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Weighing Microsoft 365 against the mailbox your host threw in, or wondering whether the cheaper provider would do the job? Every platform below is capable software. Each comparison sets one of them beside a service that carries the licence and runs the mailboxes for you, and says plainly where buying the subscription direct is the better call.
How it all works
Most teams shopping for a new mail provider are not unhappy with the inbox. They are unhappy that nobody has owned the admin console since the person who set it up left. These pages separate those two problems.
1
Usually it arrived bundled with a domain or a web host and nobody has opened the settings since. Check who the administrator is, whether that person still works here, and how many seats are billing for people who do not.
2
Each comparison covers the per seat price at your real headcount, the licences nobody cancelled, the hours somebody loses to a migration or a locked account, and what it costs the business on the morning nobody can reach their inbox.
3
If somebody in house enjoys DNS records and provisioning users, buy the subscription direct and keep the margin. If that person does not exist, a better webmail will not create one. We say which case you are in on every page.
Four providers, four different answers to who fixes it at seven in the morning.
VS
The Office Default
Priced Per Seat
Admin Still Yours
Microsoft 365 is the default in most offices and the Office apps are the reason people stay. Business Basic runs seven dollars per user per month on an annual subscription that renews itself, and Business Premium with Copilot runs thirty two. Every tier still leaves the admin console, the DNS and the licence count sitting with you.
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VS
Encrypted End To End
Swiss Jurisdiction
Bridge For Outlook
If your real obligation is confidentiality rather than convenience, Proton is the better purchase and we will say so. Business plans include a dedicated account manager and end to end encryption. That encryption is also why Outlook and Thunderbird need Proton Bridge sitting in between, which is a real cost on a mixed desk.
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VS
Independent And Quick
Support On Every Plan
Basic Blocks Domains
Fastmail is quick, independent, and answered by real people on every plan, which most of this category does not manage. Read the Basic tier carefully though. It gives six gigabytes per user and it will not let you use your own domain, which is the entire point of business email.
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VS
Sold Through Your Host
Built Around Replies
Lives In A Control Panel
Titan sells business mail through web hosts and domain registrars rather than direct, and partners with GoDaddy to do it. Read receipts and follow up reminders are the pitch. The catch is that your mailboxes live inside a hosting control panel, and shared calendars work properly only with other people on Titan.
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About the service
Managed email is not a reseller invoice with our logo on it. We carry the subscription, migrate the mailboxes, set the DNS so the mail is trusted, add and remove staff the day you ask, and pick up the phone when somebody cannot get in. You approve a seat count and read one invoice. Everything between those two things is ours to carry.
Email accounts look like a solved problem until the day one stops arriving somewhere, and then you discover nobody owns DNS, nobody owns the sending reputation, and the person who set up the domain left two years ago. Most of the work here is not provisioning mailboxes. Any provider below does that in an afternoon. It is holding the records and the reputation steady so mail keeps landing.
The comparison that matters is rarely storage per user. It is what happens when a message to an important customer silently goes to spam, and whether anybody can tell you why within the hour. That depends on SPF, DKIM and DMARC staying correct as you add tools that send on your behalf, and every marketing platform, invoicing system and helpdesk is another sender that can quietly damage the domain.
Choosing on price is defensible if somebody genuinely owns those records. Most small businesses do not have that person, and the symptom is not an outage but a slow decline in deliverability that gets blamed on the market. The mailbox is the cheap part of this decision. The ownership is the expensive part.
Company mail fails quietly. A missing SPF record does not break the inbox, it just teaches other mail servers to distrust your domain until an invoice lands in a junk folder and the customer says nothing. We set SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the domain your staff send from and then read the reports, which is where you find the old contact form still sending as you.
The most common line on an audited mail bill is a licence for somebody who left eight months ago. We add and remove seats the day you ask and the next invoice reflects it. Nobody has to remember a renewal date, and nobody has to hunt for the card the subscription was attached to.
The licence and the work arrive on one bill from us, so there is no provider portal to log into and no separate payment method on file. When something breaks your staff contact us directly, as often as they need, instead of reading a help centre article written for a different company problem.
What does a managed email service actually do?
We own your company mail rather than reselling you a subscription. The licence, the migration, the DNS and authentication, user provisioning, the security settings, and the support your staff call when something is wrong. You approve a seat count and read one invoice. The platform licence is billed alongside our fee rather than folded into it.
Why does our mail keep landing in other people's spam folders?
Usually authentication, and usually it has been wrong for years without anyone noticing. If SPF, DKIM and DMARC are not aligned on the domain you send from, a receiving server has no reason to trust you, and a quiet percentage of your invoices and quotes never get read. The second cause is a domain with a history, often an old form or a marketing tool still sending as you. We fix the records first, then find whatever else is using your name.
Can we keep our existing email addresses?
Yes, and in almost every case you should. The addresses belong to your domain rather than to your provider, so changing providers does not change anybody's address. We migrate the existing mail, contacts and calendars across, then cut the DNS over at a time that suits you. Staff keep their address, their history and their signature.
Google Workspace or Zoho Mail, and who decides?
We recommend and you decide. Teams already living in Docs, Sheets and Meet should stay on Google Workspace. Teams that want reliable mail on their own domain for about a dollar a user, and genuinely do not need the rest, are usually better served by Zoho Mail. We run both to the same standard, so the choice is about what you actually use rather than what we prefer to support.
Who sets up SPF, DKIM and DMARC?
We do, on every domain your company sends from, and we align them so the whole chain can be verified. Then we read the DMARC reports, which is the step nearly everyone skips and the one that tells you what is actually sending as you. Once the reports are clean we move the policy from monitoring to enforcement.
Why not just buy the cheapest platform and run it ourselves?
You should, if the subscription is the only thing you are missing. Microsoft 365 Business Basic is seven dollars a user and Zoho Mail is around a dollar, and buying either direct is honest value. What no provider includes is somebody who owns the admin console, watches the DNS, and answers your staff by name. That is the part we sell, and it is the part that is expensive to hire.
How long does a migration take, and what breaks?
Under fifty mailboxes usually runs over a weekend, and mail keeps flowing throughout because we copy first and cut the DNS over second. What breaks, reliably, is whatever nobody mentioned: the scanner that emails PDFs, the website form, the billing system with a password from 2019. We ask for that list up front and we still find two more.
What happens to the mail we already have?
It comes with you. We copy mail, contacts and calendars into the new mailboxes before anything is switched, then verify a sample account by account rather than trusting the migration tool's own report. Archives nobody can open any more are worth surfacing at this point, because a mailbox move is the cheapest moment to deal with them.
Can you take over the subscription we already pay for?
Often yes, and usually we should. If you already hold a Google Workspace or Zoho Mail subscription we can manage it where it sits, which keeps your history and saves you a migration nobody asked for. Moving the billing to us is a separate decision from moving the mailboxes, and the two do not have to happen in the same month.
Do our staff contact you directly, or go through one person here?
Directly, and as often as they need. A locked account that has to queue behind an office manager is the reason people give up and start using a personal address for work. There is no ticket allowance and no per incident charge, because a service that bills by the question teaches everyone to stop asking.
What size business is this for?
It starts paying for itself somewhere around five staff, and it stops being obviously worth it once you employ a full time systems administrator. Between those two points there is usually nobody whose actual job this is. A company with real IT staff should buy the licences direct and keep the margin, and we will tell them so.
What if we are already on Microsoft 365?
Then the honest answer is usually to stay put. If your business runs on Excel and Teams, moving to Google Workspace to save a few dollars a seat is a bad trade and we will say so. Managing Microsoft 365 sits outside this service today, so for now that conversation ends in a recommendation rather than an invoice.
What are we paying for on top of the licence?
The labour, and the fact that the licence stops being your problem. Migration, DNS and authentication, adding and removing users, security settings, and unlimited contact from your staff. The subscription is bought at our rate and billed alongside the management fee on the same invoice, so there is no provider portal, no second card on file, and no renewal date for anybody here to forget.
Are we locked in?
No. The domain is yours, the mailboxes are yours, and everything inside them is yours. We work month to month on thirty days notice, and if you leave we hand over the administrator credentials rather than making you rebuild. A service that needs a contract to keep you is telling you something about the service.
What do you need from us to start?
DNS access for the domain, administrator access to whatever mail you run now, and a list of every system that sends email as your company. We audit the authentication first, then agree a migration weekend. Most moves finish inside three weeks of that first conversation.
