Top HEY Alternatives in 2026

Fastmail is the closest match to HEY's own philosophy: pay for your inbox instead of letting ads fund it. Both are independent, subscription-only email companies without a wider portfolio of software to sell you. Where they split is openness. Fastmail supports IMAP, CalDAV, and its own JMAP protocol, so you can read your mail in Apple Mail, Outlook, or any client you like, something HEY refuses to allow. Pricing is transparent and per seat: Individual starts at $5 a month, and Business Standard runs $5 per user per month annually, well under HEY for Domains' $12. You give up HEY's screener and its Imbox, Feed, and Paper Trail sorting; Fastmail files mail with regular folders and rules instead. For teams that want a paid, ad-free inbox with more freedom to move their mail, it is the safest swap.

Proton Mail suits anyone leaving HEY over price or privacy rather than workflow. Its free plan never expires, unlike HEY's 30-day trial, so you can run a real inbox for nothing before committing to anything. Paid tiers start at under 4 euros a month, and once you reach Proton Unlimited you also get a full VPN, a password manager, and encrypted Drive storage, none of which HEY offers. Message bodies are end-to-end encrypted, though subject lines and metadata stay in plain text, a limit of the OpenPGP standard Proton relies on. Custom domains arrive on the entry Mail Plus tier at 3.99 euros a month, cheaper than HEY for Domains. What you lose is HEY's sender screener; Proton relies on folders, labels, and spam filtering instead of a pre-inbox gate for new senders.

Gmail fits anyone who wants HEY's calm inbox less than they want to stay compatible with everyone else's. Personal Gmail is free forever with 15GB of storage, and Google Workspace turns it into a custom-domain business address from $7 per user per month billed annually, bundling Drive, Docs, Meet, and Calendar under one bill. Deliverability and spam filtering benefit from running on the world's biggest inbox network, something a smaller provider like HEY cannot match. The tradeoff is that Gmail has no screener. New senders land straight in your inbox unless Gmail's own spam filter catches them, and there is no equivalent to Imbox, Feed, and Paper Trail sorting. You also cannot buy Gmail alone for a business; you are buying the whole Workspace suite whether you need Docs and Meet or not.

Outlook fits teams whose real reason for leaving HEY is wanting Word, Excel, and Teams under the same login, not wanting a calmer inbox. A free Outlook.com account gives 15GB of storage, and Microsoft 365 Business Basic adds a custom domain from $7 per user per month with Teams included, after Microsoft's July 2026 increase pushed business rates up 12 to 17 percent. Copilot drafts and summarizes mail directly inside Outlook, further than HEY's own writing tools go. What you do not get is anything like HEY's screener or sender-approval flow; Outlook filters junk automatically but does not make you approve new senders before they reach you. New Outlook for Windows has also drawn criticism for routing third-party account credentials through Microsoft's own servers, worth knowing if privacy is part of why you left HEY.

Zoho Mail is the budget option for a small team that wants a custom domain without HEY for Domains' per-seat cost. Workplace Standard starts at $3 per user per month billed annually, a quarter of HEY's $12, and bundles WorkDrive, Writer, Sheet, and chat at the same price tier. If you don't need the office apps, Zoho's own Mail Lite tier drops to $1 per user per month for bare email with IMAP, POP, and ActiveSync included, and its Forever Free tier covers up to 5 users on your own domain at no cost, though the free plan is web-only with no IMAP, POP, or ActiveSync access. Zoho has no equivalent to HEY's screener or its Imbox, Feed, and Paper Trail model, it is a conventional folder-and-label inbox. Support response time is also a recurring complaint in reviews, worth weighing against the low price. If your team just needs a professional inbox as cheaply as possible, start with Mail Lite; if you also want the office suite, Workplace Standard is the better fit.

Tuta is for someone leaving HEY specifically over price and encryption, not workflow. It is the cheapest paid custom-domain option here: the Revolutionary plan is 3 euros a month billed annually and includes unlimited calendars, labels, and three custom domains. Every plan, including the free one, encrypts message bodies, contacts, and even subject lines by default, which most encrypted providers do not do for subject lines. Post-quantum cryptography runs everywhere too, not as an add-on. The costs are real: new accounts go through a manual anti-abuse review that can take up to 48 hours or longer, and there is no IMAP support, so like HEY you are locked into the provider's own apps. It also has nothing resembling HEY's sender screener; filing relies on labels rather than a pre-inbox approval gate.