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Best IMAP Hosting Providers

Bluehost

Bluehost

Best hosting for IMAP

  • Integrated Cloudflare support
  • Full suite of productivity tools, from Docs to Drive
Why it's best: Bluehost's plans include all industry-standard features along with a free domain name registration for the first year. However, there is no monthly billing option.

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When you host with Bluehost, you'll be paying similar prices for its shared plans as with SiteGround. But, you also get a free domain name for the first year.

Its plans will give you varying email storage capacities, with higher-priced plans offering unlimited accounts and storage. Bluehost's email hosting is compatible with third-party clients and includes spam protection.

Your email users can have different account controls to customize their email account however they like.

Pros and cons of Bluehost

Pros

  • One free domain name registration for the first year
  • Spam protection

Cons

  • No monthly billing option (minimum one year)

What Customers Are Saying about Bluehost

Bluehost is a reputable provider offering shared and VPS hosting. The company is easy to use, affordable, and has great uptime. It is geared toward entrepreneurs and small online startups. Billing might be confusing, but they have solid customer service for any issues.

Summary

Bluehost

Bluehost

Best hosting for IMAP

  • Starting price
    • $2.75 per month
  • Why it’s best
    Bluehost's plans include all industry-standard features along with a free domain name registration for the first year. However, there is no monthly billing option.
Features
  • Integrated Cloudflare support
  • Full suite of productivity tools, from Docs to Drive
SiteGround Logo

SiteGround

Best uptime for IMAP hosting

  • Free email, SSL, CDN, and backups
  • Friendly webmail interface
Why it's best: Recommended by the creators of WordPress.org due to the high uptime rate.

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SiteGround always has many great things to offer with its web hosting plans. It gives you unlimited email accounts and email databases.

Your use of its email servers is limited to the disk space allocated for the specific plan you choose. As with all its plans, SiteGround includes free website migration, a website builder, and the industry-standard 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Pros and cons of SiteGround

Pros

  • 99.9% uptime guarantee.
  • Free website migration.

Cons

  • Low introductory rate increases after the first year.
  • No free domain name.

What Customers Are Saying about Siteground

SiteGround is a reliable web hosting company with fast speeds, a user-friendly interface, and solid customer service. Some customers are not thrilled with the price increase and back-end support.

Summary

SiteGround Logo

SiteGround

Best uptime for IMAP hosting

  • Starting price
    • $2.99 per month
  • Why it’s best
    Recommended by the creators of WordPress.org due to the high uptime rate.
Features
  • Free email, SSL, CDN, and backups
  • Friendly webmail interface
Inmotion Logo

Inmotion Hosting

Best 24/7 support for IMAP hosting

  • 99.99% uptime
  • Free SSL, premium malware and hack protection
Why it's best: Fast speed with a worldwide average of 172 ms and has a 90-day money-back guarantee, which is longer than its competitors.

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InMotion Hosting also has secure IMAP email offered with its plans. Its email hosting includes real-time spam filtering. InMotion uses super-fast SSD servers, so even its shared hosting plans pack a huge punch.

All of its plans come with free marketing and security tools. One of our favorite things about InMotion is that it lets you pick the data center where your website is hosted. This is a rare thing to find from shared hosting packages.

Pros and cons of Inmotion Hosting

Pros

  • 24/7 customer support.
  • Real-time spam filtering.

Cons

  • All data centers are located in America.
  • Does not support Nginx.

What Customers Are Saying about Inmotion

InMotion Hosting’s high-performance hosting, support team, features, and customer service are well-liked. Prices are fair, but can fluctuate.

Summary

Inmotion Logo

Inmotion Hosting

Best 24/7 support for IMAP hosting

  • Starting price
    • $2.99 per month
  • Why it’s best
    Fast speed with a worldwide average of 172 ms and has a 90-day money-back guarantee, which is longer than its competitors.
Features
  • 99.99% uptime
  • Free SSL, premium malware and hack protection

Frequently Asked Questions About IMAP Hosting Services

What is IMAP?

IMAP stands for internet message access protocol. It’s a protocol for storing and retrieving emails.

Is IMAP used to send email as well as retrieve it?

You can use IMAP to send an email; however, it isn’t typically used for this purpose. It’s more common that you’d use IMAP for storage and retrieval while using an SMTP server to send.

What’s the difference between IMAP and POP?

The easiest way to understand the difference is to think about one mailbox you use on several devices: a computer, a phone, and a tablet. Once you delete an email on your computer with IMAP, the change is replicated on the email server and then on your phone and tablet. In contrast, if you download email with POP on all devices and then read, archive, or delete messages, the devices will constantly be out of sync.

Do all web hosting plans support IMAP?

Most web hosting companies include IMAP support with their plans.

Which email software supports IMAP?

All major email applications support IMAP. If you are looking for a free client, we recommend Thunderbird.

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