Over 300 billion emails are sent each day. So who is the best email service provider to use?

Whether you are in search of a personal email provider or an email platform that’s geared towards business use, the EcoSend team has got you covered.

In this post, you’ll find the best email service providers including free and paid options to consider based on your specific needs.  

What Is An Email Service Provider?

An email service provider (ESP) is a platform that facilitates the sending and receiving of emails.

There are two main types of email service providers, including general email providers and email marketing service providers. 

As you might expect, general email providers are aimed towards everyday users who are in search of a free email tool.

Businesses tend to opt for paid email marketing service providers. That's because they have a need for premium features such as custom domains, marketing automation, analytics tools and similar aspects to grow their business and maintain customer engagement. 

Free Email Service Providers For Personal Use

General email providers include lots of free email platforms that will give you a personal email address to use. With a free account, you’ll be able to customise the first section of the email address, though the email domain (i.e. @gmail.com) can’t be changed. 

The platforms that currently allow you to create a personal email address for free include: 

• AOL Mail

• Gmail

• GMX Mail

• iCloud Mail (Apple)

• Mail.com

• Mailfence

• Neo

• Outlook

• ProtonMail

• Tuta

• Yahoo Mail

• Yandex Mail

What are personal email addresses for?: Non-business related activities such as online shopping, registering online accounts, booking concert tickets or communicating with friends and family. 

The most popular personal email providers include Gmail, Outlook, iCloud and Yahoo. But the good news is that if none of these meets your needs, lots of lesser known providers also exist. 

Some also offer enhanced privacy and other features you’ll appreciate for your everyday email sending. 

What To Consider When Choosing An Email Provider For Personal Use 

Privacy is the biggest concern with personal email addresses, especially since most of us use our personal email to shop online and perform similar important tasks involving our personal data. Free email providers have to make their money somehow, and unfortunately some opt for selling user data to advertisers. So you must research the platform carefully to check how they handle and protect your personal information. 

Free Email Service Providers For Businesses 

Technically, you could use any of the above free email providers for personal use for your business too. However, personal providers may not offer the level of privacy or features you need to do email marketing.

Instead, you could try opting for a free plan from any popular email tool. This option is going to suit startups and similar email marketing newbies the best.

Some free email plans from popular service providers include:

Mailchimp Free Plan 

• 1,000 monthly email sends

• 1 seat

• 1 audience

• Email support for the first 30 days

• Limited analytics

• Limited template access 

MailJet Free Plan

• 6,000 monthly email sends (max 200 per day)

• 1,500 contacts

• Advanced email builder

• Basic statistics

• Form builder

• APIs, SMTP Relay and Webhooks

MailerLite Free Plan

• 12 monthly email sends

• 1,000 subscribers 

• 1 seat

• Email automation features

• Additional tools for landing pages and signup forms 

• Reporting 

• Customer support for first 30 days

SendGrid

• 100 emails per day

• 1 seat

• APIs, SMTP Relay 

• Analytics

• Deliverability insights

• Ticket support

Zoho Forever Free Plan

• 6,000 monthly email sends

• 2,000 subscribers

• 5 seats

• Signup forms 

• Limited templates

• Compliance check 

Considerations with free email tools for business use: Free email tools have a lot of limitations, meaning if you want full access to all the features you need you’ll likely have to switch to a paid plan. If the email provider doesn’t include a custom email domain, your emails won’t look professional in front of your customers. Some free email tools also don’t include verification. It’s also up to you to check they comply with data privacy laws. 

Paid Email Service Providers For Business Use

Most businesses pay for their email service provider to get all the features they need, while also ensuring their customer data will be secure. 

We’ve listed some of the top paid email service providers below.

In terms of pricing, we’ve listed all plans starting at the cheapest paid plan. But as you might expect, the plan may be more expensive if you require more features or have a large contact list. 

Bird 

• 3,000 contacts

• Global SMS and WhatsApp messaging

• Subject line generator

• Templates

• GDPR compliant 

Pricing: From £38/$45 per month

Visit Bird  

Brevo (Formally Sendinblue)

• 5,000 email sends per month

• 500,000 contacts

• 1 inbox address

• Template builders

• Advanced segmentation

• Support

• GDPR compliance

Pricing: From £6/$9 per month

Visit Brevo

Campaign Monitor

• 2,500 email sends per month

• Multiple seats

• Template builders

• Real-time reporting and analytics

• Integrations

• Additional agency features

Pricing: From £10/$11 per month 

Visit Campaign Monitor  

EcoSend 

• 4,000 monthly email sends

• 1,000 contacts

• Marketing automation tools

• Drag and drop template builder

• 100+ integrations

• Reduces the carbon footprint of your campaigns

• Plants trees on your behalf

Pricing: From £29/$29 per month 

Visit EcoSend (or stay on this website! 😎)

Google Workspace

• 1 user

• Up to 30GB of storage

• Custom email domain

• Security tools

• 100 participant video meetings 

Pricing: From £5/$6 per month (minimum 1 year commitment) 

Visit Google Workspace 

HubSpot

• 1,000 contacts

• 1 inbox

• 50 active lists

• 10 email automation actions

• Remove HubSpot branding

• Standard analytics

Pricing: From £14/$15 per month 

Visit HubSpot

Mailchimp

• 5,000 monthly email sends

• 3 seats

• 3 audiences

• 24/7 support

• Limited analytics

• Remove Mailchimp branding

• Integrations

Pricing: From £10/$13 per month 

Visit Mailchimp 

You may also be interested in: The Mailchimp alternative for purpose-driven brands 

MailerLite

• Unlimited monthly emails

• 3 users

• Unlimited templates

• Website and digital product features

• 24/7 support

Pricing: From $9 per month 

Visit MailerLite

Mailtrap

• 10,000 monthly email sends

• No daily send limit

• 1,000 sending domains

• Templates

Pricing: From $15 per month 

Visit Mailtrap

Microsoft 365 

• 1 user

• Custom email domain

• Web and mobile versions of Microsoft products

• Up to 1 TB of Cloud storage

• Spam and malware filtering 

Pricing: From £4.90 per month + VAT

Visit Microsoft 365

Sender

• 30,000 monthly email sends

• 2,500 subscribers

• Multi-user access

• Template editors

• Segmentation

• Forms

• Analytics tools

Pricing: From £12.02/$15.83 per month 

Visit Sender

Zoho 

• Unlimited email sends

• 500 contacts

• 10 users

• Email templates

• Basic segmentation

Pricing: From £2.40 per month 

Visit Zoho

What To Consider When Choosing An Email Provider For Business Use 

Email is an essential tool for any business, whether you use email to provide customer service or to perform email marketing. 

Before you choose an email provider, take the time to research the tool fully. That’s because the wrong choice could limit the potential for your business to grow (email has an average of $42 ROI for every $1 spent).

Likewise, poor security or lots of downtime could reflect badly on your business, especially if your customers are affected. 

What to check before you choose an email service provider:

• Analytics and reporting 

• Anti-spam measures

• API and webhooks

• Custom email domains

• Customer service (not chatbot)

• Email automation

• Email deliverability

• Email template builders

• Features

• GDPR compliance

• Integrations with other tools

• Monthly email send limit

• Number of seats

• Pricing (including the frequency of price hikes)

• Relevancy of features to what is actually needed

• Reliability 

• Scalable packages

• Security features

• Storage

• Support resources

• Sustainability

• User-friendliness

Email providers should also keep up with sender changes including the major updates which happened in 2024 with Google and Yahoo. Otherwise, if your campaigns aren’t compliant your deliverability and ultimately your ROI could fall. 

P.S. Curious to know what a sustainable email provider is? Wholegrain Digital has a helpful explanation on their blog. 

Email Provider FAQs

Still have questions about email service providers? We’ve answered the top queries below, but for anything else related to finding an email service provider for email marketing please drop us a message. 

What Is The Best Email Service For Personal Use?

We’re big on privacy here at EcoSend, so we’d have to go for Apple Mail, also known as iCloud. 

How To Change Email Providers

When using a free email tool such as Gmail or Outlook, you can simply create a new email address by logging out of your account and creating a new account elsewhere. 

For businesses, you will need to migrate your list over to your new provider. Once you’ve selected the email platform you wish to move to, the provider should offer a migration service or have resources to show you what to do. 

What Are The Most Popular Email Providers? 

Based on email client share (i.e. the number of users), the most popular email providers are Apple Mail, Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo. 

The most popular paid email tools include Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 (Outlook), Apple iCloud Mail, ProtonMail, Zoho Mail and Mailchimp. 

Do You Lose Your Email Address When You Change Providers?

Not necessarily. If you are using a free email provider (i.e. Gmail or Yahoo), then you won’t lose access to your email address so long as the account remains active. However, if you close your account then your email address will likely be deleted. If so, the provider should warn you in advance. 

As a business with a custom email domain, you won’t lose your email address if you switch from one provider to another. At EcoSend, we even offer a free migration service to help you move all your contacts across from your current provider to us. 

How Do Email Providers Make Money?

Email providers make money in lots of different ways depending on whether they offer a free or a paid service. 

When an email provider charges for their services (i.e. for business use), then the subscription fee is the main method of earning revenue. Email providers may also generate additional revenue through affiliates or partnerships with other companies.

Unfortunately, some free email providers have been associated with less desirable ways of making money, including through monetising their email list data. For instance, allowing customers to be sent advertising mail which they didn’t sign up for. Free email providers are also more likely to display advertising on their website to generate revenue, similar to how news websites also make money in the digital age. 

Both paid and free email providers can also make money through other types of services they provide at a cost, i.e. Google Workspace. 

What Are The Best Free Email Providers?

Apple’s iCloud offers one of the best free email tools for personal use, owing to the high levels of privacy as well as the ease of integration. If you’re an existing Apple user it can make sense to use iCloud on your phone, iPad or laptop. For business use, some free email providers to consider include Mailchimp, MailJet, MailerLite, SendGrid and Zoho. 

EcoSend - Making The World Of Email Sustainable

Whether you’re in search of a new email provider for personal or business use, we hope the above list has proved helpful.

If by any chance your business uses email as a marketing tool, then you may also want to check out EcoSend while you’re here. 

EcoSend offers sustainable email tools to reduce the carbon footprint of your campaigns.

We’d like to welcome you onboard with a free trial of EcoSend. 

Or if you have any questions about what EcoSend has to offer your business, feel free to drop us a message and we’ll be with you shortly.