A fond farewell to IMAP and SMTP in Zoho

OK, so let's get things in context. Zoho mail is still free for your business email addresses.

The biggest change in their free plans is that you'll no longer be able to connect to email via their inbound (IMAP) or Outbound (SMTP) mail servers.

This means no more connecting your free Zoho hosted mail to your Google accounts, Outlook or even the built-in mail management apps on your iOS and Android devices.

You'll still be able to get access to your business emails by logging into Zoho webmail using your browser, or by downloading their mail app (available for iOS and Android).

This can be an annoying step for many users who also access their personal mail (like Gmail or Yahoo) via one tool.

From a business perspective, there'll also be issues with any businesses who connect their email to their websites via SMTP to ensure better deliverability when forms are filled in online. There is nothing more frustrating than when requests coming through your site end up in your junk folder.

As a whole, there seems to be some divide between whether this decision will cost Zoho customers along the way (see some forum thoughts here).

There's always the option of using Zoho on a paid plan. With rates as low as €2/month per user, this may still be a great option for many startups and small businesses.

Once we're looking at paid options, however, it may be time to consider some of the major players in the market who are renowned for having best-in-class options for not just email, but calendars, and document support (text, spreadsheets etc).

Google Suite

For the Google fanboys, getting your domain-specific mail setup takes just a few minutes and there is great support from their team with any ad-hoc questions you may have. Want to find out more? Visit the G Suite signup intro page here.

Office 365 

There are a number of Microsoft Partners that can help take the hassle out of getting your emails set up and running efficiently - we've found the team at IT Eye to be a great option for this with our Microsoft-centric clients.

Do you happen to have any thoughts on the direction in which email for business may use? Are there any emerging players that we could have included in our roundup? We'd love to hear more about what's working for you or your clients. Also, the types of setups you'd suggest to our evolving, growing and established customer bases.

If you gently swing down to the comments section below, your contributions would be appreciated not only by us by the Sites Done Right community at large.