How to Choose the Best Email Service for Business

With business users, the selection criteria for the best email service may vary from one business to another. Some need multiple email accounts; some may prefer a custom email address; for some, email storage space is the decision-maker, and some may choose a free email service provider due to budget constraints. Pick one with poor protection, and you may lose sensitive business data.

There are many providers out there, playing by their own rules, providing multiple free email accounts, free storage from 5 GB to 15 GB, cloud space, email encryption, etc. They use different spam filters and designs, and make emails look differently in inboxes. Some email service providers may not charge you for email accounts per month or per user or may provide unlimited storage.

So, which would be the best email services for your business? Choosing could be a bit tricky.

The right option needs to have a decent storage capacity, superb spam filters, multiple inboxes functionality, and make it easy for your employees to do their tasks.

Need some advice before making the choice? Read further to know how to choose the best email service for your business.

What Is an Email Service?

Email service is an app that allows registering emails, as well as creating, sending emails, and receiving them. Basically, it's a single interface for everything related to emails.

You can access email services through webmail (web-based app) or an email client (desktop app) thanks to an email hosting provider. Most email service providers also offer free email account(s).

What to Consider When Choosing an Email Client or Webmail?

Imagine you walk into a store looking for a smartphone.

Chances are that you already know the kind of a product you'd want to buy: a big screen, a powerful camera, etc. Or you can just say "I want to take pretty photos," that works, too.

This helps you assist the salesperson to show you the smartphones that fit your needs.

Like with smartphones, you have to know what kind of benefits you're looking for when choosing the best business email service. Many options are available out there, so you need a small but very focused checklist.

Let us propose some.

The best email service interface for your business means that:

• It's easy-to-use so your employees could learn it quickly.
• It integrates with other apps to make it easy for the user to complete their tasks.
• It has additional features like calendar and filtering.
• It has a decent storage space.

Sounds about right, agree? Now, let us describe these features in more detail.

1. It Must Be User-Friendly

You probably heard the term "user experience" (UX) before, and this is exactly what it is. A well-designed user interface in a digital product makes it easy to use, so the users can accomplish their goals quickly. For example, if you have multiple email addresses configured in one email services app, the user interface is very important for sending emails from the right email account.

UX isn't something that every software or company review includes or needs to include. For example, if you were searching for text writing services review, chances are you'd land at Best Writers Online where the focus is on quality writing indicators. But if you're looking for SaaS companies, try to find reports where they evaluate UX.

A well-designed and user-friendly UX:

• Is clear and includes only relevant features
• Is easy to use, even for the first-time user
• Has some customization options
• Provides powerful search options
• Supports integration with other popular tools.

A desktop email client or cloud-based interface that meets most of these UX requirements is likely to be a good choice.

2. It Needs to Be Functional

A functional email service interface has a set of features the users need to complete their daily tasks. When speaking about business email needs, these tasks include:

• Manage email inbox (send, receive, categorize, flag, and move email messages)
• Schedule emails to send later
• Create email folders to organize messages and find them later
• Write emails quickly with templates
• Check their schedule inside the email client to keep up to date with events, tasks, and meetings.

Based on this list of tasks, you can define the features of the best business email service for your business. When translated into features, these tasks become:

• Email management
• Email scheduling
• Email folders and labels
• Email templates
• A built-in calendar.

So, when looking for an email client for your business, you need to ensure it has these features.

3. It Needs to Support Productivity Add-ons

Add-ons are additional integrations or apps that help users with increasing personal and business productivity.

Although they are called "additional," the add-ons are actually critical to enhancing the functionality of the email client and making it more useful.

For example, modern email services for small businesses provide integrations with Dropbox, Google Docs, calendar apps, note-taking apps, and collaboration tools.

A good email app for a business must have:

• integration or third-party calendar app (and also synchronize itself with other calendars, say, Google)
• integration with a note taking app so your employees could take notes quickly without leaving the app's dashboard
• integration with online document collaboration tools like Google Docs
• integration with a collaboration tool like Asana.

A combination of these add-ons could be immensely helpful to your employees.

4. It Needs to Provide a Sizeable Storage Space

A good email client or webmail app provides nice storage capacity and supports storage add-ons to enhance it. Most modern email clients have integrations with popular online storage services like Dropbox.

Top Email Services in 2021

Now, let's take a look at some of the best email service providers for business so you could make a good choice. All of these email service providers have mobile apps for both iOS and Android as well for easy configuration and usage.

1. Gmail

Gmail needs no introduction. An email provider developed by Google, it's one of the most popular among personal users. Regular updates and excellent support make it a great choice for both personal and professional use.

Still, many users are dissatisfied with the service's low storage limit and concerned with Google's privacy policies that might make their business data vulnerable. In 2018, for example, the company faced criticism for storing emails from users who deleted in the confidential mode.

Another issue that makes G Suite business email not a good choice for small businesses is the cost. While the service itself is affordable, it comes as a part of a package with other business solutions (Google Drive, Meet, Chat, etc.), which significantly inflates the price in the long-term.

Who should use it:

Big corporations, medium-sized businesses.

Gmail in numbers:

• Storage capacity: 30 GB
• Filters: spam, message categorization
• Attachment limit: 50 MB
• License: the most affordable starter G Suite package with Gmail for Business has a $6 monthly fee per user. The business version of the G Suite costs $12 per user monthly.

2. Yahoo Mail

Another popular email service, Yahoo Mail also offers plans for businesses.

It is often considered the best email service for small businesses because of its large storage capacity, but it lacks user-friendly UX. The user interface of Yahoo Mail is pretty complicated, which means the tool has a steep learning curve for users.

Some other problems that small business users found while using Yahoo were non-intuitive email sorting, a very low attachment limit, and a lack of regular updates. For some reason, Yahoo Mail also kept ads in the inbox, which is another thing that makes using the service a bit more difficult.

Who should use it:

Small and medium-sized businesses.

Yahoo Mail in numbers:

• Storage capacity: 1 TB
• Filters: anti-spam protection
• Attachment limit: 25 MB
• License: one business mailbox for $3.19 monthly; $11.9 for 10 mailboxes monthly.

3. AOL

AOL Mail has been around since the early 1990s. Despite being one of the oldest email services, it never really enjoyed widespread popularity. Even now, the number of AOL email users is limited to around 170 million users around the world.

AOL users have access to some of the best spam filters as well as decent protection against malware and other viruses. However, due to a recent cancellation of some popular business features like the My eAddress that allowed a custom domain name, AOL Mail has seen many business users switch to other services.

Who should use it:

Medium-sized businesses.

AOL in numbers:

• Storage capacity: unlimited
• Filters: advanced spam and malware protection thanks to Norton Security package
• Attachment limit: 25 MB
• License: $4.49 per month.

4. Mail.com

Another well-known email service that offers some interesting business features such as a custom domain and advanced virus protection. Mail.com premium users who also have other email addresses can turn on the forwarding feature to receive all messages in one inbox.

Many business users of the free version of Mail.com, however, reported frequent crashes, too many ads in the inbox, a lack of personalization features, and slow customer support.

Who should use it:

Small businesses, medium-sized businesses, big corporations.

Mail.com in numbers:

• Storage capacity: 65 GB
• Filters: spam, anti-virus protection
• Attachment limit: 30 MB (compression feature available for larger files)
• License: the basic version is free. The provider does not list the price for the premium version on the website.

Why Choose an Email Client Over Webmail?

Having an email client instead of a traditional email provider (webmail) has quite a few benefits, especially for business users.

Reason #1: More Effective Management of Multiple Accounts

If you have or intend to have multiple email accounts, then things can quickly get very messy with a traditional email provider.

An average business email user receives around 120 emails per day. Of course, not every one of them needs a reply. But even if one has to reply to one-third of them — that's 40 emails — the process can quickly become a mess. Emails can easily be ignored or overlooked because of a lack of smart sorting.

A business account from an email client typically has powerful categorization and sorting features, so the process of replying is much easier.

Reason #2: You Often Need to Access Your Inbox While Offline

Email providers have offline access options, but the process is not exactly user-friendly. Your device is likely to constantly ask you to connect to the internet plus there's no way to access attachments if you hadn't downloaded them before.

An email client is a better option here. Not only does it make it possible to access your message offline without any connection limits, but you can also view attracted files and documents.

Reason #3: You Need Collaboration, Calendar and Other Add-ons

If you need additional integrations like task collaboration, business calendar, storage tools, note-taking apps, and other add-ons, an email client is an obvious choice. Though email service providers for small businesses offer many integrations, you need to pay for each add-on.

Email clients, on the other hand, integrate apps more intuitively and often have a better variety of highly-rated add-ons.

Reason #4: You Need an Organized Email Inbox Environment

The best business email clients offer more advanced inbox organization options compared to webmail.

Mailbird, for example, allows for creating different types of folders, nested folders, and subfolders for multiple email addresses configured in one app to keep the inbox as organized as possible. Besides, the user can add colors to folders to distinguish them visually.

Increase Productivity of Your Business Email Account with Mailbird

Mailbird is a popular Windows email client, created for convenient email management of personal and business accounts. Users can access messages from one or multiple accounts from their desktop in a modern, intuitive dashboard.

Mailbird is a great alternative to Windows 10 Mail and Office 365 Outlook business users who need an easy yet sophisticated tool that will help you manage multiple email addresses at a time.

Why Use Mailbird for Businesses?

Here are some of the top benefits for businesses switching to Mailbird.

Manage Multiple Accounts More Effectively

You can use multiple accounts in one place — separately or in the Unified inbox — so there's no need to switch between multiple windows or tabs.

Each email is saved on a hard drive along with the attachments, so you can access it without a connection to the internet.

A lack of ads also makes the process of using email more comfortable compared to ad-heavy inboxes of email providers.

A Native Calendar That Works for Multiple Accounts

Mailbird calendar makes it easy to keep track of events, meetings, and email reminders. Working with the calendar is easy, as the user can switch between email accounts and choose to view dates by month, week, or even day.

You can also add all your calendars from other email providers thanks to the import feature to manage every event, reminder, or a meeting in one place.

Read more: the guide to Mailbird native calendar.

Advanced Multi-Account and Attachment Search Options

With Mailbird, you can quickly search all your connected accounts to find information regardless of how many email accounts are connected in it. This makes it easier to find important emails even if there's a lot of them in each of the user's accounts.

There's also a powerful attachment search that identifies documents. You can filter the results by size and name to improve the results of the attachment search.

This feature is really useful for business users who receive a lot of documents like reports, presentations, spreadsheets, etc.

Unlike users of many webmail apps and email clients who struggle with finding documents because searches reveal emails instead of attachments, Mailbird users can search for them directly.

Read more: Mailbird Advanced Search: Now You Can Search Emails Like a Pro.

Mailbird Integrates With Numerous Productivity Apps

One of Mailbird's great advantages for business users is its integration with tools and features designed to help users be more productive and keep their email inboxes tidy.

There are time-saving tools, such as speed reader, in-line reply, email snooze, and attachment quick preview. For example, Mailbird has the first email speed reader to assist users to reduce the time they spend on reading emails.

To use the feature, the user specifies their average reading speed in WPM (words per minute) and then clicks on the "Speed read this message" option in the email menu.

The speed reader will switch between unread emails in the time indicated by the user.

An average employee spends an estimated 28 percent of their time reading emails. By using Mailbird's speed reading technology, you can significantly reduce this time for your employees and make them more efficient.

Read more: Speed Read to Inbox Zero.

Wrap Up

The first step after choosing the best email service provider is downloading an email client. Using an email client such as Mailbird has more benefits for businesses than any webmail interface can offer you, such as managing multiple email accounts, using productivity, and chat apps in conjunction with your email more conveniently.

Offline email access, native calendar, numerous third-party app integrations, and more makes email management much easier and more efficient. Download Mailbird and test all these features for free on a 14-day trial. Contact us if you have any issues or suggestions.

Gregory is passionate about researching new technologies in both mobile, web and WordPress. Also, he works on Online Writers Rating, a writing services review website. Gregory is in love with stories and facts, so he always tries to get the best of both worlds.