Email & SMS

The Ultimate List of Email Service Providers for Brands

By Tinuiti Team

Email is the core way we communicate these days — particularly as businesses. It’s how we relay order and shipment details, how we market and promote our products, and how we communicate with our team and further our goals.

In short, it’s pretty darn important.

Want to make sure that important piece of the puzzle is in the right hands? That your emails are secure, mobile-friendly and easy to access? Then choose your email provider carefully.

 

6 Email Service Providers for Brands

Here are some of the top email service providers to choose from — along with what makes them so great.
 

1. Zoho

 

Zoho is a mail client made for pros. With a built-in calendar, task manager and notes feature, it makes it easy to manage your messages as well as your daily to-dos.

Admins can also configure settings for each individual mailbox — things like quotas, privileges, group accounts and more. You can even set up custom email policies for your organization

Best of all, Zoho is ad-free (even the $1/month version!) and integrates seamlessly with the Zoho CRM, making it easy to track your leads throughout the nurturing process. It’s one of the most popular email service providers out there for businesses.

 

2. Gmail

 

There are lots of perks to using Gmail for your business needs. For one, it comes with loads of storage. Each Gmail account boasts 10GB of free storage (plus 50GB more for just $1 a month), and you can customize your Gmail account to come from your company’s website. You just have to prove the site belongs to you, and your customized Gmail account will be good to go.

It also has a super powerful spam filter and is easy to search, filters and configure settings like signatures, out of office messages and more. There’s also a built-in chat feature so your team members can communicate on the fly.

What really makes Gmail one of the best email service providers? You get access to dozens of Google apps and platforms instantly, including Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, etc.

 

3. Bluehost

 

If you need web hosting as well as email, Bluehost is a great option. Plans range from $2.95 to $13.95 per month and come with unlimited storage and unlimited email accounts. On all but the lower-priced plan, users get access to Bluehost’s SpamExperts tool, which lets you create blacklists, whitelists and delivery queues to manage your junk mail.

The higher-tier plans also include website backups and domain privacy — both must-haves if you’re looking to prevent data breaches and website hacks.

 

4. Mail.com

 

Mail.com is a free, albeit less customizable version of Gmail. You can select your address from 200 different domain names ([email protected], [email protected], etc.) or simply opt for [email protected]. The platform offers unlimited storage and attachments up to 50MB.

It comes with mobile-friendly clients for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, as well as a calendar, similar to Google’s. There is a paid version of Mail, which comes at $19.95 per year. This one is ad-free and allows you to recall messages (as long as they haven’t been read yet.)

 

5. Office 365

 

 
If you have a large team (and they’re Microsoft-based), then Office 365’s email might be the best choice. Its lowest-cost plan is just $4 per month and comes with unlimited users, 50GB of storage and includes both Word and Excel access.

More premium plans add in video conferencing, task management, individual team sites, a CRM and more. There’s also built-in spam and virus protection and, of course, webmail access.

 

6. Rackspace

 

 
Want a virtual guarantee your email won’t go down when you need it? Rackspace is your best bet. The platform offers a money-back guarantee on its uptime, and the service costs just $2 per month. You can use your company’s own domain, sync to your mobile device and store up to 30GB of messages.

Rackspace also allows you to salvage deleted emails and comes with a built-in instant messaging tool to communicate with team members. Spam and virus protection are also included, and emails are fully compatible with Microsoft Outlook and other popular desktop clients.

 

A Note From The Expert:

 
Ecommerce email marketing programs have taken a giant leap forward in segmentation, UX, and CRM integrations over the last few years.

But how do you pick the right one–or even harder, migrate from your current email service provider (ESP) to a new one?

In the following interview, we consulted with Kestrel Lemen, our Email Marketing Manager at CPC Strategy with seven years of email marketing experience under her belt, to get her take on some of the most popular ESPs.

“Email is very powerful in the world for ecommerce, but it’s only as effective at driving sales as your mobile site experience and CRO. Because at the end of the day, email is just a tool. You also have social, PPC, and Amazon as potential tools.”

“If we pare email down to its main function, it’s retention marketing–a way to keep people coming back. But don’t get too comfortable with your strategy–always be thinking ahead about what your customers want.”

You can check out Lemen’s full interview here.

To learn more about the best email service providers, email [email protected].

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