Email hosting is essential for creating a strong online presence for your business. It allows you to create a stronger brand identity, boost email and organisation security, improve business scalability, and faster integration with other tools.
Email hosting is a service that allows sending, storing, and receiving emails on the server provided by an email hosting provider. The main difference between free email service providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo, and more, and an email hosting service is you can set up a professional email address incorporating your domain name.
However, before you choose your email hosting provider, you must pay attention to the security of the hosted email. Using less-secure email hosting can threaten your organisation. Here is what we believe are 5 of the most secure email hosting providers.
1. Intermedia
Built over the Microsoft Exchange business email service, Intermedia is an outlier in the universe of hosted emails.
It comes with innovative security features with TLSv1.2 in-transit email encryption. It also allows secure file sharing and backup on top of anti-spam and anti-malware tools. Additionally, it provides extensive data protection compliant with US-EU and US-Swiss Safe Harbor frameworks. Intermedia identifiable customer data never gets “mined” to serve third-party ads.
Key Features
- Anti-spam tools and anti-malware tools
- Simple data recovery plans
- Unlimited mailbox storage
- Regularly implemented patches and security updates
- HIPAA compliant
- Multiple backup methods
- Starts at $7.49 per month per mailbox
2. Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail Premium email hosting offers competitive pricing with 50GB of mail storage per user, multiple domains, unlimited aliases and many more outstanding features. Even though Zoho offers 30+ apps and organization tools, if you just use their email provider, it will cost you only $1/user/month.
It comes with top-notch security and surveillance, with a reliable 99.9% uptime. Additionally, it supports encryption both at rest and end-to-end, along with S/MIME message encryption. It is SOC2 compliant and supports signing a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
Key features
- Email hosting for multiple domains
- Domain aliases and email routing
- Email and folder sharing
- Offline access and email recall
- IMAP/ POP access
- Exchange Activesync
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Starts from $1/user/month
3. Google Workspace
Google Workspace is the email hosting service provided by Google that comes with many other collaborative and productivity tools for organizations. One of the key features of Google Workspace is its unlimited cloud storage (1 TB for fewer than five users). It includes an added layer of protection and policy implementation for emails over the Basic edition.
Additionally, it offers advanced protection against spam and phishing attacks which is claimed to be 99.9% effective. For SMBs reliant on Google apps, adding email hosting through Google Workspace is a reasonable choice.
Key features
- Multi-factor authentication and security keys for added protection
- No advertising on Google Workspace
- Complete ownership of data
- Does not collect any data for advertisement purposes
- Full collaboration suite
- Excellent usability
- Excellent anti-spam and antiphishing engine
- HIPAA-compliant
- Starts at $6 per user per month
4. GoDaddy
Even though GoDaddy has become a household name for its web hosting services, it provides email hosting services reasonably priced with exclusive features. Its email hosting services start at as low as $1.99/user/month, which is incredibly cheap considering their other services.
With incredible uptime, GoDaddy is very upfront about its features, including complete privacy of your data, up to 25 GB of cloud storage, and search features. It also offers syncs your data across multiple devices and provides scalable features. Additionally, it ensures your safety with industry-leading spam and virus filters and best-in-class security.
Key features
- 25 GB of email storage
- Spam and virus filters
- Mobile-friendly webmail
- Features to share calendars and contacts with the team
- Task management apps
- Works with the email app of your choice
- Starts from $1.99/user/month
5. Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 Business Premium stands out in the pool of other email hosting providers due to the high number of features. It offers an easily scalable email setup for any sized business and has lots of migration and importing tools if the client is coming from another platform.
Besides excellent uptime, an expected feature from Microsoft, it provides various layers of security to protect businesses from external threats. Security features include content filtering, protection from 100% known viruses and 99% spam, and multi-layered, real-time anti-spam and multi-engine anti-malware protection.
Key features:
- Substantial cloud storage
- Access to the full suite of productivity tools and add-ons
- Desktop applications support for Windows and macOS
- Protects the company’s IP reputation by using separate outbound delivery pools for high-risk email
- Active content, connection, and policy-based filters
- Eliminates threats before they reach the corporate firewall
- Near real-time reporting and message trace capabilities
- Starts from $1/user/month
With increasing cyber threats, there is no denying that organisations need to secure their web infrastructure more than ever — a secure email hosting provider is essential for that. Small and medium-sized organisations are at the forefront of phishing attacks via spam email. Typically, attackers collect email addresses when it’s visible on the web, either on social networking sites or other spam lists. To mitigate the risks of cyberattacks, you need to check the visibility of your personal and organization email address.
To check your email address visibility, go to Sniff Email — an online platform dedicated to finding out if your email address exists on the Internet. Enter your email address in the search field and click fetch to find out if your email address exists on the web within a few seconds. Based on the results, you can take appropriate action to remove it.