UPDATE : The article was featured on hacker news. People really liked the post and expressed their views.
Read : Hacker News Featured Article
Every company needs business emails to interact with clients, customers, run day to day operations. I have found many startup entrepreneurs whose website is hosted, they are running business but they don’t own business emails. Most of them interact with their personal emails ids with company name appended in the end. This doesn’t look professional considering we have free business email hosting services.
This is mainly because of below reasons:
- Most email services are paid. e.g. Gmail for business pricing is not free even to begin with.
- Lack of knowledge that it can be setup for free.
- Email Services which lack rich UI features like Gmail, Yahoo mail
- Security of your email data
In a startup of 5-10 people, you want to spend every penny very cautiously. The blog is step by step guide for founders, entrepreneurs who want to host their business emails for free with Gmail like features.
The tool is Zoho Mail which I have been following for last 2 years. UI is cool with both web client and Android App available. It includes services like Zoho Doc, Zoho Spreadsheet which is good enough for starting a business.
Zoho Mail Pricing
Zoho Business Email Mail Pricing
Zoho mail has almost all the features which an email client needs and you can start using for 10 emails for free.
5 GB/ user is reasonable to get started.
Assumptions
Few assumptions before starting step by step guide to setup your business email with Zoho.
- You have bought a good domain from domain selling services like Godaddy.
- You have write access to your hosting provider DNS records. You will need to modify your domain CNAME & MX records.
Zoho Domain Setup & Create Zoho Account
- Choose free option from pricing window and click signup. You will be asked to input your domain name.
Add domain
- Add your domain name in the input box and click “Add Domain”.
- You will be redirected to domain setup page.
Zoho Setup Window
Click “Setup <domain> in zoho” link. You will be redirected to domain verification page.
Verify Ownership of your Domain
You need to verify your domain to prove the ownership/authenticity to use the domain for business purposes.
- Add Zoho CNAME on your DNS records(in my case Godaddy) as mentioned in this page.
- After you have added Zoho CNAME record, click “Verify By CNAME“
Configure Zoho CNAME in your hosting provider
- Login to your hosting provider(Godaddy) and add Zoho CNAME record.
Add CNAME Records
- In Godaddy make sure you click save after adding the CNAME record else changes will not be saved.
- DNS changes might take sometime from 5 minutes to 40 minutes.
- Go back to your zoho account and click “Verify by CNAME“.
- After you are done you will get congratulation window.
- Your domain is verified.
Add First Zoho User
- Add your first business email here.
- After this you will be redirected to email delivery configuration page.
Email Delivery Test
Cool huh! but hey you are not done yet.
Setup Email delivery MX(Mail Exchange) Records
Godaddy MX Records
You need to configure MX records in your DNS provider. This is required for sending and receiving of emails.
- Select your domain hosting provider.
- You will see detailed steps for adding MX records.
- Again login to your hosting providers( in my case Godaddy) and add mentioned Zoho MX records. I had various other MX records mainly because i used Godaddy website builder for 1 month.
Godaddy MX Records for Email Delivery
- Make sure you delete all previous MX records. Wait for DNS changes to take place. In my case it was working in 5 minutes.
Eureka you are done with the setup.
Lets test it 
Zoho Mail Delivery Testing
Zoho Business Email Dashboard
- Try sending email to any email id from your Zoho business email. You will be excited that your email outgoing ad incoming working perfectly.
Zoho Business Email Delivery Test
- You might face below error while sending email to your zoho business email.
Zoho Connection Error
“zoho mail Unable to connect SMTP server:smtpout.mail.zoho.com, Port25Reason:Connection refused”
- Don’t worry! This comes because your DNS changes are not reflected yet.
- Be patient! DNS changes might take 5-40 minutes
Congratulations! You are done with hosting your business email for free.
Zoho Mail is really helpful not only for new businesses but also for established businesses. You can buy premium plan as you grow but why pay money until your business has grown enough.
What do you guys think about Zoho service? Have you used any other service for free email hosting? Let me know in comments.
We write multiple articles on topic email in different domain. All email related articles you can find below:
For Spam Protection of your Marketing Newsletters, below free service will help you.
If you like my article please like our Facebook page and also follow us on Twitter. For regular updates you can also subscribe to hackpundit.com with your email.
I’m Abhinav, Android Developer and Technology enthusiast founder of Hackpundit. We are group of technology geeks who write articles here. Contact us if interested.