You are two weeks from launch and email is the fourth thing on a list of forty. Here is how to get it right in an afternoon and never think about it again.
Picture a company called Halden, two founders and a domain. In week one they need founder@ for each of them, hello@ for the website, and support@ because the first users will write somewhere. By week six there is a contractor who needs an address for six weeks, an advisor who wants one for credibility, and jobs@ because they are hiring. That is nine addresses for two salaries, and it is a completely normal startup.
Most advice about startup email is written for a company with a fixed headcount and someone in charge of licences. Halden has neither. What it has is a bill that needs to stay flat while the roster changes every month, a domain that will outlive every tool it picks this year, and no one with time to be the email admin.
The seat you forgot to cancel
On a per-user provider each of Halden's nine addresses is a seat. Google Workspace charges $7 a seat, so Halden pays $63 a month, or $756 a year, before anyone else joins. When the contractor leaves, someone has to remember to remove the licence. When nobody does, the company keeps paying for a person who is gone. Every startup has one of these seats, and most have three.
The alternative is a flat price for the whole company. Faivelo is $6 a month for unlimited mailboxes on your domain, or $60 if you pay for the year. Halden's nine addresses cost $6. So do nineteen. Removing the contractor takes one click and changes nothing on the invoice. We priced it that way on purpose, because a flat $6 is what a two-person company can afford to forget about.
What Halden's nine addresses cost
The same nine addresses, priced at each provider's list rate. The per-seat rows grow with every hire; the flat row does not.
| Provider | Pricing model | Nine addresses, per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Faivelo | Flat rate, unlimited mailboxes | $6 | $72, or $60 paid yearly |
| Zoho Mail Lite | $1 per user | $9 | $108 |
| Titan | $2.49 per mailbox | $22.41 | $268.92 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $6 per user | $54 | $648 |
| Google Workspace Business Starter | $7 per user | $63 | $756 |
List prices as cited on our compare page, July 2026. Faivelo is our own product.
The domain is the only thing that survives
Halden will change its pitch, probably its product, and possibly its name. It will certainly change tools. The one thing that carries through is the address people already have in their contacts. Investors, journalists and early customers read founder@halden.com differently from a Gmail address, and the domain keeps working when the provider behind it changes.
So choose a provider that treats your domain as yours. That means standard IMAP and SMTP, so any mail app on any phone works and moving later is a copy rather than a rebuild. It also means the provider places the DNS records for you and configures SPF, DKIM and DMARC, because the first email campaign from a domain without them lands in spam, and Halden only gets one first impression.
Buy email that does email
The big suites bundle documents, video calls, admin consoles and compliance tiers into the per-seat price, and Halden will use almost none of it this year. Buy email that does email properly, and add the rest when there is someone to use it.
What Halden will need soon is more email, not more software: signup confirmations from the product, a launch newsletter, and eventually an assistant that reads support@. On Faivelo those run on the same account and domain, so the company adds a lane instead of a vendor. One DNS setup instead of three, one bill instead of three.
Adding a hire takes thirty seconds. Removing one changes nothing on the invoice.
The shortlist, ranked for a startup
- Faivelo. Flat $6 a month for unlimited mailboxes on your domain, role addresses included, DNS placed for you, IMAP and SMTP for any app. It is our own product, so weigh that as you like; the price is the argument.
- Google Workspace. $7 per user. Pick it when every person on the team needs Docs, Drive and Meet under the company account, not just email.
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic. $6 per user with Teams and the web Office apps. The same logic as Google, for companies that already live in Microsoft.
- Zoho Mail Lite. $1 per user with 5 GB mailboxes. The cheapest seat around for a solo founder; the meter starts at hire number two.
- Titan. $2.49 per mailbox, sold through hosts like Hostinger. Fine for one address; three of them already cost more than a flat plan.
Priced for two people and a domain
Start on the free trial, add your domain, create founder@ and hello@ and support@, and get back to the other thirty-nine things. Fourteen days, no card, and $6 a month flat after that.