Microsoft recently ended custom domain support for outlook.com, their free email service. Google buried Google Apps free edition back in December 2012. So with Microsoft and Google having turned their backs (but not their wallets!) to SMBs, what should ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ do?
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Well, when Google ended Google Apps Free edition, we increased our free plan to 5 users. Let us take a peek at what happened to the no. of sign ups to ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail email hosting plans:
Given that an approx 600% increase in sign ups over five quarters is quite impressive, we have decided to raise the bar further.
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Starting today, we are increasing the number of users / mailboxes offered with our free email hosting plan, doubling it from 5 to 10 free users. And oh! It's also ad-free. Beat that!
Better yet, it doesn't stop with 10 free users. Get up to credited to your business account by referring other outlook.com users; err, we mean other 'no more for free' email hosting services in general ;) And when you invite another business, they get 5 bonus users too. It's a two-way referral incentive arrangement. In all, you can get up to 25 free users, ad-free.
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​So what is the catch? We just believe in the Freemium model. We are committed to it. It has helped budding entrepreneurs to get started with their dreams, which in turn helped us gain more visibility. When they grow, they are happy to upgrade to higher plans with a price tag. It lowers our cost of customer acquisition; we would much rather spend our money on product development than on excessive sales and marketing as so many of our competitors do.
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But what's even better is the goodwill developed in the process. And that is priceless. Here's a recent feedback from a customer that captures this essence:
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I'm glad to be a ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ customer. For me as a small company, it's very important to save money first, but also it's important to get good services. ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail service has a great free plan. Big companies have monthly fees for similar plans and they don't care about small companies like ours. So, I think, to have such sensitive partner like zoho is really important. And when you grow, and can afford bigger plans, then you choose only those who supported you. I'm happy with all apps and services I have now in your servers. So thank you!
So if you love our free plan and believe in the power of free, please do us a favor. Spread the word about us. Word of mouth is the best help you can provide us in return for the quality, free service. That's why we provide you even more for free, when you to us.
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It is said that the best things in life are free, like sunshine and rainbows. We think the best things in life are free and also ad-free, like ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail. So switch (and / or refer others to switch) to the with a cleaner outlook ;)
Hi. I'm testing ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail with my own domain. It works great so far. Will it stay FREE for the next ten years or so, so I can migrate fully to it or is it just a few months??? (I would be willing to receive advertising that the service stays free.)
We are not recieving email larger that 10 MB please support urgently . Regards Jayesh Choudhary
Hi Does the free service have any email features ?
Without ActiveSync on Windows and Mac ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail still can't compete with Google Apps. Fix this and you'll have a winner.
Verrrrrry good news! THNX
URGENT - If I have a Paid Standard (10GB) single user subscription and invite another business, does that mean I get 5 more paid accounts for free?
Iam launching a business and need to keep costs low and was reviewing pricing (again!) on google vs ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾. Problem solved. Looking forward to growing big enough to pay ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ back! Also flagging to a entrepreneur friend in London - hellostrangetown.com/ Mateo, Uruguay.
Hi I have been unable to sign up for free custom mail on ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ after several trials. I always receive error message 'We are unable to process your request now. Please try again after sometime' Please, can somebody help me out?
I use ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ only for personal need. I'm thinking to use ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ for my business need that I'll establish very soon. ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾, you are wonderful.
we love zoho mail, so we recommend only zoho mail: ?#
10 isn't enough for my business need and since Google turned their back, I was left without any choice. Now with the referral 15 plus, I definitely going to host my mail with ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾! And yes, if it's not 30, I'll be referring a lot more than three. Then you!
Hi, I am ready to migrate from Gmail sometime very soon. Just wanted you to know that Go Daddy no longer offers a free email with a domain purchase. It give its website builder and some hosting accounts 100 mb pop accounts. It is no longer actively selling its own webmail products, but is selling MS Office 365 instead. Just one more free provider going away.
@Hari Murali Fair enough and i see your point. I work in IT and I quite used to metrics, hence my comment when I saw just a part of the full picture. Don't take me wrong... ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ is a great service and works flawlessly, which is something that most companies cannot brag about! Keep up the amazing work. Its really good to have companies like ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ on the internet.
The ZOHO Mail free plan, it's free forever? Or like now domains live, users can not create or delete email accounts. Thanks
well... this article is a bit dodgy... first you Omit one of the Axis of the graph, omitting the number of subscriptions?!?! Come on.. if you wan to brag about something at least be honest... Would also be interesting seeing how many people actually keep their ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ account.... More than having more account I would be more interested on having more space than 5gb and a better webmail interface. That would be something great! Don't take me wrong, I am a happy user customer, but news like this are fallacious and just annoy me.
@Kaisersoze We are not a publicly listed company and opted to take advantage of the freedom to maintain some suspense on the numbers, partially :) The intention of the graph was to give readers an idea of the uptrend we experienced after our earlier increase in the free plan. There is lot that can be seen if we started deeply analyzing big data, yes. We only meant to highlight positives that we took from the data we have, in further increasing our free plan. We are discussing ways to package and provide more storage space. A new, revamped UI is in the making.
Awesome! And ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ saves the day. I have referred will be referring many more to your service.
zoho.mail is very very good, i like so musch
ZOHO.COM IS VERY GOOD
Cool i like very well
Thanks a lot ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾! You are doing such a wonderful job! Thank you so so much!
THANKS A LOT ZOHO FOR GREAT SERVICE!!!
VERRY GOOD THANKS ZOHO
zoho est superbe...... 9*
I love ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾, and will be referring many of my clients to you! Thanks!
A question Please! Thank you first !:) if we had 5 basic emails then we made referrals and we got 10 and now an additional 5, 1st how can we see the number of mails we have 2nd shall we have 15 mail now ?! Thank you.
@Roger A-Smith You are welcome. You can now get up to 25 free users / mailboxes. 10 users free by default and up to 15 more bonus users through referrals. Every time you refer a domain, we'll add 5 bonus users to you and the referred domain. Thus you can refer 3 businesses (domains) and get up to 15 bonus users, on top of the default 10 free users. The referral bonus user count is displayed in the 'Mail Storage' section of the control panel on the right column pane.
I use only one user, but I want to add a new domain :( Anyway, zoho is my friend, domains.live.com is my old friend :(
Thank You!
Good news Thanks,
When I first signed up for ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾, 10 users was the norm and I actually was telling people about the service. Then things were changed to a 3-user model and I stopped advertising it as much. I also used to think of myself as "special" cause I had the better plan. Now that everyone else can have the 10-user plan I no longer have that "special" feeling but I am far more willing to tell others about ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ again.
Thank you for what you do!
thank you ZOHO !!!
I am in love with ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ services. Its flawless, and absolutely easy to setup and operate. And what is better when its free for 5 users, and now 10. I almost refer everyone to ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail for their business emails, and I am sure most have integrated and started using it. Thanks ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾. You are the best :)
I am in just love with ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾! Great Service! Great People!
Gr8 job Guys! Just when I needed... besties to ZOHO... Whats the referral Link, have referred quite a few, will be glad to refer many more! Cheers! SudhEe
I have been very happy with ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ and am recommending it to others. I appreciate the quick support for the few times I have needed it. I have used other email services and ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ is at the top of the list. Thanks!
This is great news! Thanks ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ team for all of your wonderful services. I have found ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ to be THE best in email hosting for professional and personal needs.
I am currently a new convert (March 2014) and I'm currently loving the system i'd give it 8 out of 10 stars. I wish i could do a few more things with it. Was getting a TON of spam 1) add a blacklist service like spamcop. Although zoho does stop alot of spam from happening it doesn't catch all of it.. I'd like to be able to setup a blacklist service or a way to mark spam that keeps is based off of subject... Yes i can do it based off of from but they spoff that stuff ALL the time
@Joseph Martin Thank you for the top score. But yes, we will look into improving our spam control mechanisms and get the 2 more points from you.
Thank you ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ for good services you offer ;)
Make User Experience similar to Gmail and you will Rule !
Good news for small business organisations. I recommend zoho to all my clients. Very good service, spam control also nice.
×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ is great for small business and small government. Our little city couldn't function without this! We're getting setup now and appreciate your product!
Great news, somebody is taking the initiative to pick up on a void in the market where other companies are neglecting the chance for offering something free and receiving a great advertising scheem for premium services in return. I previously used domains.live.com and find zoho's mail service to be much more user friendly. I'm using ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾'s freemium mail service for a non profit open source project, so having a free, usable and reliable email service is vital. On the other hand should my project start generating revenue and require further email addresses I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade.
Hi ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ team We would like to increase our ids. thanks for the wonderful offer. Is it for the new joiners or we can have it extra 5 ids. We have been using this service from last 5 months. looking for your quick reply.
WoW! Great News :)
Excellent news....Thanks to ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ team
This is awesome guys. Really appreciate it. Great to have such entrepreneur supporting company. I am going to stick with ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ for a long time. Keep it up guys.. entrepreneurs needs you..
I do agree with Andreas regarding attachment size for email attachments. Even I face problems with the size limit and iam unable to receive the email grater than 10 mb it would be appreciated if both incoming and outgoing mail attachment size is increased to more than 20 mb.
@leela We acknowledge that we have to support larger attachments. We are testing a feature to attach large attachments in the form of ‘link to the file’ within the email message. Once this is ready, we’ll post an announcement. Stay tuned.
esto es increible, realmente me encanta esta noticia! felicidades ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾
Great work guys, this put ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ in an even stronger position in the market.
I to am happy with zoho but as you limit file attachements I have to keep switching between my hotmail/outlook and zoho, that is ourely the only reason I have kept my other email account open. So I use zoho 90% of the time the rest of the time I have to use hotmail or outlook, inconvenient to say the least.
@Tina Lewington We acknowledge that we have to support larger attachments. We are testing a feature to attach large attachments in the form of ‘link to the file’ within the email message. Once this is ready, we’ll post an announcement. Stay tuned.
Thank you very much :)
After starting a new business our need was to curtail our expenses. On that the problem was delayed payments from clients, there was a day came when we need to make a choice between renewing our email subscription or paying to our vendor. Happy, that I found ZOHO. With now added 5 more free emails, I may not need to worry when adding employees. You people are saviour for startup like ours. Can we ask a little more? We have a very lightweight website hardly 500MB, can you offer free hosting as well?
@Amit We happy that you found us. Glad to be of service. About website hosting, have you had a look at ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Sites? As with all our other ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ services, there is a free plan in . We are looking to come up with Mail+Sites combo plans soon.
Great work. Thank for your support small business. It's very usefull of my startup
If ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ does not increase the attachment size for email attachments, it will be very difficult to keep working with ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾. More Free Users does not improve things for existing customers, more attachment file sizes is what is impressive. I hope someone is reading this and listening. Andreas
@Andreas We hear you and acknowledge that we have to support larger attachments. We are testing a feature to attach large attachments in the form of 'link to the file' within the email message. Once this is ready, we'll post an announcement. Stay tuned.
AWESOME!!!
Kudos guys, i want to confess here that you guys are wonderful and also want to congratulate you on your standard improvement in helping people meet their needs in the present internet business communication world. Well, not to go too far, i have been telling more about your service to my friends recently before i traveled to Africa and i will remind them that they truly need your service once i get back. I will want you guys to work properly on the "domain" verification process as it takes time to verify even after completing process and i have sent mails to your support several times without reply. Well, i am already singing the ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ song "5-10" upgrade trala la la la
@Eric Francis We love your song and its tune. Thank you for spreading the word about us. We'll do our best to keep up the faith you have in our service. We realize that the domain verification process can be nagging to go through. There are so many domain service providers out there and the user interface of the DNS management page differs from one to the other. This makes it challenging to provide instructions to suit the different styles. However, we are working on providing video guides to go through this ownership verification step. Hopefully videos will make it a lot easier to complete this step during the sign up process.
Hello, i know it is not easy to complete everything at a time where users will applaud at the same time for good delivery , but you guys have been wonderful. I will agree that you guys should try to complete a Video on domain verification soonest as i have friends who are complaining of domain verification problem like i had also. It is making me to look stupid in their site even after letting them know that, it will surely give a little cause for alarm during domain verification and which is important. Do not forget that, it is the beginning of customer 's expectation for good service. The more they get pass there the earlier the service interest. ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ guys should work on this advice Eric Francis.
Appreciate your support really you are great people
Wonderful news for us! Thank you ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾!
Thank you ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾! Your Freemium model is great for those of us in education. I've been with ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ for some time now and love it.
Viva ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾! You guys rule.
It change anything if I have about 72 paid members?
Great news! Thank you very much! I was wondering if I can trade doubling the number of users to doubling the number of POP clients (from 1 to 2). It would be great to get emails on both desktop and smartphone...
Wonderful. ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ has been integral to the launch of my startup. Thanks for being the enabler of great things to come!
Thanks for support small business guys, you rocks!!!
Definitely the best email service I found. ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ is really good and this is another great leap forward!
As much as I love ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ free, it limits file attachments too much when Outlook accepts larger files. For this one reason, I may have to switch back which is a shame.
@springheal We acknowledge that we have to support larger attachments. We are testing a feature to attach large attachments in the form of ‘link to the file’ within the email message. Once this is ready, we’ll post an announcement. Stay tuned.
Woohoo!
Hey Guys, great job!
Excelente!!!! muchas gracias.. :)
How can we take advantage of this, if we are currently paying for under 10 accounts? I attempted to downgrade the accounts, but it is not allowing me.
This is awesome news, certainly something that I'll take advantage of as I had already used my 5 mails!
Yes actually we enjoy that philosphy if things go right, for this integrity we are going to get services from zoho, as we look for trusted partners and no some company who at first opportunity will try to get a piece of us.
Thank you for "raising the bar," or rather just the number of users because the referral process is getting old. They don't verify MX records using normal methods, so many times when mail IS setup correctly and the referred user is receiving mail properly, ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ referrals will respond that it isn't working. This could be due to DNS propogation, but the servers are working in the US and that's what matters. It shouldn't take a week to be credited for referred users. We also don't have IMAP push or Calendar Sync yet. These are features that have been promised in other threads, but we haven't received any status updates in quite a while. How about a post about these issues, or a response please? Thanks - I still love ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ services! J
This is great! Good job ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾
Great news!! I've only used ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail. The more I use it, the more i fall in love with it. I've recommended 3 of my friends to use it for their startup.
×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾'s vision and mission are helping worldwide SMEs.
×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ is simply awesome. You are best for my small scale business. A BIG THANKS ! :)
Excellent news, ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾! You guys, keep up the excellent work. You have saved us hundreds of dollars compared to Google Apps.
@LoudBux (For some reason I am not able to reply to the comment), yes you can. 10 users means 10 different mailboxes. However, what you asking is just 1 mailbox with 2-aliases. To create alias, log-in to your admin control panel go to mail administration and 'Add a new alias'
I am always confused by ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail terminology. I love ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ mail, but please tell me the difference between 'A User", 'A Mailbox' , 'An Account" and 'A License." I have a paid ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail service so does the extra amount of Mailboxes or Users etc., apply.
@Mark There is FAQ that explains the user-mailbox terminology. I'm copy pasting it here. If you still find it confusing, then we have to do a better job at providing clarity. Please let me know :) How does the '/user' pricing work? Is it the same as paying '/mailbox'? One user corresponds to one mailbox of 5, 10, 15 or 25 GB based on the base plan you choose. However, a user can have many email or domain aliases (ie. different email addresses), with all emails accumulated in the exclusive mailbox assigned to the user.
Hi guys, great news, I'm starting my own business myself and I've been involved in a few ventures before. It's great to have the possibility to increase the number of users at this stage, hope to earn a lot of cash to payback for this :) Best of luck Ricardo
I am wondering why you are charging us $15usd per month to use your service and about to go to $1usd the first of june. we have six (6) users so I am wondering why you are charging us? thanks; t.j.
×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ is a great (the greatest) email system I've found, the apps are great too. What I would like to see is better filtering, like, the ability to discard emails. Also, the black list system is a bit odd at times...Nothing major.
I would like to send this this info to my son but he does not use social networking, nor do I. He recently switched from netscape to gmail and I've always told him zoho is safer and better. Could you send this to me as an email and I will forward it to him. Thanks.
@Mary McKisson It would be easier for you to email the link to this blog to your son - ;)
Hari, This is great for a small business like ours. The one thing missing for us and a lot of people we talk to about which service provider is best is the ability to track open emails being delivered/opened. Thats a hugely important feature thats missing with ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ compared to Gmail. I know ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ has the "ask receipt" option and also the CRM option which is not what I am talking about. Gmail has a lot of third party options like "Yesware" and "Signals" that offer simple features that add so much value. Any plans or hacks to compete with google mail on this front?
@Dilip Malave This sort of tracking is available with our email marketing application ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Campaigns. We are working on including such smart features in ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail. In fact, an interface make over is on the cards. Stay tuned for more updates on this front during the span of this year ;)
I am personally delighted that servisjm that offers zoho.com
hello, how can i have 3 emails on the same account? I mean like admin@loudbux.com, payments@loudbux.com and support@loudbux.comThank you!
URGENT: I am about to be charged for 1 year of "standard" plan which I no longer need - we selected standard last month because we required 8 users (7 + admin). But I do not see any way to "downgrade" back to the free plan. Is this possible?
@mike miskulin All you have to do is change to the free plan. Go to ‘Subscription’ section in the control panel and select ‘Cancel Subscription’, found below the title ‘Subscription’, on the right pane. However, please be aware that when you do this, the mailbox storage size of all your users will reduce to 5GB, as against 10, 15 or 25GB /user in the Standard or Premium plans.
Awesome! A big THANKS from the "small guys"!
I've only been using ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ mail for a little over a month and wonder why I didn't make the switch long ago. It's fast and reliable. I started a small Social Media Management company for the food and beverage industry and began integrating the additional apps like invoice, and creator. Now that ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ Mail is adding additional users, and as my company grows, it's comforting to know that I can add 5 more users without any fees. Great Job ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾! I will be spreading the word many times over..By the way, what will you think of next?
@Charlie Wyrick We wish you had found us long ago too. Well, you are here now and we are glad to have you. Do spread the word, many many times over! ;) And we are thinking of a lot of improvements but what takes the cake is a new, revamped UI. Stay tuned.
boy--you guys really now how to put lipstick on a pig.
Is this only for new customers? Are you taking into account the customers that support you from a long time now? Greetings. Patxi.
@Patxi Existing customers can change to the free plan to avail the extended free user limits, provided 5GB mailbox size /user will suffice.
Great!!...we really apreciate zoho service :)
Can I ask what you offering your paying customers for being loyal and paying you each month?
@SI Paying customers get more mailbox storage /user (10, 15 or 25GB), multiple domain hosting and domain aliasing, more groups and ability to buy additional storage. If your point is that we should be coming up with better benefits to paying customers, we are working on providing features beyond higher storage. Please stay tuned.
Hari - is there anything we need to do to take advantage of the 10 free emails if we currently pay for them?
Good news. Great show guys. I've been using ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ for 5 years now. All the free apps that ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ provides is very much helpful to Entrepreneurs at the earlier stages of their business. Thanks, Ansari. www.crunchleads.com
What about your existing users with SMB requirements? It would be great if you can extend the initial offering to existing SMB accounts with free 5 or 10 user mailboxes. I have refereed more than 5 customers and I never saw a single free mailbox added to my account in past 1 year. They all are using zoho suite of products.
@Andy Existing business users can change to the free plan to avail the extended free user limits, provided 5GB mailbox size /user will suffice. Please request the 5 businesses you referred to forward the email invitations sent to them to referrals@zohomail.com and we'll follow up. Matching of the referral code sent through email invitations is the way we validate genuine referrals.
Hari - excellent news! I have two questions. 1) If we currently pay for additional email addresses (but still have less than 10), is there anything we need to do to take advantage of this wonderful benefit? Also, we referred a client to ×îв©²ÊÍøÕ¾ back in the fall but we didn't get our credited email addresses. (They may not have used the referral link, or completed the referral form). This is awesome news. We're happy to help further.
@Shemiah, 1) All you have to do is change to the free plan. Go to 'Subscription' section in the control panel and select 'Cancel Subscription', found below the title 'Subscription', on the right pane. However, please be aware that when you do this, the mailbox storage size of all your users will reduce to 5GB, as against 10, 15 or 25GB /user in the Standard or Premium plans. If 5GB mailbox size /user would suffice for your current business communication needs, we do not mind you cancelling your subscription to avail the benefits of our extended free plan. 2) If you had sent a referral invitation to the client back then, please request them to forward your referral email invitation to 'referrals@zohomail.com'. We'll follow up from there.