From personalisation to security: PR stakes for the best email hosting services have never been higher. Establishing brand recognition and reputation on a secure platform is a must if you want to land your emails in your prospects’ inboxes.
As a growing business in 2025, you might have designed a big picture with a PR strategy that outlines your goals, target audiences, and efforts to build a comprehensive and positive image of your brand. However, one of the most critical parts of engaging customers with the right PR strategy checklist also includes selecting the right channel of communication.
Today, when the entire world’s communication is largely influenced by instant messaging, social apps, and AI-based chatbots, do you think companies still depend on emails for building strong customer relationships? Well, you will be surprised to know that 87% of the B2B companies use emails to engage with new leads and existing customers.
So, what’s the issue? While email marketing is a popular choice, it is also one of the most targeted channels for cybercrimes. According to the email security statistics, most hackers use malware, ransomware, and phishing to target growing businesses. Any such cyberattack can drastically impact the brand image and the PR efforts of the company.
A strategic decision to overcome or minimise the chances of a security breach is to partner with the best email hosting service provider, which not only boosts your brand’s credibility but also offers security and compliance.
In this article, we will discuss the five best email hosting service providers in 2025 for growing businesses and PR companies.
What is Email Hosting and Why Is It Important?
For a growing business or a PR company, creating a lasting impression on customers, journalists, media persons, or stakeholders is essential to building strong relationships. While a generic email (for example, yourname@gmail.com or companyname@yahoo.com) may deliver your message, it does not guarantee email deliverability (Email deliverability ensures that your emails land in your customers’ inboxes, while in email delivery, your emails may land in spam, get blocked, or may land in some other folders).
A generic email also does not offer the professional edge to your email address that reflects that your email has come from a reliable and trustworthy source.
With email hosting, you get to choose your customised domain for your email address. For example, you can create a custom email address like yourname@companyname.com, info@companyname.co.in, etc.
Such email addresses with customised domains can:
- Boost brand authenticity, making your brand stand out in a pool of emails of competitors.
- Ensure email deliverability, as it has fewer chances of being flagged as spam. It is critically important for PR organisations that need to deliver time-critical information or pitches to the investors or media persons.
- Guarantee data security and adherence to compliance while sharing information with multiple clients and media houses.
- Seamlessly scale with the growing demands of the business. For example, creating multiple customised email addresses for the teams for collaboration and communication.
Top Five Email Hosting Service Providers
The list of email hosting service providers in 2025 is endless, so to help you out, here we have outlined the five best email hosting service providers that offer a balance of features, security, and affordability.
1. Neo
Neo ranks as the number one solution that offers email hosting services for growing businesses, startups, freelancers, or individuals. It is an easy-to-set-up and user-friendly platform that allows customized domain registration (users can create a new free domain or use an existing one) and professional email address creation all through one platform.
Key Features
- Free custom domain extension: Neo offers a free (.co.site) extension to create a customized domain for your branded email address. The (.co.site) domain is easily available and is recognized worldwide. Although if you have an already registered domain (such as .com, .net, .co.in, etc), you can also use it for email hosting on Neo.
- Free one-page website: Once you have created a custom domain, you can create a small one-page website and link it to your email.
- AI-driven capabilities: Offers AI-smart write to assist you in creating email drafts, a no-code site builder to build a quick AI website for free, site analytics, and lead generation to help you track conversions. Customizable themes can assist you in aligning your website with your brand.
- Email-specific features: Calendar, Priority inbox, read receipts, email rules, and email tracking can help with real-time notifications. Also offers 100% uptime, campaign tracking to decide on your next steps to engage with your customers.
- Security: Two-factor authentication, data encryption, antivirus, and antispam for enhanced protection.
- Pricing: Neo offers budget-friendly plans with a 15-day free trial with every email hosting plan. The paid plans start as depicted in the following image:
Benefits
Neo is the best platform when you need quick brand recognition with your email marketing services. Its simple setup and no learning curve make it accessible for small growing businesses in building their brand image, such that it helps to gain immediate response through a recognized, secured, and reliable platform.
2. Google Workspace
Google Workspace is the most popular platform for email hosting for business and PR teams. Known for its strong and secured Gmail backbone, it offers a suite of productivity tools that can efficiently enhance your PR game.
Key Features
- Customized domain creation: Create a branded domain for your emails for a professional first impression.
- Gen-AI features: Gemini for workspace can assist in writing emails and organizing data.
- Enterprise-grade security: Capable of blocking 99.9% of spam, malware, and phishing attacks. Offers data loss prevention control and zero-trust security to protect sensitive data. Digital sovereignty to manage data storage, encryption, and compliance.
- Simplified productivity tools: Offers all the tools present in Google’s ecosystem, including Calendar, Google Chat, Google Docs, Sheets, and Vids.
- Storage: Provides users with expandable storage with easy-to-manage shared drives.
- Pricing: The platform offers a 14-day free trial with its starter, standard, and premium plans.
Benefits
Since Google Workspace offers every email hosting service in a highly secure Google environment, sharing emails, content, media kits, and press releases across teams can be performed in a jiffy without any headache of your data exfiltration. It also offers the benefit of real-time teamwork, thus ensuring minimized delays and timely updates with the stakeholders.
3. Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail is a well-known platform among SMBs and growing organizations looking for a simplified, secured, and affordable email hosting solution. It offers a power-packed suite of features that minimizes the need for third-party applications and additional apps for offering secured email marketing and PR services to the customers.
Key Features
- Domain Creation: Users can create custom domains and set unique email addresses to add authenticity.
- Power-packed suite of email features: Built-in calendar, to-do lists, Notes, and Contacts all in one place.
- Secured Emails: Physical security features offer 99% uptime, access restrictions and monitoring techniques, DOS and DDOS prevention, and secured data centers. Anti-spam, anti-virus, malware, and phishing protection, and email policies for threat protection. Additional security features include encryption in transit and at rest, TLS indicator, S/MIME, 3rd party audited certifications, and internal audit and compliance.
- Integrations: Seamless integration with Zoho Books, Zoho Inventory, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Expense, Zoho Billing, Zoho Sign, Adobe Sign, etc.
- Agile features: Email filters and rules, advanced search, out of office, and email signature to create a professional lasting impression.
- Pricing: Offers a 15-day free trial with the highest edition and a forever free plan that allows email hosting for one domain (For up to 5 users, and 5GB mail storage per user)
Benefits
For small-scale businesses, Zoho offers a premium email hosting solution at affordable pricing. With integration across Zoho CRM, PR teams can easily manage media communications from their branded inboxes, while ensuring all collaborations happen through Zoho’s ecosystem.
4. Microsoft 365 for Business
If your organization relies heavily on Microsoft Office productivity tools, then partnering with Microsoft 365 for business is the best option. It provides deep integration with Outlook, SharePoint, Word, Microsoft Teams, and Excel.
Key Features
- Create or purchase a new custom domain: Users can directly purchase a new custom domain from the Microsoft 365 portal. Additionally, they can use an existing domain to create a business email address.
- Easy platform migration: Users can easily migrate emails, contacts, calendars, and data from any platform to Outlook.
- Business platform applications and AI assistance: Teams can stay productive and collaborative with chat, call, and meeting hosting built-in applications. Microsoft Copilot AI provides guidance and assistance to users while working on the platform.
- Security and protection: Enterprise-grade security, data encryption in the mailbox, automatic deactivation for unsafe links for phishing scams, viruses, malware, and ransomware. Anti-malware software offers protection from rootkits, worms, and several other malicious software.
- Compatibility across devices: Microsoft offers cross-device compatibility to allow users to sync data across mobile devices, tabs, desktops, and web applications.
- Pricing: Although the platform does not offer a free plan, users can gain access to a free trial of one month with various business plans.
Benefits
Microsoft 365 Business is an ideal solution for growing businesses with high-volume or large communication requirements. While the flawless integration with the Microsoft tools is a plus point, strong data protection with rich compliance standards helps establish branding globally with trust and confidence.
5. Proton Mail
In terms of data privacy and security, Proton Mail offers the best-in-class secured features and services for email hosting services. Regulated by Switzerland’s data privacy and protection laws, it is the most preferred choice of PR teams and organizations with non-negotiable data confidentiality.
Key Features
- Customized domain creation: Users can create unique professional email addresses with features such as catch-all addresses and groups to keep teams organized.
- AI writing assistant: The platform offers Proton Scribe, an AI writing assistant, to write quick emails for investors, stakeholders, clients, and other team members.
- Easy integration: The Proton Mail bridge offers seamless integration with Thunderbird, Outlook, Apple Mail, and IMAP.SMTP clients.
- Swiss protection and advanced protection: Built under the strong data privacy laws of Switzerland, your data remains protected from other surveillance. Advanced security features such as end-to-end encryption, regular third-party audits such as ISO 27001, and a SOC 2 Type II audit.
- Adherence to Compliance Laws: Offers compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA laws and other privacy regulations with a zero-access architecture.
- Pricing: Offers a free plan that includes one professional email address, 1GB email storage, with a limit of sending 150 email addresses for a 24-hour period. Paid plans for businesses start at $6.99.
Benefits
With Proton Mail, PR companies can gain the benefit of creating a brand authority through emails using a highly data-sensitive and compliant platform. The PR professionals can share high-stakes information and establish strategic communications with the clients while maintaining confidentiality.
Choose the Best Email Hosting for Your Growing Business that also Brings a PR Advantage
Email hosting is not just about sending emails with a customized domain; it’s about how you can make your customers remember your brand while sifting through hundreds of emails in their inboxes.
For a growing business, an email hosting solution like Neo can offer easy setup, top email and AI features that also assist in creating a solid brand authority through PR campaigns.
Similarly, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 Business, and Zoho Mail offer strong integration capabilities within their ecosystem, along with enterprise-grade security levels, allowing PR professionals to use branded emails for establishing connections without any fear of data breaches, failure in compliance, or privacy loss.
Lastly, Proton Mail comes with a Swiss-based data security server and layers, which makes it the most preferable option for growing organizations and PR teams that share sensitive information across their clients and investors.
Finally, whichever platform you choose for email hosting services, ensure that it reinforces your brand’s image for long-lasting customer relationships. Even a small breach in data security can derail the performance of your entire PR strategy and disrupt your brand’s image.
Learn how you can further enhance your brand’s reputation by using an AI-driven PR management solution that offers actionable insights, crisis management, and useful brand insights to boost your PR game. Talk to our expert today.
FAQs
1.What are the benefits of using a custom email domain?
A custom email domain can help you build brand authority, customer trust, and earn credibility while ensuring email deliverability.
2. Do email hosting service providers allow migration to a new host?
Yes, many email hosting service providers offer migration to different platforms like Neo, Zoho Mail, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 Business, etc.
3. Which is the most affordable email hosting service provider?
Neo offers the most affordable email hosting plans that can be used by startups, freelancers, individuals, and growing businesses.
