The short answer
Choose Zoho Mail if each person needs their own full mailbox that works in Outlook, Apple Mail or a phone’s mail app, or if you use other Zoho apps. Choose Nexmail if your team mostly answers mail together, wants owners and notes on each conversation, routes addresses to Slack, and is happy working in the browser.
At a glance
| Nexmail | Zoho Mail | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free for up to 9 seats; Team plan for more seats, the meeting notetaker and the AI calendar reader | Has offered a free plan for small teams with limits, and paid per-user plans. Check their site for current pricing and plan limits. |
| Addresses at your own domain | Yes, for every person plus shared mailboxes | Yes, a hosted mailbox per user |
| How mail arrives and leaves | Arrives through Resend’s inbound, your own mail server or Gmail; leaves through your own Resend, Brevo, SES, SMTP2GO, SMTP or Gmail account | Zoho hosts the mailboxes and delivers the mail |
| Assign, labels, internal notes | Yes | Group mailboxes; see their site for collaboration features |
| Slack routing and replies from Slack | Yes | Not its focus |
| Calendar sync and booking links | Yes: Google, Outlook and CalDAV both ways | Zoho Calendar |
| AI first drafts | Yes, with the sales pipeline on; a person always sends | See their site |
| Desktop or phone apps | No: runs in the browser, with no IMAP or POP access | Yes: mobile apps, and IMAP or POP on the plans that include it |
How they differ
Mailbox host or team inbox. Zoho Mail stores and delivers your mail, like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Each person gets a private mailbox, and mail clients connect to it. Nexmail is built around the team: one inbox where conversations are assigned, labelled and noted on, with each person still having their own address.
Sending. Zoho sends your mail for you. Nexmail sends through providers you connect, such as Resend, Brevo or Amazon SES, and fails over between them, which gives you more control and keeps sending costs with the provider’s own pricing.
Around the inbox. Zoho has a broad suite of business apps. Nexmail keeps a smaller set close to the mail: Slack routing, a calendar that syncs with Google, Outlook and CalDAV, booking links, campaigns, a sales pipeline and a meeting notetaker on the Team plan.
When to choose Zoho Mail instead
- Each person needs a private mailbox that works in desktop and phone mail apps.
- You want one company to host the mail, with no separate sending provider to set up.
- You already use, or plan to use, other Zoho apps.
When Nexmail fits better
- Most of your mail is to shared addresses that several people answer.
- You want each address routed to a Slack channel.
- You want to own your sending provider and have mail fail over when one is down.
- You run campaigns or newsletters from the same tool, with limits and one-click unsubscribe.
The two can also work together: keep personal mailboxes with a hosted provider and put shared addresses, perhaps on a subdomain such as help.yourcompany.com, in Nexmail.
How to set it up
- Create a workspace. Sign up and name your organization. The Free plan covers up to 9 seats and needs no card.
- Add your domain. Open Get started and add the domain you own. Nexmail lists the DNS records it needs, or publishes them for you on Cloudflare, Vercel or DigitalOcean. See Connect your domain.
- Connect a sending provider. Connect Resend in one click, or add Brevo, Amazon SES, SMTP2GO or any SMTP server under Settings → Providers. Add more than one and Nexmail fails over between them.
- Invite the team and add shared addresses. On Teammates, invite people by email and create general mailboxes such as support@, shared with everyone or only the people you pick.
- Send a test and route it. Send yourself a message, reply to it, and, if you use Slack, connect it under Settings → Slack and choose which channel hears about each address.
Questions
Is Zoho Mail free?
Zoho has offered a free plan for small teams, with limits on users, storage and features such as IMAP access. Check Zoho’s site for the current terms.
Is Nexmail a mail host like Zoho?
Partly. Nexmail receives and stores the mail for the addresses it handles, but it does not offer IMAP or POP, and it sends through a provider you connect rather than its own servers.
Can I use Nexmail and a mailbox provider on the same domain?
Mail for a domain or subdomain goes wherever its MX record points, so pick one per domain. A common split is personal mailboxes on the main domain and shared addresses on a subdomain in Nexmail.
Which is cheaper for five people?
Nexmail is free for up to 9 seats, plus your sending provider’s own pricing, which is often free at low volumes. Compare with Zoho’s current plans on its site.
Read next
- Free business email on your own domain — How to get free team email at your own domain: addresses for everyone, a shared inbox and Slack routing, sending through your own Resend or Brevo account.
- Nexmail vs Google Groups — Google Groups collaborative inbox or Nexmail for support@ and sales@? What each does, what each costs on your own domain, and when to stay with Google.
- How to set up email on your own domain — Step by step: set up email on a domain you own. The MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, where to add them, and how to check that mail arrives and sends.