Zoho Mail review

If you’re fed up with in-client advertising and spam, and concerned about your privacy, then it’s time to review your choice of email clients. With big commercial brands under the spotlight for their privacy invasion practices, secure email clients are growing in popularity.

What is a secure email client?

Quite simply, these email providers use state-of-the-art technologies to ensure that your emails are completely private and secure. They combine this with policies that don’t allow advertisers to spam you, and that prevent scanning of your email content by the server company itself (for data resale purposes) or by public bodies such as the government.

The allure of Switzerland

Remember that in many countries, the government and other public organizations have a right to scan emails for content. This is another reason why secure email providers exist, as they prevent this from happening, by using legal means.

Some even operate in countries such as Switzerland, basing their HQ and servers there because of the country’s extremely stringent privacy laws which protect individual privacy rights above all else.

Why customers are moving away from the big players

Big email providers were once the default option for most people, but there have been a number of high-profile scandals recently – with Facebook most recently in the limelight – for compromising user data and privacy, and for scanning emails and selling data to advertisers.

Introducing Zoho Mail

Today we’re going to look at one of the leading secure email clients on offer currently – Zoho Mail. We’ve taken a look at its features and benefits, and our Zohomail review will get you up to speed fast!

What is Zoho Mail?

Zoho Mail is a highly secure email client that is particularly popular with businesses, although it offers private accounts too. It has almost 30 million users across the world, from individual and private users through to large organizations.

It offers packages suitable for all user groups, from light start-up size users through to heavy and enterprise-level organizations.

Zoho Mail features

Users will find all of the usual calendar, contacts, chat, notes, and other familiar administration features. The user interface is clean and simple and designed to be intuitive, using familiar layout styles and menus.

There is a chat feature which is very useful for business customers who are using the client within their organizations for collaborative working and rapid communication.

The platform is also uncluttered and completely free from adverts but seeks to use all available space so that business users can extract maximum value from the software.

The ability to white-label it makes the platform attractive for business customers who can add their own logo and branding as required, and make it look like a more customized solution.

For businesses, the mail feature is integrated into a broader Zoho Workplace offer, which integrates 9 office-based applications together, including Office Suite, Connect, and Zoho Docs. These allow users to create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and so forth.

All of the added modular features allow collaboration and modern co-working benefits on the digital platform. Every feature is supported, updated via the cloud and regularly updated for the latest updates, patches, fixes, and general improvements, offering all of the benefits that come with a managed solution.

Is Zoho Mail secure?

The company takes its security extremely seriously and delivers this through a mix of technologies, practices, and policies across its organization. It says that it can generally offer a higher degree of security than any local server or PC alternative.

There are comprehensive security policies published on the website which clearly define the approach taken to guaranteeing user security and confidentiality.

The company constantly reviews and upgrades its security procedures wherever new alternatives are available, seeking to offer a best in class solution for its customer groups. It also regularly monitors all of the latest cybersecurity threats to ensure that it remains ahead of the game and resilient in the face of any attack.

However, in order to get a little more security to help protect their sensitive information, many users are also utilizing VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). These help encrypt users’ data, and also hides their true location by spoofing their IP address with another one from a location of the user’s choosing.

For that reason, many security-minded users incorporate both Zoho Mail and a VPN in order to give them the most security without losing features. If you don’t know yet which VPN provider to choose, our top 10 VPN list is a great place to find out more about available options.

Zoho Mail features

• Datacentres located in some of the most tightly protected facilities possible, in locations safe from natural disasters and physical attacks.
• Round the clock security at each datacentre, with physical guards, video monitoring, biometric and dual-factor authentication and controlled entrances in operation!
• Constant network security monitoring, with the use of the latest encryption protocols, the strongest ciphers and intrusion protection programmes.
• Distributed grid architecture for business continuity
• Guaranteed uptime of 99.9pc
• Absolutely no advertising at any time.

Benefits to businesses

As an email tool designed primarily for businesses, there are a number of features which offer particular benefits to these customers. For example:

• Zoho offers a comprehensive CRM tool for businesses alongside its email client and office packages and all can be seamlessly integrated.
• Businesses can also make use of a handy migration tool which makes it quick and easy to transfer email accounts.
• The software has excellent customization options

Enhanced features

There are also a number of advanced email features on offer which many other email clients don’t offer to the same degree. These include:

• The ability to draft a review for collaboration before sending
• Smart composition features with auto text population
• Mail scheduling
• Folder sharing and bulk archiving based on defined user parameters
• The ability to receive notifications on identified ‘watched’ email threads
• An attachment viewing library
• Bookmarks
• White labeling options for corporate users to apply their own branding
• A night mode feature which dims the backlight and optimizes the screen to avoid glare
• A ‘scrub’ feature for rapid cleanups of your files
• An outbox which you can customize so that you have a second chance to recall and edit an email before it is completely sent to the recipient!
• A full list of keyboard settings for shortcuts.

Zoho Mail pricing

Our Zohomail review found competitive pricing structures on offer for customers.

• For standard users, the service costs $3 a month, with 30 GB of storage and a 30 MB attachment limit.
• For a professional user, the cost is $6 a month, for 100GB of storage and an attachment limit of 40GB.
• There is also a ‘lite’ option, which has just 5GB of space per user and the ability to send 25 MB of attachments.

Zoho says that the lite package tends to be popular with individual users and startups, the standard option is preferred by SMEs and the professional package is preferred by larger organizations.

Zoho Mail vs Gmail

But how does Zoho Mail compare against one of the biggest global email providers on the market today – Gmail? We’ve carried out a review so that you don’t have to!

User reviews of Zoho Mail

Zoho generally gets very high reviews for its email security, service, privacy and overall quality of the offer – all for an affordable monthly subscription price.

Business customers also tend to buy the other software packages for an integrated solution but some say that the modular purchase structure means that you can end up buying more than you actually need, just to access certain features.

However, for those customers looking for email software only, this is less relevant and shouldn’t pose a problem.

Conclusion of Zoho Mail review

Zoho Mail is well worth looking at if you’re a business, especially as it offers competitive pricing and excellent tools which are designed with the needs of business in mind.

The company behind the email client is constantly developing new features and solutions, including add-ons to CRM solution for businesses and applications that mirror the typical Office packages provided by other big brands.

Its customer service is also notable and will give customers peace of mind if they do encounter any issues and need support. Last but not least, the ability to use office packages and email securely on the go – whether from your smartphone or a web browser version – offers excellent flexibility.