You’ll see email hosting providers that seem to focus their energies in particular areas, allowing the competition to excel in others. That seems to be the case with IceWarp, which really excels should you need a lot of email and file storage. 

That isn’t to say that IceWarp is particularly lacking as an all-rounder. Perhaps its support could be better and you have to sign up a minimum of 10 users, but the potential of adding native desktop apps is a great alternative to Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Part of a storage-hungry organization? Keep reading our IceWarp review to fund out why this could be the email hosting service your business needs.

IceWarp: Plans and pricing

Unlike many of the other email hosting providers we’ve reviewed, IceWarp lets customers choose from plans for cloud email hosting and self-hosted email. For those who prefer the scalability and flexibility that you get from the cloud, the choices include Startup, Business, and a custom quote. For self-hosted email, you can opt for either a licence subscription or a customer quote. 

The cloud Startup plan costs $23 per month for up to 10 users, while the Business tier costs $3.50 per user per month for up to 500 users. Should you need email for more than 500 users, you’ll need to get in touch with the IceWarp sales team directly to receive a custom price.

If you’d rather go with IceWarp’s self-hosted offering, this is charged at $3 per user per month for up to 500 users. And again, if you need more than 500 users, you'll need to reach out for a bespoke price from IceWarp. All of IceWarp’s plans come with one month free and, if you sign up for an annual subscription, you’ll save 17% compared to being billed monthly. 

Pricing is slightly different if you want access to IceWarp’s native desktop applications for Windows and Mac. These are optional add-ons for subscribers to the Business plan and will set companies back an additional $3.50 per user. The flexibility of IceWarp’s pricing for this desktop suite is a bonus, however. You can sign up for Business email for your entire organization, for example, but add the desktop apps for as many or few individuals as required.

Features

In terms of its core features, the first thing that stands out about IceWarp is the generous amounts of cloud storage you receive with your chosen email hosting plan. Even Startup customers receive 200GB of email storage per user and 1TB of file storage. 

Other welcome features included across both plans include TeamChat to help with collaboration, video conferencing for up to 1000 attendees, a calendar, and a personalized dashboard. There’s also ChatGPT integration, indicating that IceWarp isn’t going to let the opportunity of incorporating AI tools into its email hosting pass it by. So, if you already have a ChatGPT subscription, you can leverage it to create an AI assistant for use with your IceWarp account. 

The main point of difference in terms of features between the Startup and Business tier plans is the desktop suite of applications for Windows and Mac devices. This isn’t available at all for Startup customers and can only be purchased as an optional add-on if you’re signed up for the Business plan. These applications represent pretty good alternatives to those you get with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. You can create and edit your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, but you may find that the applications are not quite as slick or well-designed as those on offer from Google or Microsoft.

Support

IceWarp's support isn’t bad but doesn’t necessarily fare that well against some of its competitors. For example, although its live chat support is easy to use and makes for a good first port of call for users, the company only guarantees a response within 48 hours. This is twice as long as the guaranteed response time for some other services, with Hostinger promising to respond in a single business day.

However, if you do need more urgent support, you can put in a request for dedicated cloud support, with responses typically provided in two hours. There’s also priority support available for those self-hosting, with a contact for telephone support.

In addition, IceWarp has an academy for video tutorials, an online FAQ, and a pretty active community forum.  Overall, IceWarp’s support is pretty decent - it’s just that you might find more responsive assistance elsewhere.

Security

IceWarp has a fairly good security offering, with all applications safeguarded by TLS/SSL encryption. There are also integrated anti-spam and antivirus solutions and two-factor authentication is supported.  

IceWarp’s security is multi-layered and leverages online detection to protect against threats. In total, it combines 20 antispam technologies with real-time zero-hour protection from CYREN and Intrusion Prevention System. That should help prevent malicious actors from accessing your email account. 

What’s more, if you still hold reservations about the cloud’s security credentials, you can always decide to go with IceWarp’s on-premise plan. This puts responsibility for safeguarding your sensitive information firmly in your hands. 

The competition

IceWarp certainly differentiates itself from the competition - noticeably in two major ways. It provides an on-premise option and has a minimum number of users set at 10. The former is a nice option if you have the resources to run your own IceWarp server, but the latter could be off-putting for smaller firms. On the other hand, larger enterprises will need mailboxes for more than 10 users anyway.

If you need plenty of storage, IceWarp blows most of the competition out of the water. While the cheapest Google Workspace plan comes with 30GB of shared storage per user, you get 1TB of file storage with IceWarp. Of course, storage isn’t everything, so if you want a slicker office suite or more third-party integrations, you might want to check out other providers, like Zoho Mail or Neo.

IceWarp: Final verdict

IceWarp is an excellent email hosting provider for businesses that need a lot of storage. For everyone else, it’s just very good. Smaller businesses may find the minimum sign-up for 10 users prohibitive, but they will enjoy the inclusion of various productivity tools.

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Hostinger is one of the best email hosting services on the market today, but that should come as little surprise because Hostinger also excels in terms of the other solutions it offers. In terms of relaibility, collaboration tools, security and more, this is a great choice for businesses.

The affordability of Hostinger’s email hosting also can’t be overlooked. If you’ve decided that your business is lacking the sense of professionalism that you only get by moving away from a generic Gmail or Outlook address, then you could do a lot worse that Hostinger. Make your brand instantly look more credible without crippling your IT budget by signing up for one of Hostinger’s email hosting plans.

Hostinger: Plans and pricing

Hostinger keeps things simple, offering just two business email hosting plans: Business Starter and Business Premium. Business Starter costs $0.99 per mailbox per month, based on a 48-month contract. Note, that if you renew this plan, the price does increase slightly to $1.59 per mailbox per month. While this is still pretty affordable, the lengthy contract terms may put some businesses off - even though they’ll still only be forking out $47.52 per mailbox for an email plan that will continue to function for four years. 

The Business Premium plan, meanwhile, will cost users $2.99 per mailbox per month - again for a 48-month term subscription. This works out to be $143.52 over the course of the four years for each mailbox required. Again, there is a small price increase should you choose to renew after the four years are up, with fees going up to $3.99 per mailbox per month. 

The prices offered here are very affordable. For instance, the Business Starter plan offered by Neo is more expensive at $1.75 per month for one user. However, it’s worth considering that the Hostinger prices quoted above are those offered at a discount by Hostinger. The website admits that this is 66% less than the Business Standard plan’s normal price and represents a 40% reduction for Business Premium. It’s good to keep this in mind when comparing Hostinger’s prices and those of other email hosting services.

Features

Whether you choose between the Business Starter or Business Premium plans has a significant impact on the features you’ll have at your disposal, but either way, Hostinger provides a good range of functionalities. 

With Business Starter, you get 10GB of email cloud storage, access to 10 forwarding rules, 50 email aliases, and cloud-based infrastructure. Among the benefits for Business Premium subscribers is the way that Hostinger takes things up a notch. They’ll receive 50GB of storage, the ability to set up 50 aliases and create 50 forwarding rules. 

In terms of the email management features provided, Hostinger customers also get autoresponse, email forwarding, and filter rules. This means the platform makes it easy to implement the kind of automation features that could result in your employees’ productivity levels increasing substantially. 

You’ll also encounter an email hosting service that is intuitive and easy to setup with autoconfiguration for third-party mail clients, such as Apple Mail, Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and others. Integration with the likes of Gmail is also straightforward. 

As you might expect, given the prevalence of hybrid work, Hostinger’s email hosting works just as well on smartphones on as it does desktop computers, so you can access your email via your iOS or Android mobile devices.

Support

Hostinger’s support for its email hosting services is very reliable and includes 24/7 multilingual chat support and email assistance. There’s also a comprehensive knowledge base, complete with resources on some of Hostinger’s other services, like its website builder, file manager, database, and more.   

Regarding its email hosting specifically, the knowledge base includes more than 100 articles, including around troubleshooting, migration, and anti-spam tips. This should mean that you hopefully won’t have to reach out to Hostinger directly for additional support - especially if the company meets its 99.9% uptime guarantee.

If you do need to reach out for email support, Hostinger promises to reply to your inquiry within one business day. However, in our experience, the company performed a lot better than that. We receive a response to our email configuration issue in just over 15 minutes - a very speedy response! So, although the lack of a telephone support option is somewhat unusually, the other support options more than make up for it. 

Security

Hostinger’s email hosting offers some robust security, supporting DKIM, DMARC, and SPF protocols. You’ll also find built-in anti-spam and antivirus included within your email plan so there’s some solid protection for both your incoming and outbound email traffic.  

Should anything nasty slip through and you find that you’re account is compromised or you’ve lost some important emails, Hostinger also comes with automated email backups for data loss prevention and disaster recovery. There’s also two-factor authentication and encryption. 

In addition to the technical safeguards provided by Hostinger, there’s also a fairly detailed support page informing users of what they can do to secure their email account. This includes how to change your password, checking for unauthoruzed activity, scanning for malware, and other recommendations. These tips, combined with the approaches that Hostinger takes as standard, should keep your email account pretty well protected. 

The competition

Hostinger’s email hosting stand out from many of its competitors because of its feature-rich nature, robust security and affordable pricing plans. For instance, it works out slightly cheaper than many other providers, such as Neo, although you’ll have to decide for yourself whether this means it is the best value for money based on your company needs. 

Certainly, you won’t find many  other email hosting services that take security and support quote so seriously. The inclusion of various security measures, from encryption to multi-factor authentication should help It managers sleep a little easier. And, should anything go amiss, support is fast and reliable.

Hostinger: Final verdict

Hostinger’s email hosting is a great option for businesses that want an affordable, reliable plan. The fact that Hostinger offers various other service, such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, and more is pretty appealing too and mankes this an excellent choice.  

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With twin trays capable of holding a whole ream of tabloid paper, this wide format multifunction printer should be enough to satisfy any home user. In addition to duplex color printing on A3 paper, it can also scan and copy. There’s a 35-sheet ADF (automatic document scanner) for copying a stack of A4-size documents and a large touchscreen interface. 

It prints quite quickly for an inkjet at a top speed of 22ppm (pages per minute) and like all HP printers, it comes with self-healing dual-band Wi-Fi and a trial subscription of HP+ offering subsidized ink and extra functionality. It appears to have most of the key features essential for enterprise and it looks a little large for the home office, so why not recommend it as one of the best small business printers? Read on to find out why it might not suit a workgroup situation.  

HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e: Design and build

Like all large format multifunction devices, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e is a big unit and HP has allowed plenty of room on board for paper. There are two paper trays, each capable of holding 250 sheets and these trays stick out by a few extra inches when loaded with A3 or tabloid paper. That means the quoted depth of 467cm is really 842cm with the input and output trays extended, and it weighs 20kg before you load any paper. It’s probably not going to fit on the same desk that you work on.  

While the printer and scanner bed can handle anything up to A3, the ADF on top is limited to A4, so it cannot copy multiple pages of A3 automatically. The output tray is also somewhat limiting in that it can hold only 75 pages before they start spilling onto the floor. Sadly, there’s no multipurpose input tray, but you do have a USB Host port at the front and a large tilting touchscreen interface. At the rear are connections for Ethernet and USB data cables. 

Open that big flap at the front of the unit and you’ll see the cavernous space where the printheads zoom across the paper and it’s here where you’ll install the four surprisingly small inkjet cartridges. Overall, the design looks clean and symmetrical in its cement grey finish and the unit feels reasonably well built. But I can’t help wondering if it could be more compact.  

HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e: Features & specifications

As a three-in-one multifunction device, this inkjet can auto duplex print, scan A3 paper and copy using its 35-sheet ADF. We’ve tested the best all-in-one printers, and given the competitive price, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e is well endowed with additional features. There’s dual-band Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct and AirPrint compatibility, a generous 4.3” capacitive touchscreen, USB Host port and HP’s Wolf Pro Security for Windows users. What it doesn’t have is a fax facility, NFC (near field communication), or a multipurpose input tray. And it should be noted that while the maximum media size of the scanner platen is 297 x 432 mm (A3 or tabloid), the ADF is restricted to 216 x 356mm (A4 or letter). These are all things that would be useful in a shared workgroup environment.  

The 500-sheet paper capacity will be enough for the average office environment, but the ink capacity could be limiting because the highest yield color cartridges top out at 1,650 pages. The bundled standard cartridges yield just 800 color pages. The top print speed of 22ppm is pretty fast for an inkjet, and in draft mode, that increases to 34ppm which beats some laser printers. Color pages print at 18ppm and that drops to 4ppm in best quality mode. 

It can print on any kind of media from envelopes to coated photo paper, but HP does not recommend loading anything heavier than 105 g/m², which seems like a very low limit. It means you can’t print on heavy paper and even thin card is likely to jam – as I discovered.

If you open an HP+ account, without necessarily signing up to an Instant Ink subscription, you can use some additional functionality when using the companion app for iOS or Android. These advanced features include sending a digital fax via your smartphone, printing a scan captured on your phone, or scanning directly from the printer to your phone. A free two-year HP+ subscription is included in the purchase price of this printer, but I wouldn’t describe that as a feature and from personal experience, I wouldn’t recommend signing up to the free trial unless you print regularly and have a good idea of the quantity. I found it surprisingly difficult to wriggle out of the contract after the trial.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e: Setup & operation

To set up the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e, you simply load some A4 or letter paper, turn on and follow the on-screen prompts. These will tell you when to set the region and how to load the four inkjet cartridges. You can run out a test page at this point to ensure your nozzles are aligned and firing. Then you can switch to the companion app in order to get your printer online. If using the intuitive HP Smart app, you won’t need to type in your Wi-Fi password as your data will be transferred for you. It’s easy and it worked first time for me. The only frustrating thing about HP’s setup wizard is the way you are railroaded into signing up for an HP+ subscription at every turn. I had to decline five times before the printer grudgingly allowed me to start printing. 

The user experience is enhanced by the large tilting color touchscreen and the printer’s interface is as intuitive as the excellent app. However, I also discovered some frustrating aspects to this printer’s operation. Each time you load paper you have to select the paper type, as with all printers, but HP’s naming convention makes this difficult. If you want to print on glossy photo paper that isn’t branded HP, for instance, you must choose ‘other glossy inkjet papers’ or ‘other photo inkjet papers’ and be careful to choose the same thing at the printer and the PC as it won’t print with a mismatch.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e: Performance

I achieved mixed results while testing the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e - it’s certainly not the best printer I’ve ever tested. It turned out consecutive pages of monochrome text as quickly as the claimed 22ppm, though reversing the page in auto duplex mode slows the print rate considerably. There’s an extra second or two delay when the message ‘ink drying’ appears on the display. Black printed characters remain sharp and clear on plain paper, even at the smallest point sizes. In draft mode, simplex printing is faster (around 34ppm) with very little compromise in quality.

Switching to color test pages and the results are still strong. HP’s EvoMore ink makes for brightly colored documents and vivid photos. There’s no bleeding of inks and fine detail is rendered clearly. Photos on glossy photo paper are especially pleasing thanks to the vibrant palette. 

However, during the test I experienced several paper jams and instances of duplicate pages being drawn through the paper path together. And it was unable to print on A3-sized coated photo paper. Tray one is supposed to be able to handle large format photo paper, but each attempt caused a jam. This was presumably because it weighed more than the 105 g/m² weight limit of this printer. Most inkjets can cope with 300 g/m² so that’s a definite strike against the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e.

Scanning using the 11 x 17-inch platen worked smoothly, and so did copying via the ADF. This document scanner is blessed with automatic 2-sided scanning, so you can duplicate double sided documents without having to turn the paper over yourself.

HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e: Final verdict

The HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e gives you a lot of printer for the money. It’s big enough to print and scan on paper up to A3 or 11 x 17-inches and hold up to 500 sheets of it in two deep trays. It’s well equipped for business use with a 35-sheet ADF, Wolf Pro Security and a USB Host port at the front. The big touchscreen and fairly fast print rate also make it easy to use. And most importantly, the print quality is very good, especially with color documents and photos. 

But there are limitations too. That ADF can only handle paper sizes up to A4 and none of the input trays can handle paper over 105 g/m² which rules out heavier photo paper. I experienced a few jams during the test and this raises reliability questions. As with all cartridge inkjets, it’s expensive to run and the EvoMore cartridges are quite small. If you print regularly on large paper at home, the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730e could be just the thing for your home office, but it’s not up to the challenge of a shared office environment.  

For more buying advice, we tested out the best inkjet printers and compared the best HP printers 

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