In a previous blog post I talked about why one shouldn’t use the email service from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). With that option eliminated, you still have a ton of email providers to choose from.

You might have read the headline of this article thinking that we will tell you what the ultimate email provider is for you. If so, I’m sorry to make you disappointed. The reason is that there is no such thing as a one-size-fit-all email provider. The reason is simple: what you value and consider critical might be a feature that the person next to you couldn’t care less about. Surely, there are email providers that worse than other on all counts. It is a fairly safe thing to state that Gmail is generally a better email provider all-around than, let’s say, Hotmail/Live.

So how do you find the best email provider based on your needs?

After receiving this question numerous times, we realized that the only way to settle this is to create a web-based tool with a large database of most email providers and their plans in it. So we did. Yes, it took us a significant amount of time to put it together, but we hope it was all worth it. We call it Email Service Guide.

Right now there are almost 200 plans in the database, complete with storage quota and pricing. Just enter the number of users you have, the storage and support needs and press ‘search.’ Email Service Guide will find the cheapest plan based on the information you entered.

Are you only in the market for a hosted Exchange plan? No problem. Just enter ‘Exchange’ as a search criteria and only Exchange plans will pop up. Looking for a Zimbra plan, require phone-support, or perhaps an eco-friendly email hosting service? Yep, you got it, that’s possible too.

As a final note, it should probably be said that Email Service Guide was primarily developed to help companies navigate in the email jungle. Because of this, some popular personal plans are missing.