Cost
8 min read
What does professional email on my own domain really cost?
The published price is per person. The number of addresses a business needs is not the number of people it has — and that gap is the whole cost question.
Short answer
Business email is sold two ways. Per-seat suites charge for every person every month, which is the right model when each of those people needs a full mailbox, calendar and document suite. Per-domain routing charges once for the domain regardless of how many addresses exist on it, which is the right model when what you actually need is addresses on your own domain that reach inboxes people already have. The cheaper option is decided by one number: how many of your addresses belong to a person who needs their own mailbox.
Start here
You want addresses on your own domain
Does each address belong to a person who needs their own mailbox, calendar and files?
A per-seat suite is the right shape
Staff who each need a separate login, their own storage, a shared calendar and document editing. You are buying a workplace, and email is one part of it.
Cost scales with headcount, every month, forever
Per-domain routing is the right shape
info@, bookings@, accounts@, plus a handful of people who already have inboxes they check constantly. You are buying addresses, not workplaces.
One cost for the domain, whatever number of addresses you create
Two pricing models, and what each one is really selling
Almost every business email option is one of two shapes, and comparing headline prices between them is meaningless because they sell different things.
A per-seat suite sells a workplace for a person: a mailbox with storage, a calendar, document editing, video calls, an admin console and a login. The price is per person per month. If that person needs all of it, the price is reasonable and the alternatives are not really alternatives.
Per-domain routing sells addresses on your domain that deliver into inboxes people already have. There is no new mailbox, no new login, no new app, and no storage — because the mail lands where the person already reads mail. The price is for the domain, and the number of addresses on it does not change it.
The question is not which is cheaper. It is how many of your addresses belong to a person who needs a workplace, and how many are just addresses.
The number that decides it
Write down every address your business needs to publish or use. Not people — addresses. A typical ten-person business produces a list like this.
| Address | Belongs to | Needs a full mailbox? |
|---|---|---|
| Ten personal addressesone per member of staff | A person | Depends on the person |
info@ | The business | No |
bookings@ | Whoever is on shift | No |
accounts@ | The bookkeeper, part-time | No |
support@ | Two people | No |
careers@ | The owner, occasionally | No |
noreply@, press@, privacy@, dpo@ | Nobody, until they matter | No |
The rows in the tinted band are the ones that cost nothing extra under per-domain pricing and are the reason the two models diverge.
Now split the ten personal addresses. Some of those people genuinely need a workplace — they run calendars other people book into, they edit shared documents, they need their own file storage. Others need an address on the company domain that lands in the inbox they have used for years, and would be actively worse off with a second inbox to check.
Working it out for your own business
- 1
List addresses, not people
Every address you publish, print, or would want to exist. Most people are surprised by how many are role addresses rather than personal ones.
- 2
Mark the ones that need a workplace
A calendar others book into, shared document editing, their own file storage, a separate login for compliance reasons. If none of those apply, the address does not need a seat.
- 3
Price the marked ones at per-seat rates
Use your provider's current published price and multiply by twelve. That is the annual floor, and it grows with headcount.
- 4
Price the rest at zero marginal cost
Under per-domain pricing, the number of addresses does not change the price. Check the plan's daily and monthly sending allowance against your real volume instead.
- 5
Prove it before you migrate anything
Set up one role address on a free plan and use it for a fortnight. Every claim in this guide is checkable in an afternoon, on your own domain, without moving a single existing mailbox.
Our own plans are structured for the second half of that list: a free tier that exists to prove the thing works before any payment, and paid plans priced per domain with unlimited addresses on them rather than per person. Current numbers are on the pricing page, which is the only place they are guaranteed to be right — a price written into a guide is a price that will be wrong eventually.
The comparison changes shape over five years
A cost comparison made on today's headcount is the most optimistic version of a per-seat bill, because per-seat costs move in one direction and the things that move them are not decisions you get to make.
Year 1
The quoted price
Headcount times the entry tier, usually on an annual commitment. This is the number the decision was made on.
Year 2
Headcount, and the first leavers
New staff add seats. Leavers whose mail must keep arriving add seats that are never reclaimed.
Year 3
One requirement moves everyone up a tier
Retention, storage or a security control that one department needs is priced per organisation, not per department.
Year 4
Storage
Included storage is generous until a few long-serving people exhaust it, and the remedy is a higher tier for everybody.
Year 5
Renewal at current list price
Introductory and negotiated rates expire. The renewal is the moment most organisations discover what the bill actually became.
Per-domain pricing moves too, but it moves with sending volume rather than with headcount, tiers or storage. That is worth stating plainly rather than as an advantage: if your business grows by sending far more mail, a per-domain plan gets more expensive and a per-seat one does not. The models are not cheap and expensive — they are indexed to different things, and the honest question is which of those things your business grows.
What to remember
- Per-seat suites sell a workplace per person. Per-domain routing sells addresses on your domain. Comparing their headline prices directly is meaningless.
- List addresses, not people. Most businesses need far more addresses than they have staff.
- The deciding question per address: does it belong to someone who needs a mailbox, calendar and files of their own?
- Most businesses end up mixed — seats for the few who need a workplace, routing for everything else.
- The genuinely expensive option is running a business on a free consumer address, and the cost never appears on any invoice.
Questions people ask next
Is a per-domain plan always cheaper than per-seat?
No. For a team where every person needs their own mailbox, calendar and document editing, a per-seat suite is the right purchase and routing does not replace it. Per-domain pricing wins when you need many addresses and few workplaces, which is the common shape for small businesses and for role addresses at any size.
Can I use both?
Yes, and most businesses that look at it carefully do. Seats for the handful of people who need the full suite, per-domain routing for role addresses and for staff who prefer the inbox they already use. They coexist on one domain without conflict.
Do I need a mailbox for every address I publish?
No, and this is the assumption that inflates most quotes. An address is a destination, not a storage container. info@ can deliver into inboxes that already exist without any mailbox of its own, which is why the address count and the seat count do not have to match.
What happens to an address when someone leaves?
Under per-seat pricing you usually keep paying for the seat so their mail is still received. Under per-domain routing you change where the address delivers — to their replacement, or to a manager — and the address keeps working with no billing change at all.
Is there a free way to try this?
Yes. Our free plan gives one address on a domain you own, delivering into an inbox you already read, with authentication configured properly. It exists to prove the mechanism on your own domain before any money is involved, and it needs no card.
How does the comparison change as we grow?
Per-seat costs are indexed to headcount, tiers and storage, all of which only rise and none of which you fully control. Per-domain costs are indexed to sending volume. Neither is universally cheaper — the honest question is which of those two curves your business actually grows, and a five-year view answers it better than today's headcount does.
Why not just use free forwarding from my registrar?
Registrar forwarding often works for a while and then quietly stops, because it typically forwards without handling the authentication problem that forwarding creates. The failure is silent — mail is accepted and dropped — and it is very hard to notice until someone tells you they never got a reply.
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Last reviewed 2026-08-16 · Brand My Inbox current