Email hosting for agencies, one domain per client

Three things have an owner: the domain registration, the DNS credential, and the mailboxes. Agencies get into trouble when all three sit in the agency's name, because a client who leaves then needs the agency's cooperation to keep their own email.

The arrangement that survives a parting is this. The client owns the domain, in their registrar account, with you as a delegate where the registrar allows it. The DNS credential or one-click connection used to set up email is created from the client's registrar login, so it can be revoked by them. The mailboxes live in an email account you can administer during the engagement, with the client able to take it over. Write this down in the proposal; it takes one sentence and it is the sentence clients remember.

On a per-seat host each client mailbox is a seat on the client's own subscription, which means a separate admin console, a separate invoice and a separate renewal to chase per client. That is manageable at three clients and a part-time job at thirty.

A flat-rate host changes the shape. On Faivelo the Starter plan is $6 a month and allows up to three domains, which suits a freelancer with a couple of client sites alongside their own. The Growth plan is $12 a month with unlimited domains and unlimited mailboxes across them, which is the agency plan: every client domain joins the same account, every hello@ and name@ is included, and there is one bill. Storage is pooled per plan (10 GB on Starter, 200 GB on Growth), so a client with a heavy inbox is worth watching, and the Pro plan at $24 raises the pool to 1 TB and adds multi-admin access for a team that shares the console.

What flat rate does not do is bill the client for you. Some agencies absorb the cost inside a care plan, since $12 across twenty clients is small. Others set each client up in their own account from the start and keep only an administrator login, which keeps the hand-over trivial.

In practice the first row covers most agency clients, because agencies put client DNS on Cloudflare or at the site host. For those, setting up email on a new client domain is a few minutes with the client on a call: they approve the connection, the records are written, and you create the mailboxes. The guides have the exact screens for each host, including the two settings on Cloudflare that silently break mail when done by hand.

Each mailbox has its own password, so a client gets exactly the logins they need and nothing else: name@ for each person, and the hello@ password for whoever answers it. Webmail works from any browser, and the same credentials go into Apple Mail, Outlook or a phone. You keep the account console, where domains, DNS and mailbox creation live, until the engagement ends or the client wants it.

Set a catch-all per domain while you are there, delivering into hello@. Clients are reliably surprised by how much lands on addresses they never created, from the previous agency's info@ to a misspelt name on a business card.

Say three things. The domain renews yearly at the registrar and that invoice is theirs. The email is a flat monthly amount that does not change when they hire, which matters because the question clients ask after the second hire is always "does this cost more now". And if they ever leave, their email comes with them: the domain is theirs, the mailboxes can be moved over IMAP to any host, and you will hand over the console.

Agencies that have run client email on registrar bundles know the alternative: an intro price per mailbox that doubles in year two, and a call from the client when it does. A flat price with no intro year is simply easier to explain once and never again.