Neo may not have the name recognition of the real major players in this space, like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or Proton Mail, but it is nevertheless making a concerted effort to join them as one of the best email hosting services around.
Attempting to set itself apart from its competitors, Neo has set its sights on the small business market. This is an email provider that is geared towards entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses. And what it does, it does well.
Neo comes with a good range of features, including appointment scheduling, email templates, and read receipts, and is available at an affordable price. It’s a great option if you want a custom email address, flexible cloud storage and the possibility of exploring whether some of those AI tools making headlines are really as important to business success as they claim to be.
It must be said, Neo isn’t perfect. We’ve found that the support on offer isn’t the most responsive and if you're a large enterprise you might require some of the advanced functionality that you find offered by some of the larger players out there.
However, if you’re a small business on the lookout for a reliable, affordable email solution, then it’s certainly worth giving Neo a go. The email and marketing services on offer could help take your brand to the next level.
Neo: Plans and pricing
Neo subscribers have access to three plans: Starter, Standard, and Max. The Starter plan costs $1.99 per mailbox, per month (when billed annually). The Standard plan is $3.99, while the Max subscription costs $7.99.
Interestingly, although the majority of email providers let you pay either monthly or annually, offering a slightly reduced rate for the latter, Neo is the only platform that we’ve seen that also offers two-year and four-year subscriptions - again at a reduced rate.
Although signing up for multiple years may seem like a big financial commitment, if you’re sure you’re going to stay with Neo for the foreseeable future, it could be a great way of lowering your costs. For example, signing up for a four-year plan takes the monthly cost of the Max plan down to just $4.99 a month.
It’s also worth noting that if you need more than 50 mailboxes, you’ll need to contact Neo’s sales team directly to receive a bespoke price. This is pretty standard for business software anytime a customer has needs that go beyond the usual. As we mentioned earlier, however, if you require more than 50 mailboxes, you might have outgrown the ‘small business’ tag, so you might find that there are other email providers out there that are better suited to your needs.
Features
As with all business email providers, the features that you receive depend heavily on the subscription you’ve signed up for. Let’s start by taking a look at the email storage on offer. With the Starter plan, you only receive 10GB of mailbox storage, which is even less than the free 15GB that comes with a personal Gmail account. We found that this amount of space filled up quickly, so if you’re a small business with big aspirations, you might find this somewhat lacking. If that is the case, you’ll probably want to look at the 50GB you get with the Standard plan or even the 100GB enjoyed by Max customers.
In terms of the other features that Neo offers, there’s plenty on show. Subscribers to all three payment plans will receive access to Android and iOS mobile apps, a built-in calendar, and the ability to access their Neo inbox via a third-party mail platform.
Some more advanced functionality is provided on the Standard plan, including a priority inbox and read receipts but most of the really high-level stuff requires you to be signed up for the Max plan. For instance, customers here get a plethora of powerful business suite tools, such as access to campaign mode - geat for email marketing, appointment booking and the AI Smart Write feature.
Support
Here’s an area where Neo could do better. While there is a help center, which comes with a host of useful articles and guides like help getting started and a general FAQ, it’s when you try to contact Neo directly that things become a little more tricky.
There is a link that allows you to create a support ticket but getting a response can take a long time. This is a shame, because for small businesses especially, any issue could cause significant reputational damage that ends up sending customers elsewhere.
Security
Neo’s security credentials are solid and this is clearly something that the platform takes very seriously. The platform offers data encryption both at rest and in transit with 256-bit ciphers, two-factor authentication, advanced antivirus and antispam functionality, and is hosted on Amazon Web Services, which should give users a little extra peace of mind.
Neo is also fully GDPR compliant and allows users to include a digital signature with their message to add extra authenticity whenever they are sending an email.
The competition
Although you might think that email is a bit old-fashioned, it remains essential to the business world. Sure, most successful organizations may have adopted an omnichannel strategy these days, meaning they can contact customers via WhatsApp or a social media platform, but email remains crucial.
In terms of email providers targeting the small business market, Neo has to compete with the likes of Zoho Mail, IONOS, and a growing array of others. Neo fares pretty well in terms of price and does offer users a free .co website domain but for advanced functionality or more response support, you might be better going with more established players.
Final verdict
Neo is a very decent email provider - especially given that it hasn’t been around the longest. If you too are just starting out and don’t require some of the more advanced features you get with larger vendors, then be sure to check Neo out.
If you have expectations of scaling your business rapidly, you might find that you outgrow Neo, but until then, this platform is likely to have everything you need at a very reasonable price.
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