Best Email Hosting Services (UK) - Hosting Data (2024)

Similar to how great web hosting services are easy to find these days, the same goes for quality email hosting.
Google “amazing email hosting”, and you’ll get mostly consumer-oriented, free email hosting services.
But this might not be enough for professional users & businesses.
They need pro email hosting providers who offer custom domains like the best domain registrars do.
The most robust email hosting services offer features to boost productivity and reduce time consumption, such as:

More email storage
Larger file sizes
Better deliverability

These are as easy to find – you can even get a free custom email – as your usual email hosting services like Outlook or Google. There may be the additional step of adding a few DNS records to your domain, but that’s a breeze.
Lastly, worried about price? Don’t be. There are quality email hosting services for under a fiver per month.
Table of Contents:

How We Reviewed Our Best Email Hosting Picks
Best Email Hosting (UK)
1. Hostinger
2. SiteGround
3. HostGator
4. A2 Hosting
5. Zoho
6. GSuite
Top Email Hosting (UK) Buying Guide
UK Best Email Hosting FAQs
Conclusion

Our review process is extremely simple.
The first thing we did is find the 20 best email hosting UK wide. Then we reduced them to the top 10 finalists.
Here are the metrics of focus for our top 6 picks:

Account creation
Email deliverability
Features & tools

All the information we gathered is included in the reviews.

Without further ado, let’s review the best email hosting services (in our humble opinion) that UK has to offer.
While our list is essentially “best to worst”, you don’t have to necessarily look at it like that. You might find that some of our lower-ranked picks are better suited for your specific needs and wants.

Visit Hostinger

Review
Hostinger comes up a lot when it comes to web hosting. It undercuts the prices of most other businesses while still providing many of the features that are considered mainstays of the service.
The thing that keeps them ahead of everyone else is not that they do anyone thing especially well. Rather, they do everything better than most, even if they are not the best at anything. Anyway, you can’t complain because all packages have free email (with hosting plans) included, such as:

An antivirus software built into the platform
Easily accessed and customised calendar
Works on multiple devices at once, even if they run different software
High quality filters for your mail
Up to 10 aliases per user

These email hosting features keep the service functional while also keeping it safe. You would be surprised how many email hosting services make safety a distant second to any other feature.
Hostinger’s Usability is Some of the Best 🏆️
While security often comes at the cost of usability, that is not the case with Hostinger. People looking for email hosting use Hostinger because it is secure. People who actually use the email hosting services Hostinger provides use it because it is clean and intuitive.
The user never has to think about the protection tools. Spam never gets through, and the user will never have to make a decision about how much protection they want.
The experience design is top-notch with this best email hosting platform, while the backend is advanced enough to work on its own. You get all the user experience, without any time-consuming setup processes. Neither you nor your users have to worry about tinkering with settings.
Using Different Devices 📱️
Phones and tablets have clunky interfaces, hence why apps have to be designed especially for them. Hostinger’s app is available on most devices, and is consistent across all device types. This means that even if you have a Windows computer and an iPhone, you will be able to easily use both without getting lost on either.

Visit SiteGround.com

Overview
SiteGround is a reliable email hosting provider that provides an adequate domain and email hosting service.It was founded in 2004 and is currently servicing over 2 million domains worldwide.
Siteground doesn’t sell email hosting separately, but if you’re a business – your website also needs to be hosted somewhere.It’s often considered the best email hosting service choice, despite offering domain services too.
All of their hosting plans, even the cheapest one, allow you to get an unlimited number of emails per domain for free.
With the cheapest email hosting plan, you get:

Single domain
Unlimited emails
10GB Email storage
50MB Max attachment size
20 Received emails per minute
800 Emails sent per hour
80 Recipients per email

Siteground’s Security-First Approach
Siteground utilizes a security-first approach to ensure that you get top-notch security for their email hosting.
Instead of using software created by other companies and waiting for updates to drop and fix vulnerabilities, Siteground’s team does the fixes.It consists of specialized security personnel who can handle site security threats and a DevvOps team for custom security solutions.

The A-Team
They also have a 24/7 administrative team that watches over the platform and makes sure it’s always reachable.
They made a system monitoring software that checks the server’s health every 0.5 seconds – much more than the industry standard.
On top of that, it’s programmed to foresee issues and proactively fix them before they actually occur. It’s genius.
Software solutions like RoundCube and WordPress are also under their watch, applying countless patches before developers release.

Underwhelming Email Specifications
SiteGround’s security is amazing, though their email offerings could be better.
Since SiteGround understands that each business entity has unique needs, they allow you to create an unlimited number of email accounts and each account can store up to 10 GB of email data.
This might not be very important to you if your emails do not have huge attachments. But the attachment size is also limited to 50MB – even at the highest plan. With only 10GB of storage, you might have to back up your emails before deletion from apps. Though…this is a huge number for most people.

Visit HostGator.com

Overview
HostGator, similar to SiteGround, is also a hosting company that provides free email hosting with their hosting services.It was founded in 2002 – it has enough experience in the industry to offer great email hosting provider service.
Here’s their selling point: they provide unlimited email storage.
As mentioned in our HostGator review, most other services limit the storage on cheaper plans and go into unlimited or high-gigabyte storage with the more expensive plans. Here’s exactly what you get with HG:

Unlimited Domains (depending on the plan)
Unlimited Email Storage
50MB Max Attachments Size

Unlimited Email Storage
Most email hosting companies don’t offer unlimited email storage. Hostgator does – even with the cheapest plan.
This won’t be important for everybody, although some professionals and businesses need to keep track of years-old emails. Having to download a backup of your emails before you delete them just because your provider limited your storage is not how you want to do things.
Instead… opting for unlimited email storage is a much better solution. For example, if you’re a site manager and a 10-year client asks about something you’ve done for him or her 6 years ago, you’d need to scroll through your email to that point to find that information.
Only thing is, without the unlimited email storage, it’s very likely that you’ve deleted that email already.
If you had unlimited storage, you’d be just fine!
Email Deliverability
If you didn’t know by now, many things affect email deliverability – server IP, domain, email content, and sender.
If any of those things aren’t optimized to perfection, your email might end up in the spam folder. It’s also possible that your email won’t even reach its destination – it’ll be blocked and won’t even arrive in the spam folder.
IP Issues
The one thing that affects email deliverability the most is the server IP – that’s why some people use SMTP.
They send their emails through other servers and avoid this penalty. This can incur additional costs.
Hostgator isn’t exactly known for great deliverability – some of your emails might reach the spam folder, instead of your inbox! Good thing is, Hostgator offers a dedicated IP with its highest hosting plan. You’re gonna be the only one using your IP. This will ensure higher email deliverability.

Visit A2 Hosting

Overview
A2, formerly Inquinet, was formed in 2001. Its primary service is website hosting – which includes free email services.
As opposed to most hosting companies’ 30-day version, A2 provides an anytime money-back guarantee.
At any point in your journey, leave A2 and move to a different provider, and you’ll get at least a partial refund.
They also offer a 30-day full refund.
A2 Hosting reviews all agree that it’s an extremely fast hosting option with high uptimes – and they deliver on that. Their servers are extremely fast.
You will not have any issues or slowdowns while sending emails.
A great fact, which might be important to you, is that A2 Hosting is 100% carbon-neutral. This means they’ve got a net carbon footprint of 0.
Extremely Quick Email Hosting
A2 Hosting is the email version of getting a great VPS host – at least regarding speed and performance.
A2 isn’t just like any other host – they’ve developed technologies to make their servers run exponentially faster than others.They say their servers are up to 20 times more quickly, but you shouldn’t take this number as-is.
The results from our testing don’t lie, and they conclude thatA2’s email hosting is faster than othersout there.
The difference in speed is about 20% in page load – though this will vary between pages.
How does this transfer to email?
If you want to check your email quickly, you can be sure their servers won’t hang at that moment.
Even when they receive load spikes, they’re quickly regulated by the load balancers in their network infrastructure.
The uptime is also nothing to joke about. They average more than the promised 99.9% – which is not always an easy feat.For speed and dependability, it delivers the best email hosting the UK and Europe have to select from.
Shared IP and Email Limiting
A shared IP means many people send emails from the same IP address. This makes that IP prone to blacklisting and blocking. Although A2 manages this incredibly well, you might sometimes find that your email reached the spam folder instead of the inbox.
This isn’t a problem if it happens very rarely.
But on the other hand, you get an unlimited number of emails which isn’t something a starting business or freelancer necessarily needs but it’s an excellent advantage for a rising business.

Visit Zoho.com

Overview
We here, at Hosting Data, adore hosting analogies. To understand Zoho, think of them as the email version of an awesome free VPS host.Premium performance, average price tag.
You might’ve heard of Zoho Workplaces – their full software suite that includes apps for spreadsheets, presentations & file management.
The Workplaces package also includes nifty email hosting, though there’s also a separate plan for that.
Overall, Zoho is one of the finest email hosting services and is certainly the best cheap email hosting provider.
For a small price, you get many features that help your productivity. The premium mail plan (£3.20/month). Here’s even more to consider:

50GB Storage per user/1GB Max attachments
White labelling
Email backups

There’s a Free Plan
Some businesses or professional users might not have a high budget when starting.
You should be looking at free options if you fall under that category. And Zoho offers its email suite for free. Yes, completely free – although it does come with a few caveats, which is understandable – considering that you’re not paying anything.
The worst thing about the free plan is that it supports up to 5 users. Larger businesses that need more than 5 users will need to pay. It’s also web access only, so you won’t be able to access your email from your phone.
Also, this won’t work for you if you’ve got multiple domains. Zoho’s free plan only allows for a single domain.
Other than that, there’s a limit on storage and email attachments:

5GB Storage per user
25MB Max attachment size

This means that the free plan is only suitable for a small-scale business, though if you’re a larger business, you probably have the budget to invest in a capable email hosting service.
But there are no ads displayed.This is quite normal for a paid plan.
Support Can Be Slow Sometimes
There’s nothing more worrying than customer support taking their sweet time to reply. It can be the life-or-death difference to your business. The best email hosting services prioritize speed for ticket delivery.
Zoho’s customer support does take time to reply – sometimes even takes a few days to get back to your ticket.
(This depends on the number of support requests at a given time.)
Even so, this doesn’t give you a lot of confidence that your problem will be fixed in due time. Sometimes you need an instantaneous solution. Also, the phone support team can be difficult to understand over the phone.
Even though they will solve your problem, it can be slow, and it might warrant you going with a different provider.

Visit GSuite

Overview
G Suite is a product of Google, a leading web services company for years. You are likely a Gmailer. Though there is no free custom domain option, the excellent thing about G Suite is that it has several powerful package apps that can boost your business performance.
These include Google Docs, Slides, and Google Forms – all of which can help your business rise.
G Suite also comes with 30GB of Google Drive storage – which you can use for file sharing between team members.
The email service itself is lacking in some ways.
For example, you’re limited to 25MB attachment size when sending and 50MB when receiving. Lower than most others. You may want a different one. There’s a Gmail app and you can connect your G Suite email to your app – the same as you do with a free Gmail email address.
Lastly, you can get emails for multiple domains if you need them.
G Suite Includes Powerful Software
G Suite isn’t just for emails – while it does provide custom domain emails, it’s aimed at businesses that also need a powerful software.The apps it comes with vary depending on your pricing plan.
But even the cheapest email hosting plan includes many productivity apps like Google Sites for building websites or Google Currents for engaging employees. Everything is cloud-based, so you won’t need to download anything – navigate to the website address, and the application just works! For even better productivity rates, consider blocking certain websites like social media.
No waiting for updates!
And with the help of Google Drive to keep your files, you can work from anywhere in the world.
Even if you forget your laptop. Everything is available on the cloud.
It Isn’t Cheap
G Suite is not cheap. It’s probably the most expensive application suite among the top contenders.
If you’re only using email, it comes out even more expensive because you’re not using features you’re essentially paying for. If you’re looking for the best cheap email hosting services – G Suite is good but not worth it.
Zoho comes at a fraction of the price for email hosting.
If you need to host your website and get quality professional email hosting – the above four solutions will do a perfect job for you. For a low price as well.

Professional emails also come with your hosting, some of which leave you asking for more.
This list features both dedicated & hosting-integrated solutions, to help you make a better decision. This way…
Quite a few things fall into the equation when choosing an email hosting provider. The most important three are:

Security
Privacy
Storage

Security and Data Privacy

Hosting emails requires reliable security implementations. Websites and emails hosted on the same server require an even higher level of security.
If you’re going with an email-only hosting solution, you might not need to consider high-end security measures.
You definitely should when choosing a website hosting along with email hosting.
If a hosting provider doesn’t tolerate scam websites or adult content – you probably won’t feel any negative deliverability. Still, you should look for security features such as:

DDOS Protection
Spam Protection
Email Backups

When it comes to email security, there’s no reason to be less vigilant about it than you would be when picking a high-quality cloud storage service to protect regular data.
Storage

Most people don’t take care of their inboxes as they should.
They leave thousands of unopened marketing emails & promo offers instead of deleting them or blocking the sender. You shouldn’t expect this from your employees as well…
Look for a provider with high storage options – over 5GB should be good for quite a few years.
You might want the email version of unlimited cloud storage options (like Hostgator – see #3) if you do more than typical email data exchanges.
Either way, you want high attachment size support.Usually, this is limited to 25MB though every provider on this list is limiting attachments to 50MB, to save you some headaches.
* Zoho’s Mail Premium plan puts the limit at a whopping 250MB
What to Expect
Any email provider you choose should support the most common email protocols:
IMAP
Internet Message Access Protocol is a server-client protocol that ensures you can connect to your email from multiple platforms and applications.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is used by servers and clients to configure sending emails through a domain – which is essential for a successful send. You can also connect to an SMTP server from any other website or app to send through it.
POP3
Post Office Protocol retrieves emails from a server – similar to IMAP, though used mainly by web mail.
(To be clear, all of our choices support these three protocols – even if that might not be explicitly mentioned in the review.)
Webmail & Email Client Availability

If email is important to you, you need your emails to be available whenever you need to – whether you’re at home or the pub shouldn’t matter.
The online business idea you got off the runway must seize new opportunities to expand readily.If you look at Gmail, you can use it on Windows, Mac, Android, IOS – desktop, tablet, or phone.
That’s the best-case scenario.
No need to turn on your computer to check email.All the choices laid out above allow you to use them through the web or mobile apps. The one exception is Zoho’s free tier.
Free Tier – Availability Limits
The free tier offers amazing features, but it’s web access only.
The hosting-associated emails don’t have dedicated applications, but you can easily connect them to your existing apps like Gmail, Bluemail, or Outlook.
Just use the provided IMAP/SMTP settings.
Device Compatibility
High device compatibility should be your default requirement for email hosting providers.
Without wide device compatibility, you’d only be able to check your emails from your computer – which is stuck at home.If, for example, you get an emergency email and miss it because your email hosting service doesn’t provide you with a way to connect to your mobile phone.
What then? It might be a life-or-death email. Let’s treat your client like a large-scale business, opting for the best-dedicated hosting plan available to cater vigilantly to their customers.
Not seeing these kinds of emails could be detrimental to your business; it could be the reason you lose customers. That’s why you need to connect your email to your phone.
A2 as a Good Example
A great example of this is A2 Hosting’s email. There’s no native Android or IOS app, but there is a way to connect your email to your phone.
All you have to do is open the cPanel and go to your email, then find the instructions for connecting to your phone and follow them.
Soon enough, your email will be connected to your phone, and you’ll start receiving emails.
The other email hosting services on this list also support this – some even with dedicated apps.
Adding New Accounts

Most businesses that aren’t in the IT sector don’t have dedicated people to deal with technology. That’s why everything needs to be extremely easy to do.
It’s also, generally, a sign of a top email hosting company. Great reseller hosting companies, for example, let you provide unique tech solutions to your clients in a simple and natural way.
When choosing the choicest email hosting service, you should look for an extremely easy solution that lets you create accounts within a minute.
Otherwise, it might be too complicated for a non-techy person – and you might need to hire someone to do this.This will incur additional expenses, so it isn’t the desired option.
Zoho’s Process
Zoho does this pretty elegantly. All you need to do is log in to the main admin page and click Control Panel, then User Details. After that, a button called Add User will send you into a new work environment.
From here, all you need to do is enter the user’s First and Last Name, and an email address will automatically be filled in for you, depending on your preferred email formatting options.
Choose a password and click Ok.
Website hosting companies make this process even easier by removing the need to enter First and Last Names.
If you’re hosted with one of the three web hosting companies, log in to the cPanel, and find Emails.
After that, you only need to click Emails and then Create User. Enter the email, password, and storage limit, then click Create.
Your Budget
Starting businesses and even small businesses don’t have a budget to work with.
This stems from many reasons: they invest heavily in marketing to induce faster growth.
But that means they can’t just sign up for G Suite and pay a high price for emails. They need a lower price to fit their business model and current budget.
Hosting providers know about this predicament, and there will be a top-tier free web host for businesses at any point along their growth journey.
Already With a Host?
If you’re one of these businesses and have already used one of the above hosting companies, you’re in luck.
You can create your emails through the cPanel at no additional cost. You’ll likely need to pay for the email if you’re hosted elsewhere.
Zoho allows free usage for up to 5 users, though that’s probably less than you need.
The pricing is very cheap – it’s the ideal cheap email hosting option for most people.
UI/Accessibility
Here, we always want to know the front end as well as the back end. Sites with great web design tools unwaveringly produce the best user experiences, reducing headaches.
Everything is better when organized – you know how to reach everything.That’s where some email clients go wrong – they hide some options behind multiple menus – making them hard to find.
Not the options on this list, though – what we’ve reviewed today are some of the most accessible emails.
For example, let’s take a look at Zoho’s interface:

It’s organized, nice, and clean – and it looks good.
This is especially important for non-techy people. Techy people like messing around with technology. Contrary to that, non-techy people don’t enjoy tech that isn’t neatly organized or easy to use.
No matter what type of people your team has, always aim for great UI, & easy accessibility.

A pro email can increase your business success through reputational building and newsletters.
But choosing the perfect email hosting service isn’t easy. You need to consider your:

Use need
Budget
Website hosting

Most of the above-mentioned email hosting services will fill your needs and save you time and headaches. 📚
Final tip: If you don’t need the additional software that some providers offer, for example, GSuite, I’d go with a hosting provider-based email since you also need to host your website.

You Might Also Like:

How to Get a Free Custom Email
Best Email Marketing Platforms (UK)