G Suite (previously and more famously known as Google Apps) and Office 365 (previously known as Windows Live Custom Domains and Windows Live Admin Center) are two of the most popular hosted cloud office productivity, email hosting, cloud computing, collaboration, and software applications service. For many SOHO, SMEs and webmasters, G Suite and Office 365 main feature would be the ability to host enterprise email accounts powered by Gmail or Hotmail (now OUtlook.com) with email address that ended in custom domain name.

However, both G Suite and Office 365 no longer offer free plan. However, there are plenty of the other services that do still provide free enterprise email hosting service with custom domain support. Here’s a list of free Office 365 and Google Apps / G Suite alternative with focus on free email hosting on your own custom domain.

Zoho (Zoho Workplace / Zoho Email)

Zoho

Zoho offers a complete range of web-based solutions to boost sales, step up productivity, and manage all day-to-day activities, such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Office Suite, Zoho Creators, Zoho Sites, Zoho Books, Zoho Desk, Zoho Recruit, Zoho Report, Zoho Mail and etc.

Zoho Email is grouped under the Zoho Workplace, which means you’re also getting a range of other web apps such as integrated calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, bookmarks, announcements, tasks, events, notes and more.

One warning and major negative though: New Zoho free accounts have only web access support. It means that you cannot configure POP access, IMAP access, email forwarding, email routing and ActiveSync access. To access the email, you need to use web browser or Zoho mobile apps.

Features of Zoho Email (Zoho Workplace) free plan:

  • Maximum user mailboxes: 5
  • Storage space limit: 5 GB per user
  • Attachment size limit: 25 MB
  • Email hosting for single domain.
  • Web access only

Sign up for Zoho Workplace with Custom Email Hosting: https://workplace.zoho.com/orgsignup.do

Yandex.Mail for Domain / Yandex.Connect

Yandex Connect

Yandex.Mail for Domain is a free service for setting up email on your domain, aka free email hosting. If you just want to create mailboxes for your user with email addresses such as “[email protected]” without many other extra services, then Yandex.Mail for Domain is a good choice. Yandex.Mail for Domain utilizes the Yandex.Mail web interface with all of its advantages, including the spam filter, automatic virus scanning, and other features. In addition, the users can also login to other Yandex services, such as Yandex.Disk (free 10GB disk space) or Yandex.Music by just entering their email address as the username.

Note that all Yandex.Mail for Domain account is automatically migrating to Yandex.Connect. Yandex.Connect is a platform of services designed for collaboration at work. Yandex.Connect includes enterprise versions of Mail, Disk, and Calendar, as well as the new Wiki service and the Yamb messenger, in addition to offering more features for managing domains and user mailboxes. In fact, now Yandex Mail for Domain is considered as part of Yandex Connect.

Features:

  • Maximum mailboxes: 1000
  • Maximum storage space per mailbox: Unlimited Inbox space
  • Maximum attachment size: 30 MB
  • POP3, SMTP and IMAP access
  • Domain aliases
  • Default email address to catch email sent to non-existent email addresses

Register for Yandex Mail for Domain via one of the following URLs:

Yandex.Mail for Domain URL: https://domain.yandex.com/
Yandex.Connect URL: https://connect.yandex.com/

NetEase Enterprise Email

NetEase Free Enterprise Email on Custom Domain

NetEase is a Chinese Internet technology company providing online services centered on content, community, communications and commerce, and one of its offering is free email hosting service for businesses and enterprises. Users can have email mailboxes with addresses ending on own custom FQDN.

The main downside for NetEase free enterprise email hosting service is everything is in Simplified Chinese language. So you have to rely on translator if you don’t understand Chinese.

Features:

  • Maximum mailboxes: 200 user accounts or mailing lists
  • Maximum storage space per mailbox: 3 GB
  • Maximum attachment size: 50 MB
  • POP3, SMTP and IMAP access

Signing up for NetEase free enterprise email service via http://ym.163.com/ or directly via http://app.ym.163.com/ym/reg/view/index

Tencent Exmail

Tencent Free Exmail Custom Domain Email Hosting Service

Tencent is the one of the world’s biggest largest Internet, technology, gaming, social media and investment company based in China. One of its products is enterprise email hosting service called “Exmail”, which allows users to have email addresses ending in other custom domain such as business name or company name. The Exmail is based on the popular personal QQ email service.

The main downside for the free plan of Tencent Exmail email hosting service is that the sign up process is done in Simplified Chinese language. So you have to rely on translator if you don’t understand Chinese. But at least there is a English UI when accessing the webmail at https://en.exmail.qq.com/.

Features:

  • Maximum mailboxes: 50 user accounts
  • Maximum storage space per mailbox: 2 GB
  • Maximum attachment size: 50 MB
  • Free 2 GB online storage drive
  • Free 2 GB file hosting storage space
  • POP3, SMTP, IMAP and Exchange ActiveSync access

Sign up for Tencent Exmail at https://exmail.qq.com/onlinesell/intro or directly at https://exmail.qq.com/signupfree?refer=intro#signup/free.

Aliyun Qiye AliMail Enterprise Edition

Aliyun

Aliyun, the brand name used in China that otherwise more commonly known as Alibaba Cloud internationally, is a cloud computing company in China that has data-centers and offices across the world. Aliyun provides free enterprise email hosting service to its Chinese customers (but not international customers) as part of Aliyun suite of cloud services and solutions.

As such, you will need to know Simplified Chinese to sign up and manage the Aliyun enterprise mail server. In addition, you may need a Chinese mobile phone number in order to sign up for the service. Once you manage to register and configure the MX records, Aliyun enterprise email hosting service does have a English UI for its webmail at https://qiye.aliyun.com/.

Features:

  • Maximum mailboxes: 50 user accounts
  • Maximum storage space per mailbox: 5 GB
  • Maximum attachment size: 50 MB
  • Free 2 GB online enterprise cloud storage space
  • POP3, SMTP, and IMAP access

Sign up for Aliyun enterprise mail hosting service free edition at https://wanwang.aliyun.com/mail/freemail/