The best messaging service 2020: paid, free and professional providers

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• The best messaging service 2020: paid, free and professional providers

If you're looking for the best email service providers today, you've come to the right place. It's easy to contact the best email service providers today. Sign up with an ISP and you'll have an account to get started. Creating an account with Google, Microsoft, or other big names will bring you more. Buy a decent web hosting package and you'll probably get enough email addresses to power a large business, all at no additional cost. But choosing the best email service providers for you can be more difficult as there is so much to consider, especially in these days of remote work. How are spam filters? How easy is it to keep your inbox organized? Can the account be accessed from other email clients? What about using the service with a custom domain and address (your [email protected])? Read on and we'll highlight some of the best email service providers. They all have decent free services, perhaps with ads and some limits, but we'll also talk about their easy-to-use commercial products that offer the power, features, and enterprise-grade extras that demanding users need.

The best email service providers of 2020 are:

Image Credit: Proton Technologies

1.ProtonMail

Email focused on security and privacy Strict privacy features End-to-end encryption for messages Only 500 MB free storage. Signing up with an email provider will often come with some privacy compromises. For example, Yahoo Mail asks for your name and mobile phone number. Gmail and other services can scan your messages for useful actions (like adding events to calendars), and almost all serve you ads. ProtonMail is a Swiss-based email service that focuses first on privacy. You can sign up anonymously, there's no IP address logging, and all your emails are end-to-end encrypted, meaning there's no way for ProtonMail (or anyone else) to read your content. Additionally, address verification (which allows you to be sure you're securely communicating with the right person) and full support for PGP email encryption are available. In late April 2019, elliptic curve cryptography was introduced, adding additional security and faster speeds. There are important limits. The free product has a small storage space of 500MB, only supports sending 150 messages per day, and is distinctly short in terms of organizational tools (no files, tags, or smart filters). Since end-to-end encryption is specific to ProtonMail, it also ensures that you cannot use the service with other email clients. However, it seems a bit unfair to complain about a service that is free with no strings attached and doesn't even carry ads. In reality, ProtonMail is a specialized tool that is meant to be used in conjunction with services like Gmail, not to replace them, and overall, it does its core tasks very well. If you need more, the ProtonMail Plus account for €5 (you can choose to pay in USD, Euro and CHF) per month (or €48 per year) Plus gives you 5 GB of storage, an allowance of 1000 messages per day, custom domains ( you @ your .com domain) and support for folders, labels, filters, as well as certain additional features such as contact groups. Another pro plan provides more storage, email addresses, and a second custom domain, plus adds a general email address and multi-user support. It's priced at €8 per month per user (€75 per year), which is reasonable if you need the security of ProtonMail, though it's also much more expensive than professional accounts from big-name competitors. .

Image Credit: Google

2. Gmail

No need to show off Google's webmail giant Simplified interface G Suite option gives you plenty of power Paid plan isn't as cheap as some First launched in 2004, Google's Gmail has become the market leader in services Free email services with over a billion users worldwide. Gmail's simplified web interface is the highlight. Most of the screen is dedicated to your inbox, with a minimum of toolbars and other clutter. Messages are arranged neatly through conversations for easy viewing, and you can easily read and reply to emails, even as a new user. There is a lot of power here. Dynamic Messaging makes Gmail more interactive, with the ability to take action right from within email, like filling out a quiz or replying to a Google Docs comment. Posts can be automatically filtered into tabbed categories like Primary, Social, and Promotions, helping you focus on the content you need. Advanced spam blocking keeps your inbox free of spam, you can manage other accounts from the same interface (Outlook, Yahoo, any other IMAP or POP email), and there's 15GB of storage for your inbox, Drive, and photos. . You can also access Gmail offline, although you need Google Chrome for it to work. Also, there is a neat repeat feature that allows you to repeat an email for a specified period of time (it also automatically marks that email as important). Other features are more questionable. Instead of organizing messages into folders, for example, a simple metaphor that almost everyone understands, you should filter them using a custom tagging system. It works and has some advantages, but it is not popular with all users. Still, Gmail is a great service overall, and a good first choice for your email provider. Google offers a paid commercial version of Gmail in the form of its G Suite product. This more professional product removes ads and allows the use of a custom email address on your domain ([email protected]). Business-oriented migration tools can import mail from Outlook, Exchange, Lotus, and more. Storage space is doubled to 30GB on the basic plan, and you get unlimited group email addresses, 99.9% guaranteed availability, and 24/7 support. G Suite is Google's answer to Microsoft Office, so it also has apps for working with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Shared calendars let you stay better organized, there's video conferencing and voice conferencing for online meetings, and again, there's 24/7 support to keep your system running smoothly. This more office-like power makes a product more expensive than the email-only competition, with prices starting at €6 per user for the simplest plan. However, you do get a lot for your money, and if you're using G Suite features, this might be a smart choice. A 14-day free trial provides an easy way to help you find out.

Image Credit: Microsoft

3. Prospects

There's a lot of power here, especially for Office 365 users Targeted Inbox is a smart feature Powerful events and calendar-related capabilities. A multitude of app-based integrations Outlook's web interface follows the same familiar style as its desktop incarnation and most other email clients: folders and organization tools on the left, the contents of the current folder on the center and a simple preview panel on the right (with ads in the case of the free account). A toolbar gives you quick access to common features, and right-clicking on folders or messages brings up just about everything else. If you've ever used another email client, you'll find the key details in a few moments. Despite the apparent simplicity, there is a lot going on under the hood. The service automatically detects important emails and places them in a specific inbox, keeping distractions out of sight. Events, including flight and dinner reservations, can be automatically added to your calendar. It's easy to share this calendar with other Outlook.com or Office 365 users, or you can save your events to a family calendar that anyone can access. In addition, there are also some great features, such as the ability to add surveys directly to your Outlook emails. Excellent support for attachments includes the ability to directly share files from OneDrive in the form of copies or links. You can also attach files directly from your Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box accounts, and a big 15GB mailbox can hold lots of other people's files. This all worked great for us, but if you're not happy with the service's default settings, they may be changeable through the Outlook.com Settings dialog. It doesn't have as many options as Gmail, but they're well organized and give you a lot of control over layout, attachment rules, message handling, and more. If that's still not enough, Microsoft offers a bunch of app-based integrations to push the service forward. You get built-in Skype support through beta, and the apps give you easy access to Evernote, PayPal, GIPHY, Yelp, Uber, and more. Upgrading to Office 365 gives you an ad-free inbox, 50GB of email storage, and a massive 1TB of OneDrive storage. Extras include offline work, professional message formatting tools, phone or chat support, file recovery from malicious attacks like ransomware, and more. Oh, and the latest versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Image Credit: Yahoo

4.Yahoo Mail

A powerful offering with surprisingly neat extras Useful extras like disposable email addresses 1TB of inbox storage Not as many low-end options as its rivals. Yahoo Mail doesn't make headlines these days, but its latest iteration is a clean, professional service that stands up well to the competition. The well-designed interface resembles Gmail, at least initially, with a great view of your inbox, one-click filters for common messages and content (photos, documents, travel), and easy navigation for everyone. emails in a conversation. But you can also organize emails in custom folders, and the layout can be changed to preview the message with a few clicks. Mobile users have additional features, such as the ability to unsubscribe from newsletters and the like, without ever leaving the Yahoo Mail inbox. A powerful underlying engine can integrate with Facebook, supports sending SMS and SMS , is accessible via the Web, POP and (in some situations) IMAP, and can forward emails to another talk to. Valuable extras include disposable email addresses to protect your privacy, and a whopping 1TB of mailbox storage means you can keep almost everything you receive, for a long time. Demanding users may encounter problems over time. Mail organization can't match the flexibility of Gmail's labeling scheme, for example, and there aren't as many low-level tweaks, settings, and options as you'll often see elsewhere. But overall, Yahoo Mail is an attractive service that should be on your email list. As with other providers, Yahoo offers a business email plan with more features. The highlight is an option to use the service with a custom domain ([email protected]), although there are other benefits as well. The service can import contacts from Facebook, Gmail, Outlook, and more. You can see all your mailboxes on one screen, and there are all the usual easy-to-use productivity tools (multiple calendars, document management, analytics, and more). Prices start from €3.19 per mailbox per month, billed annually, and go down as you add mailboxes: €1.59 for 5, €1.19 for 10, and for more than 20, you'll need to contact them. Also, another pricing plan called Yahoo Mail Pro is available at €3.49 per month. This gives you an ad-free inbox, priority customer support, and additional functionality. Even a free domain name is included, not just the initial registration: Yahoo will also renew it while your subscription is active.

Image Credit: Zoho

5. Zoho

An email provider that gives you a lot for, well, nothing The free plan allows up to 25 users. Freebie has functionality normally only on paid plans. It also has office and collaboration tools. Zoho Workplace is a business-oriented messaging service that integrates an online office suite, document management, and a host of collaboration tools and other extras. Zoho's free plan supports up to 25 users, though 25 more are available if you can refer others to the service (update: Zoho is revamping the referral program, which isn't available right now), each with 5GB of storage in the mailbox and can be used with a domain of your choice. These are features you'd normally only find in commercial products, and when you factor in the spreadsheet, word processor, presentation, and other tools, it seems like a real bargain. The messaging service is easy to use and provides a decent set of features to help you organize your emails: folders, labels, filters, smart searches, etc. You can also create custom keyboard shortcuts to expand and replace easy abbreviations of your choice with full words and phrases as you type. Zoho also has an offline mode, which allows you to read and reply to your emails even when you have an Internet connection. The free plan is still a bit basic. It gives you web-only access, for example, and there's no support for email forwarding. Fortunately, Zoho's standard plan fixes this. A mere €3 per user (paid annually) gets you access to IMAP and POP, email forwarding, active sync, multi-domain hosting, domain aliases, 30GB of storage, a 30MB attachment limit (vs. to 25MB with the free plan) and some major improvements elsewhere (the ability to send files in the cloud to non-Zoho users, for example). It also has a Lite plan, which is a cheaper standard plan ($1 per user) with fewer features, and a Pro plan ($6 per user) that adds more features. Some of these features are available elsewhere for free, of course, but businesses or anyone using custom domain support or Office tools will find a lot to like here. It is worth taking a closer look.