Email is a digital innovation which has stood the test of time – millions of businesses still use it on a daily basis to communicate with customers, handle orders and send out email marketing.
If you’re on a tight budget or are a new business, you could benefit from a free email account – but be choosy about it. You need a free email account which looks professional, doesn’t advertise someone else, and is reliable and easy to manage. Fortunately, there are several free or very low cost email services which do tick all of these boxes.
For integration with the rest of the ubiquitous Google world, you can’t beat good old Gmail. If you’re not used to it, you may find Gmail’s use of tags rather than folders irritating, but it grows on you.
To get a custom, personalized [email protected] type of email address, you’ll need to sign up to Workspace, which provides a host of Google tools and utilities in one place, streamlining your work flow and offering effortless integration. This starts at just $6/month, including a generous 30GB of cloud storage per user, plus free video meetings and a lot more bells and whistles to boot.
If Google isn’t your thing, a good alternative option is Zoho Mail. Specifically designed for small business use, you can use it as a standalone option, starting at just $1/month for a custom email address, or you can opt for Zoho’s Workplace suite, which comprises a suite of office software, email, instant chat and online meeting facilities, all for $3 per user per month.
Zoho’s email offering uses what it calls ‘streams’ to further email productivity among teams and collaborators. Similar to a virtual team bulletin board, it enables messages to be shared with the whole group or only with one or more individuals, reducing the need for email replies and confusion.
Zoho is big on security and privacy, and it is guaranteed ad-free. It’s also a very reliable service, with 99% uptime.
Yahoo’s business email service isn’t that well known, but it offers a slick and easy to use service from as little as $1.19/month for 10 mailboxes, including a custom yourname@yourdomain email address. Each mailbox can have up to 30 aliases. You get 1TB of free storage, as well as email analytics tools. There’s also an instant messaging function.
Some users may be wary of Yahoo, however, due to repeated security breaches over the years.
If security and privacy are top of your wish list, then Proton Mail may be a good option for your business. It’s more expensive than the others, starting at around $8/month for a professional account. For that, however, you get an end to end fully encrypted email service, which can be used anonymously – no name or contact details are required when you sign up.
Emails are stored, encrypted, on the company’s Swiss datacenters, and governed by Swiss law, which offers some of the strictest privacy laws in the world.
There are other free or low cost email services around, but these four choices between them will offer something to suit any small business. Whether you’re looking for the lowest possible cost, easy integration, included office software or high tech security, there’s an email account here for any kind of business, and all of them offer plenty of room to grow.
