is not provided.
Final Word
We have listed out all the best free email service providers that are currently providing their services to the customers. Each day there are new upgrades that are becoming available with each of these providers.
Email communication has become an integral part of everyone’s life nowadays. So the race to be the best email service providers will always be there among these services which are good in a way to the end-users.
Every email service provider has its pros and cons so choose the one that satisfies your needs. We hope that this article will help you find the best free email service provider that suits all your needs to have safe email communication.