Email Tools

Business email hosting: what do five providers charge per mailbox?

Published 2026-10-30 · Researched and price-checked on official sources

Business email hosting costs $1 to $7 per mailbox per month on pricing checked October 30, 2026. Zoho Mail Lite is $1.00 billed annually, Hostinger starts at $0.39 on a 48-month prepay that renews at $1.59, Fastmail Basic is $3.00 yearly, and Google Workspace Starter and Microsoft 365 Business Basic both list $7.00.

Key facts

What matters

Zoho Mail Lite is the cheapest paid custom-domain mailbox verified, at $1.00 per user per month billed annually with 5 GB of storage and no monthly option.
Hostinger's $0.39 headline rate requires $18.72 per mailbox upfront for 48 months and renews at $1.59, roughly four times the promotional rate.
Google Workspace Starter and Microsoft 365 Business Basic are both $7.00 per user per month on annual billing, so the choice between them is about apps, not email price.
For a five-person team the year-one outlay ranges from $60 on Zoho Lite to $420 on Microsoft 365 Business Basic, and Google's three-month half-price window is worth $52.50 at that size.

What business email hosting actually is

Business email hosting is a mailbox on your own domain, you@yourcompany.com, running on a provider's mail servers with an admin console for adding and removing seats. The category splits into three kinds of product, and the price differences below come mostly from that split rather than from mail quality.

Mail-only hosting: Zoho Mail and Hostinger sell mailboxes and aliases, with calendar and contacts attached but no office suite.
Email-first suites: Fastmail sells mail, calendar and contacts with no word processor anywhere in the bundle.
Productivity suites: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 include docs, drive storage, video meetings and now AI assistants, which is why they cost several times more per seat.

That distinction matters at checkout. A five-person agency that only needs five working inboxes is comparing two different products when it puts Hostinger next to Workspace.

Business email hosting prices, provider by provider

Everything below was read off the provider's own pricing page on October 30, 2026. Prices are US dollars, per user, per month, and none of them include tax.

Zoho Mail

Mail Lite is US$1 per user per month billed annually with 5 GB of mail storage. Mail Premium is US$4 with 50 GB of mail storage plus 50 GB of retention storage. The page states plainly that Lite has no monthly plan, so the $1 rate only exists if you pay for a year. Zoho also keeps a Forever Free plan: one domain, up to five users, 5 GB each, with IMAP, POP and ActiveSync excluded and availability limited to select data centers.

Hostinger Email

Starter shows $2.99 crossed to $0.39 per mailbox on a 48-month term. The card spells out the mechanics: you pay $18.72 today for 48 months, and it renews at $1.59 for the same term. Standard runs $3.99 down to $0.99 with 50 GB and 30 aliases, renewing at $2.79; Premium runs $5.99 down to $1.99, renewing at $3.99. Hostinger's card also advertises "Buy 2 mailboxes, get 1 free" alongside the standard rate.

Fastmail

Business Basic is $4 monthly or $3 on annual billing, with 6 GB per user split into 5 GB mail and 1 GB files. Standard is $6 or $5 yearly with 60 GB per user, and Professional is $10 or $9 with 150 GB. Multi-year billing cuts further: Basic drops to $2.85 on a 24-month term and $2.80 on 36 months. Fastmail's Basic tier lists only shared addresses such as support@yourdomain, so a real per-person business mailbox starts at Standard.

Google Workspace

Starter is $7.00 per user per month on the annual commitment, Standard $14.00, Plus $22.00, with 30 GB, 2 TB and 5 TB of pooled storage per user. A 50%-off banner is live on the page with a price timeline of November 12, 2026 to February 12, 2027, dropping Starter to $3.50 and Standard to $7.00 for three months. It is not live today.

Microsoft 365

Business Basic is $7.00 per user per month paid yearly, capped at 300 users. The plan cards that render on the comparison page are the Copilot bundles, Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50 and Business Premium with Copilot at $32.00, which is easy to mistake for the classic tiers if you skim.

The two traps that decide your real price

Prepay length. Hostinger's $0.39 is a four-year commitment, not a rate. Paying $18.72 per mailbox works out to $4.68 per mailbox per year, which is cheaper than anything else here, but only if the business and the domain survive 48 months. The renewal at $1.59 is 4.1 times the promotional rate.

Promo footnotes. Google's page runs a banner reading "Get up to 50% off your first 3 months" while the footnote underneath says the introductory price is "available for the first 20 users added, for 12 months." Three months and twelve months are different offers, and both sentences sit on the same page today. Budget on $7.00 and treat any discount as a rebate, not a price.

Microsoft has the cleaner story of the two suites: $7.00, annual, auto-renewing, no promotional rate advertised. Zoho's Mail Lite has the cleanest story of all, because there is no monthly price to compare against and therefore no cliff.

What five mailboxes cost in year one

Per-seat pricing hides how differently these plans behave at team scale. For five mailboxes on one domain, paid for the first twelve months:

Zoho Mail Lite: $60.00 total ($1 x 12 x 5).
Hostinger Starter: $93.60 total, which covers all 48 months, or about $23.40 per year of cover.
Fastmail Standard: $300.00 total ($5 x 12 x 5), since Basic is not a full personal mailbox.
Google Workspace Starter: $367.50 in year one with the three promo months ($3.50 x 3 + $7.00 x 9, times five), then $420.00.
Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $420.00, unchanged in year two.

The spread between the cheapest paid mailbox and the most expensive entry suite is about seven to one. Google's discount is worth $52.50 to a five-seat team, which is real money for a small business but does not close a $360 gap against Zoho.

What you give up at $1 to $4 per mailbox

Nothing here is a scam, and the cheap tiers are honest about their limits. The tradeoffs are concrete:

Storage. Zoho Lite and Hostinger Starter both cap a mailbox at 5 GB. Workspace Starter pools 30 GB per user across the account, and Fastmail Standard gives 60 GB per user.
Protocol access. Zoho's free tier excludes IMAP, POP and ActiveSync, and the page ties that free tier to select data centers. If your team lives in a desktop client, that is the first thing to check before signing up.
Apps. Mail-only plans give you mail. They do not give you documents, shared drives, video meetings or an AI assistant inside the inbox, which is what the $7 suites are selling.
Support model. Hostinger's terms are four years of prepaid service with a 30-day money-back window. Getting out early is a refund question, not a cancel button.

Seat, alias and domain limits that bite later

Cheap mail plans rarely fail on price. They fail on a limit nobody read before signing up, and every one of these is printed on the provider's own page.

Hostinger: Starter allows 5 aliases and 5 forwarding rules per mailbox. Standard raises that to 30 aliases and 50 forwarding rules. If a single inbox has to absorb billing@, support@ and press@, the Starter tier fills up quickly.
Zoho free: one domain and five users, full stop. The sixth user moves the whole account onto a paid plan, per the pricing page's note.
Google Workspace: Starter, Standard and Plus top out at 300 users. Above that you are in Enterprise territory, where Google does not publish a price.
Microsoft 365: the Business Basic card states 1 to 300 employees, and the subscription auto-renews annually.
Fastmail: Basic is built around shared addresses. Individual mailboxes with custom domains start at Standard, which is why the $3 rate is a weaker deal than it looks for a five-person team.

Read those limits against your current headcount and your alias habits, not your planned headcount. Alias sprawl is the usual reason a $1 mailbox turns into a migration project eighteen months later.

Which business email host fits which buyer

Five inboxes, tight budget, one domain: Zoho. Either the free plan at exactly five users if nobody needs IMAP, or Mail Lite at $1 annual. Nothing else comes close on price.

Many low-volume mailboxes, like a studio with twenty freelancers: Hostinger at $0.39 works out to $4.68 per mailbox per year, but only on a 48-month prepay. Do the survival math on the business before committing four years.

Email as a craft, with calendar and contacts: Fastmail Standard at $5 yearly, or Professional at $9 if retention policy matters. It is the only provider here whose product is the mailbox itself.

Docs, meetings and AI in the inbox: Google Workspace Starter or Microsoft 365 Business Basic, both $7.00. Pick on which editor your team already opens, because the email price is identical.

If the requirement is privacy rather than price, hosted mail is the wrong starting point: our privacy email hosting comparison covers the encrypted options, and the Google Workspace pricing breakdown tracks that page's promo timeline if you are leaning Google.

At a glance

Provider and entry tier	Price per mailbox	Storage	Commitment and renewal
Zoho Mail Lite	$1.00 billed annually	5 GB	No monthly plan, annual only
Hostinger Starter	$0.39 for 48 months	5 GB	$18.72 paid upfront, renews at $1.59
Fastmail Basic	$4.00 monthly, $3.00 yearly	6 GB total per user	Monthly or 1 to 3 years, 30-day trial
Google Workspace Starter	$7.00 annual commitment	30 GB pooled per user	$3.50 for three months from Nov 12, 2026
Microsoft 365 Business Basic	$7.00 paid yearly	Not listed on the plan card	Annual, auto-renews, up to 300 users

Business email hosting entry tiers, verified on provider pricing pages October 30, 2026 (USD, per user/month, tax excluded)

FAQ

Is business email hosting free with a domain?

Sometimes. Zoho's Forever Free plan hosts email for one domain and up to five users with 5 GB each, but it excludes IMAP, POP and ActiveSync and is only offered in select data centers. Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Fastmail and Hostinger all charge per mailbox from day one.

Is Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 cheaper for email?

Neither, at the entry tier. Google Workspace Starter and Microsoft 365 Business Basic both list $7.00 per user per month on annual billing as of October 30, 2026. Google's promotional months are the only short-term difference.

What happens to Hostinger's $0.39 email price after the first term?

It renews at $1.59 per mailbox per month for the same 48-month term, according to the pricing card. That is 4.1 times the promotional rate, and the $18.72 you pay today covers all four years.