The AtMail hosted email service begins at $20 per month, which includes 10 mailboxes and 100 gigabytes (GB) of shared storage.
Beyond that, the service runs $2 per user per month, including another 10 GB of storage.
You will also take advantage of a 99.9-percent uptime guarantee as well as full Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV), IMAP, and POP support.
This means most third-party email clients will work with the service, though, if you'd rather, there's a polished web client available, too.
However, while all of this adds up to a solid email hosting competitor, most of the other players in this hosted email review roundup offer additional tools as part of the package, notably in the areas of collaboration and productivity.
AtMail offers neither and, even if we solely consider email hosting functionality, its lack of bells and whistles still keep it behind our Editors' Choice winners Intermedia Exchange Email and Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium.
For those worried about geography, you have a choice of having your email hosted in Germany or in the United States.
For users who upgrade to their top tier of support, you can also get access to 24/7 phone support.
A free 14-day trial is available on their website.
Getting Started
A nice side effect of a relatively barebones service is that there's very little required to get started: just an email address and a password.
After getting through the initial setup, you will end up with a temporary subdomain on the atmailcloud.com domain.
You will also be given two separate sign-ins.
One is a username to the web administrator account, while the other is to the webmail user interface (UI), where you can perform all of your day-to-day mail and calendar activities.
Once signed in to the admin account, you will likely want to add your business' domain.
From AtMail, adding a domain is a two-click operation, which makes it somewhat competitive with other services that focus on ease of use in that department, including both Google G Suite Business ($12 Per User Per Month at Google Workspace) and Microsoft.
However, I'm an IT professional, so the process was familiar to me.
On behalf of those who are entirely new to configuring an email service, I was a little underwhelmed by the level of instruction AtMail provided.
And for those who go this route, you will also likely want to configure DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authentication and SPF records as well, which will take even more research for any neophyte to accomplish.
Once you get past initial configuration, however, things get a little easier, though only for folks setting up their email for the first time.
Adding and managing users is straightforward, and it's even possible to import a list of users from a comma separated value (CSV) file.
Unfortunately, if you're attempting to migrate your business from another email system, then there didn't seem to be a great deal of information about how to do that.
It will be necessary to rely on external tools to transfer boxes from a different environment, and this once again points AtMail away from beginners and toward IT pros.
Then again, for IT pros or IT consultants looking for a reliable, no-frills email service that supports most common email standards, AtMail is definitely worth a look.
Using AtMail
The email client is good entry-level application that will meet you users' expectations as long as they're fairly basic.
The AtMail web client's design is modern and stylish but it definitely doesn't try to overachieve.
Email composition is reminiscent of Gmail in appearance.
It also supports drag-and-drop attachments, which is a nice touch.
Some basic rich text formatting is available but nothing outside of some font tweaks, bulleted lists, alignment, and indentation.
Viewing email is also done with a familiar layout.
While not awful, it was slightly irritating that keyboard navigation is not supported.
This means that deletion always needs to be a point-and-click operation rather than a swift series of keystrokes.
The calendar and tasks module were also basic, though still effective.
This also makes training a non-issue as anyone familiar with another web client will have no issues finding their way around AtMail.
Business users might be disappointed to find that they are unable to share calendars with their teammates, however.
In a Microsoft Office-dominated productivity world, users have come to expect the ability to seamlessly use their email for scheduling purposes, and missing it could be a deal breaker for some.
Security and Privacy
Things perk up on the security front as AtMail leverages several third-party tools to make this part of their portfolio very competitive.
For example, AtMail's spam detection capabilities are based around SpamAssassin, a popular third-party spam flagging tool.
As an IT pro, I've seen it used to great effect, though you will want to improve upon AtMail's default settings, which I found to be a little on the weak side.
After setting the threshold to a stronger level, I could get it to catch most of the test spam messages I threw at it, but be aware that this is a manual setting.
In terms of anti-phishing, it's not really broken out as a separate feature.
I saw no indication, beyond being flagged as spam, if something was specifically a phishing email.
Plus, if I chose to click on the contained link, there was no additional block of that action.
Given the propensity of phishing as an attack tool specifically using email, this seems to be a surprising oversight on AtMail's part.
However, it's not alone in this attitude, as Zoho Mail simary addresses phishing.
On the rest of the security front, AtMail is a litte vague.
For example, the company offers you a choice of having your data hosted either in the European Union (EU) or the US, which is nice but significantly behind the really big-name vendors, Google and Microsoft.
Additionally, unlike those players, AtMail publishes nothing about their internal security and privacy policies, which might make security-conscious buyers nervous.
They do conduct regular penetration tests against their platform, and perform code reviews to help safe guard against data theft.
That must be worth something because AtMail does support Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance, through only through a partner.
Details on its regular data centers, however, aren't disclosed.
While they're likely compliant with current industry standards, there's no published documentation on whether or not the company maintains SOC 2 or International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 compliance.
The team did voice that it's tracking to be compliant with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulation in the EU, though that's not such a victory when you consider they really have no choice in the matter.
Third-Party Integration
Another area where AtMail delivers somewhat minimally is third-party integration.
While there is a REST application programming interface (API) available for AtMail, which means you can hire developers to build you an integration with any other REST-compliant app, there's no marketplace of existing integrations available.
Google and Microsoft have vast integration marketplaces, populated mainly by huge partner ecosystems that offer value-add integrations.
AtMail leaves that up to you, though even your developers will find this difficult because ongoing development of the API reveals that there's currently no way of adding items to the UI.
This leaves anyone hoping to instantly link AtMail to a third-party product out in the cold until a future release.
While it's not a deal breaker by any means, it is becoming more common to see email hosting services offered as part of a larger ecosystem instead of as one lone island.
Overall, AtMail doesn't try to be anything more than a simple email and calendar service.
While it does a solid job at that, it has a long way to go before it will be stealing users away from any of the major players.
It does have a nice presentation and modern feel to it, though, and its price is right, too.
So, for folks who really don't need a ton of features, AtMail is an acceptable choice.
However, for a better experience, a greater amount of features, and a similarly inexpensive price, Zoho Mail is likely the better choice.
Also, for those who really expect their needs to grow, Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium ($20 Per User Per Month at Microsoft365 for Business) is still the strongest contender.
The Bottom Line
Though it still has some rough edges, if you need a secure, well-designed, and inexpensive email service without a lot of bells and whistles, then look no further than AtMail.
