Third-party comparison · not affiliated with either
Forward Email vs. Migadu: alias-and-forward vs. full mailbox host.
Forward Email's free tier gives unlimited domains and aliases but only forwards mail — it cannot send until you upgrade to Enhanced Protection at $3/mo ($36/yr), which adds 10 GB pooled storage and 300 outbound messages per day. Migadu has no free tier and starts at $19/yr for a full standalone IMAP mailbox with unlimited domains and mailboxes, but that Micro plan is metered at 20 outbound and 200 inbound messages per day across the whole account. Migadu is the cheaper mailbox and never bounces mail for full storage; Forward Email is fifteen times more permissive on sending, is 100% open source, and can be self-hosted.Folio, which publishes this comparison, sits between the two: real mailboxes like Migadu, but with the many-domains-one-inbox shape people reach for Forward Email to fake — every domain lands in a single reading view, reply-From is chosen by the domain the message arrived on, and each domain gets its own DKIM key at bind time. It costs $2.99/month billed annually ($35.88/yr) for up to 3 domains and 1,000 sends a month, or $3.50 month-to-month. If forwarding into an inbox you already own is enough, Forward Email's free tier is genuinely free and Folio is not; if you send under twenty messages a day, Migadu Micro is cheaper than both.
Forward Email's free tier is forwarding-only — unlimited domains and aliases that route mail to an existing inbox, with no mailbox storage and no outbound sending until you pay. Migadu is a full mailbox host from its first paid tier: real IMAP storage, sending, and receiving on every plan.
They solve genuinely different problems, and this page — the honest, third-party comparison neither vendor's blog publishes — lines them up on their own pricing, docs, and published rate limits.
Updated 7 September 2026 (2026-09-07)
The verdict
In one sentence.
Migadu is cheaper to enter and Forward Email is far cheaper to send from. Migadu's Micro plan is $19/yr for a real standalone IMAP mailbox, against $36/yr for Forward Email's Enhanced Protection — but Micro is metered at 20 outgoing and 200 incoming messages per day, account-wide, while Enhanced Protection allows 300 outgoing per day. Matching Forward Email's send headroom on Migadu means the Standard plan at $290/yr. So the honest split is: if your mail is mostly arriving — aliases, a handful of replies, one person's correspondence — Migadu at $19/yr is the better mailbox and the better value. If you send with any regularity, or you want to start at zero, Forward Email's model costs a fraction as much and is the only one of the two you can self-host.
Feature by feature
Feature by feature.
- Free tierYes — unlimited domains, forwarding only, cannot send mailNo — the free plan was retired and replaced by Micro at $19/yr
- Entry paid price$3/mo (Enhanced Protection, $36/yr)$19/yr (Micro) — yearly billing only, no monthly option
- Outbound sending limit, entry paid plan300 messages/day (~9,000/mo), per-user and per-domain, resets at midnight UTC20 messages/day account-wide on Micro; 100/day on Mini, 500/day on Standard
- Inbound limit, entry paid planNo per-mailbox cap; untrusted senders throttled at 1,000 msgs/day200 messages/day account-wide on Micro, counted across every domain
- What happens at the limit421 'try again later' deferral until the daily counter resets25% tolerance, then deferral (inbound) or outright rejection (outbound)
- Mailbox storage on entry paid plan10 GB pooled, then $3/mo per additional 10 GB5 GB soft — no hard quota, mail is never bounced for a full mailbox
- Domains per accountUnlimited on every tier, including freeNo enforced limit; a large count 'raises eyebrows' and may prompt an upgrade
- AliasesUnlimited, no per-user feeUnlimited addresses and mailboxes, no per-user fee
- Open source100% open-source software, plus a supported self-hosted option since March 2025Built and operated 100% on top of open-source technologies — the stack, not Migadu's own application
- Pricing modelFlat per-account fee ($3 or $9/mo), not per-user, not per-GBFlat per-account fee, tiered by capacity ($19–$990/yr)
- RefundsAutomatic full refund within 30 days of a first paid plan starting100% within 14 days, less a prorated deduction if usage was heavy
- DMARC reporting / admin APIDMARC report ingestion and a developer API from Enhanced Protection upFull admin API for domains, mailboxes, identities and forwardings; DMARC reporting not offered
How to choose
Pick the right one.
Choose Forward Email if
You send more than a trickle, or you want to start free and self-host later.
- You want to try unlimited domains and aliases for free before paying anything.
- Your outbound volume is real — 300/day is fifteen times Micro's allowance at roughly twice the price.
- You care about auditable code: Forward Email is 100% open source and self-hostable as of March 2025.
Choose Migadu if
You want a real, standalone hosted mailbox with IMAP storage from day one and your mail mostly arrives.
- You don't want mail routed through a second inbox — you want Migadu to be the mailbox itself.
- You'd rather have soft storage limits that never bounce a message than a hard 10 GB and a metered overage.
- Your sending is personal correspondence, not volume — under 20 a day, Micro's cap is invisible and $19/yr is unbeatable.
A deeper look
The number that decides this: 300 a day against 20
Both vendors publish hard daily send limits, and they are not close. Forward Email's Enhanced Protection defaults to 300 outbound messages per day, enforced per user and per domain, with anything over it deferred by a 421 until the counter resets at midnight UTC. Migadu's Micro plan allows 20 outbound and 200 inbound per day, metered across every domain and mailbox on the account together; it grants 25% tolerance, then defers inbound mail and rejects outbound.
That is the whole comparison for most people. Twenty a day is one person's ordinary correspondence and nothing more — no announcement to a customer list, no busy support week, no automated notifications from an app you run. Migadu's next step up, Mini, allows 100/day at $90/yr; matching Forward Email's 300 means Standard at $290/yr, eight times Enhanced Protection's price. If you are comparing $19/yr against $36/yr and stopping there, you are comparing the wrong two numbers.
A deeper look
Forwarding-first vs. mailbox-first
Forward Email's architecture starts from forwarding: the free tier explicitly cannot send mail, only receive and forward it to an inbox you already run elsewhere. Paying unlocks SMTP sending and real (if pooled, 10 GB) storage, but the product's identity is still built around aliases and routing rules layered on top of your existing inbox. Migadu skips that layer entirely — even its cheapest $19/yr tier is a standalone mailbox with its own IMAP storage, sending, and receiving, no second inbox required.
If you already have a Gmail or other primary inbox and just want clean aliases across many domains, Forward Email's model fits naturally. If you want one self-contained mailbox per domain setup, Migadu's model is the more direct match — and note that Micro withholds a few administrative features the higher plans have: per-mailbox storage limits, welcome messages for new accounts, and multi-administrator access.
A deeper look
Where each one is more generous than its price suggests
Migadu's storage is the quiet win. There are no hard storage quotas on any plan — the published figures are soft, and Migadu states plainly that mail will never bounce back because a mailbox is full. Forward Email's 10 GB is a real ceiling with a real meter behind it: $3 per month for each additional 10 GB, which doubles the cost of Enhanced Protection the first time you cross it.
Forward Email's is the refund and the exit. A first-time customer who upgrades, downgrades, or cancels within 30 days is refunded automatically and in full; Migadu's window is 14 days and may be prorated against usage. And Forward Email is the only one of the two you can walk away with — the self-hosted option shipped in March 2025, so the code that runs the service is the code you can run yourself. Migadu is built on open-source components, which is a narrower claim: the stack is open, the service is not.
Monthly cost, low to high
The numbers, in US dollars.
| Tier | Forward Email | Migadu |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free — unlimited domains, forwarding only, no sending | — (the free plan was retired) |
| Entry | Enhanced Protection — $3/mo, 10 GB pooled, unlimited aliases, 300 sends/day | Micro — $19/yr ($1.58/mo effective), 5 GB, 20 sends/day, 200 receives/day |
| Mid | Team — $9/mo, 10 GB pooled, team management, 300 sends/day | Mini — $9/mo or $90/yr, 30 GB, 100 sends/day |
| Upper | — (no tier between Team and Enterprise) | Standard — $29/mo or $290/yr, 100 GB, 500 sends/day |
| Top | Enterprise — $250/mo, custom, dedicated support | Maxi — $99/mo or $990/yr, 500 GB, 2,000 sends/day |
A note from the people who make Folio
We make Folio · here are its limits too
Neither is a unified reading view across brands — Folio is a narrower, different tool.
Forward Email and Migadu both solve custom-domain mail well — one alias-first and open-source, one a full mailbox host. Folio targets a different problem: one operator with several distinct businesses who wants one inbox, not several accounts or a forwarding layer.
Folio starts at$2.99/mo billed annually ($35.88/yr) · $3.50/mo month-to-month Up to 3 domains on Solo, 1,000 sends a month, per-domain DKIM included. 14-day trial, no card to start.
Where Folio fits
- You run multiple brand domains and want the reply-From address auto-selected per message, without configuring per-domain aliases or forwarding rules yourself.
- You want per-domain DKIM handled at setup instead of managing DNS records for each domain, whether forwarded or hosted.
- You want a genuinely unified reading pane across domains — a distinct concern from where the mail is ultimately stored or forwarded.
Where Folio doesn't fit
- You want a free way to route several domains into an inbox you already use — Forward Email's free tier is purpose-built for exactly that, and Folio has no free tier.
- You want the cheapest fully open-source option, or the ability to self-host the whole service — that is Forward Email's stated differentiator and Folio offers neither.
- You send in volume: Folio's Solo plan allows 1,000 messages a month, well under Forward Email's roughly 9,000, though comfortably above Migadu Micro's 600.
- You want the cheapest mailbox on the page — Migadu Micro is $19/yr against Folio's $35.88, and if you send fewer than 20 messages a day nothing about that trade goes against you.
Not ready? Check a domain's mail records first — free, no account.
Common questions
Questions readers ask.
How many emails per day can I send on each service?
- Forward Email defaults to 300 outbound messages per day on Enhanced Protection and above, enforced both per user and per domain, with the counter resetting at midnight UTC; over the limit, messages are deferred with a 421 rather than lost, and higher limits can be requested from support. Migadu meters by plan across the whole account: 20/day on Micro, 100/day on Mini, 500/day on Standard, and 2,000/day on Maxi, with 25% tolerance before outbound messages start being rejected.
Can Forward Email's free plan actually send email, or just receive it?
- Per Forward Email's own pricing page, the free plan is "email forwarding only," explicitly stating you cannot send mail on it. Outbound SMTP sending requires the paid Enhanced Protection plan ($3/mo) or higher.
Which is cheaper for hosting several domains?
- Both charge per account rather than per domain or per user, so domain count is not the variable that moves the price — send and receive volume is. For forwarding-only use with no sending, Forward Email's free tier costs nothing at any domain count. For a real mailbox with light correspondence, Migadu's Micro at $19/yr is the cheapest option on this page. Once you send more than 20 messages a day, Forward Email's $36/yr Enhanced Protection undercuts the Migadu plan that would match it ($90/yr Mini at 100/day, $290/yr Standard at 500/day).
What happens when I run out of storage on each one?
- Nothing bounces on Migadu: it states there are no hard storage quotas on any plan and that mail will never be rejected because storage is full — the published figures are soft, and going far over them may prompt a request to upgrade. Forward Email's 10 GB is a real default; past it, additional storage is $3 per month for each additional 10 GB, pooled across all your domains.
Is Migadu open source?
- Migadu says it is "built and operated 100% on top of open source technologies," which describes its underlying stack rather than claiming Migadu's own application code is open. Forward Email makes the stronger claim of being 100% open-source software and, since March 2025, publishes a supported self-hosted option — so it is the only one of the two you can run yourself if the provider ever goes away.
Does Migadu offer a forwarding-only free tier like Forward Email?
- No. Migadu ran a free plan for over five years and retired it, replacing it with the $19/yr Micro plan; every current tier is a paid, standalone mailbox rather than a forwarding-only layer.
Can I get a refund if it doesn't work out?
- Forward Email automatically refunds the full amount if a first-time customer upgrades, downgrades, or cancels within 30 days of their first paid plan starting; it does not prorate when switching between paid plans outside that window. Migadu refunds 100% within 14 days, though it may deduct a prorated cost for the period if the service was used extensively.
Sources & further reading
Where the claims come from.
Adjacent comparisons
Other head-to-heads.
Open the first letter
Match the model to how you actually work, not just the price.
Forwarding-first and mailbox-first are genuinely different architectures, and the published send limits matter more than the headline prices. Read both vendors' own docs — linked below — before deciding which model fits your mail flow.
Updated 7 September 2026 (2026-09-07)