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Migadu vs. Fastmail: bare-metal budget host vs. polished all-rounder.

Migadu starts at $19/yr for 5 GB with unlimited domains and mailboxes on every tier, up to $990/yr for 500 GB. Fastmail starts at $60/yr for one person with 60 GB and full calendar/contacts sync, with Business plans billed per user from $36/yr. Migadu is cheaper per domain hosted, but meters messages: its $19/yr Micro tier allows only 20 outgoing and 200 incoming messages a day account-wide, against 8,000 sends a day on Fastmail's Individual plan. Fastmail also includes more finished product — search, calendar, contacts, and native mobile apps — per person.Folio, which publishes this comparison, is priced on a third axis again: not per gigabyte like Migadu or per person like Fastmail, but per operator — $2.99/month billed annually ($35.88/yr) for up to 3 domains, $12/month for up to 10, $29/month for unlimited. It is built for one person running several businesses: every domain lands in one inbox, reply-From follows the domain a message arrived on, and each domain is DKIM-signed with its own key. It does not have Fastmail's calendar, contacts, or native mobile apps, so if you want a finished all-in-one mailbox for one identity, Fastmail is the stronger product.

Migadu is a minimal, developer-oriented mail host: unlimited domains and mailboxes at every tier, priced purely on storage. Fastmail is a mature, feature-complete webmail with its own calendar, contacts, search, and mobile apps — priced per person, with business plans billed per user.

They serve different buyers more than they compete head-to-head. This page lines up what each actually includes for the money, sourced from each vendor's own pricing page.

Updated September 7, 2026 (2026-09-07)

Where Folio fits — and what it costsMore head-to-heads

The verdict

In one sentence.

Migadu is cheaper for many domains and mailboxes — one account, one price, no per-seat multiplier. Fastmail is the more complete product — first-class calendar and contacts sync, fast full-text search, Masked Email, and iOS/Android apps that Migadu doesn't publicly advertise. If you're hosting a dozen small domains and just need reliable SMTP/IMAP, Migadu is the cheaper fit. If you want one polished daily-driver mailbox with a few custom domains attached, Fastmail is built for exactly that.

Feature by feature

Feature by feature.

CAPABILITYMigaduFastmail
  1. Entry price$19/yr (Micro, 5 GB)$60/yr billed annually (Individual, $5/mo effective)
  2. Pricing modelFlat per account, storage-tiered — unlimited domains/mailboxes on every tierPer person (Individual/Duo/Family) or per user (Business plans)
  3. Domains per accountUnlimited, fair-useCustom domains supported on every plan; exact cap not published on the pricing page
  4. Daily message limitsCapped per tier and counted account-wide — 200 in / 20 out per day on Micro, rising to 10,000 in / 2,000 out on Maxi4,000 messages/day on Basic and Business Basic; 8,000 on Individual, Duo, Family and Business Standard; 16,000 on Business Professional. No published receiving cap
  5. Storage, entry tier5 GB (Micro, $19/yr)60 GB total — 50 GB mail/calendar/contacts + 10 GB files (Individual, $60/yr)
  6. Calendar & contactsNot advertised on public marketing pagesFull CalDAV/CardDAV, shared calendars on Duo/Family, sharing on Business
  7. SearchStandard IMAP search via mail clientFast built-in full-text search, a long-standing Fastmail strength
  8. Native mobile appsNot advertised; standard IMAP/webmail accessFirst-party iOS and Android apps
  9. Business (multi-seat) pricingSame flat per-account pricing regardless of mailbox countPer-user: Basic $3/user/mo, Standard $5/user/mo, Professional $9/user/mo (billed annually)
  10. Retention / compliance archiveNot advertised on public pagesBusiness Professional plan includes an email retention archive for legal compliance

How to choose

Pick the right one.

Choose Migadu if

You're hosting many domains or mailboxes and want one flat account price, not a per-seat bill.

  • You run several small domains and don't want the price to multiply per mailbox.
  • You mainly need reliable SMTP/IMAP/POP3 and a plain webmail, not calendar/contacts sync.
  • You want the lowest entry price for light usage ($19/yr for 5 GB).

Choose Fastmail if

You want one excellent, feature-complete daily mailbox with a few custom domains attached.

  • You want fast search, native mobile apps, and calendar/contacts sync built in.
  • You're paying for 1–6 people (Individual/Duo/Family) rather than a dozen domains.
  • You need a compliance retention archive, which only Fastmail's Professional tier documents.

A deeper look

Where the money goes

Migadu's price scales with storage, not people: the same $290/yr Standard tier covers unlimited domains and mailboxes up to 100 GB combined. Fastmail's price scales with people: Individual is one person for $60/yr, Duo is two for $96/yr, Family is up to six for $132/yr, and Business plans bill per user starting at $36/yr ($3/mo) on Basic. For someone running ten small brand domains with light mail volume, Migadu is dramatically cheaper. For a household or a small team that wants a mature shared calendar and contacts, Fastmail's per-person price buys more finished product per dollar.

A deeper look

The entry tiers are 400× apart on how much you can send

Migadu meters messages as well as disk. Micro, the $19/yr entry tier, allows 20 outgoing and 200 incoming messages per day, counted across the whole account rather than per mailbox — so ten domains share one 20-message allowance. Mini raises it to 100 out / 1,000 in, Standard to 500 out / 3,000 in, and Maxi to 2,000 out / 10,000 in. Fastmail publishes a much higher ceiling on its own account-limits page: 4,000 messages a day on Basic and 8,000 on Individual, Duo and Family, with hourly and ten-minute limits set at half and a quarter of the daily figure.

That gap decides more purchases than storage does. If your mail is a handful of replies a day, Migadu's Micro is genuinely enough and $41/yr cheaper. If you answer support, send invoices, or run anything transactional, 20 a day is a wall you hit in an afternoon — and clearing it means a tier upgrade to $90/yr Mini or $290/yr Standard, at which point Fastmail's $60/yr Individual is both cheaper and far more generous. Note that Fastmail is explicit that it is not a bulk sender: its terms prohibit duplicative mail regardless of the numeric limit.

A deeper look

Feature completeness vs. minimalism

Fastmail has shipped calendar, contacts, search, Masked Email, Scheduled Send, and Snooze as first-class features for years, with native mobile apps. Migadu's public marketing focuses on the mail transport layer itself — SMTP, IMAP4, POP3, aliasing, and catch-all — without advertising a calendar or contacts product. Neither approach is wrong: Migadu is closer to “infrastructure you configure yourself,” while Fastmail is closer to “a finished consumer mailbox that happens to support your own domain.”

Annual cost, low to high

The numbers, in US dollars.

TierMigaduFastmail
EntryMicro — $19/yr, 5 GB, 200 in / 20 out per dayIndividual — $60/yr, 60 GB, 8,000 sends/day (1 person)
MidMini — $90/yr, 30 GB, 1,000 in / 100 out per dayDuo — $96/yr, 120 GB, 8,000 sends/day (2 people)
HigherStandard — $290/yr, 100 GB, 3,000 in / 500 out per dayFamily — $132/yr, 360 GB, 8,000 sends/day (up to 6 people)
TopMaxi — $990/yr, 500 GB, 10,000 in / 2,000 out per dayBusiness Professional — $108/yr per user, 150 GB/user, 16,000 sends/day
Prices and limits as published by each vendor, checked 2026-09-07. Migadu: migadu.com/pricing, which publishes the per-tier daily message limits alongside the storage figures. Fastmail: fastmail.com/pricing for price and fastmail.help “Account limits” for the daily send figures. Fastmail annual figures shown are the 12-month billing rate; monthly billing costs more per month.

A note from the people who make Folio

We make Folio · here are its limits too

Neither is trying to solve reply-From auto-selection across brands — that's the gap Folio fills.

Migadu and Fastmail both do an excellent job of hosting custom-domain mail — one minimal and cheap, one polished and complete. Folio is a narrower tool for a specific operator shape: one person, several distinct business identities, one reading view.

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 3+ brand domains and want them to feel like one inbox, with the reply-From address chosen automatically per message.
  • You want per-domain DKIM handled for you at setup instead of hand-managing DNS TXT records per domain.
  • You'd rather see a colour-coded identity per domain in the reading pane than remember which account tab you're in.

Where Folio doesn't fit

  • You want the cheapest possible per-domain mailbox and don't need a unified multi-brand reading experience — Migadu is purpose-built for that.
  • You want the most mature single-mailbox product with calendar, contacts, and search as first-class citizens — that's Fastmail's core strength today.
  • You're a small team paying per seat and don't need per-domain identity switching — Fastmail's Business tiers are built for that.
Start free — no cardSee who Folio is actually for

Not ready? Check a domain's mail records first — free, no account.

Common questions

Questions readers ask.

Is Migadu cheaper than Fastmail?

For hosting many domains under one account, usually yes — Migadu's price is set by storage tier, not by the number of domains or mailboxes. For a single person who wants a full mailbox with calendar and contacts, Fastmail's $60/yr Individual plan is competitive once you count included features, not just the sticker price.

Does Migadu have a calendar like Fastmail?

We could not find a calendar or contacts (CalDAV/CardDAV) product advertised on Migadu's public marketing pages as of the checked-on date below. Fastmail documents full calendar and contacts sync as a core feature on every plan.

Can I use unlimited domains on Fastmail like I can on Migadu?

Fastmail's pricing page confirms custom-domain support on every plan but does not publish a specific numeric domain cap the way Migadu explicitly advertises "unlimited domains." If you need a large number of domains specifically, verify Fastmail's current domain limits with their support before committing.

How many emails a day can I send on Migadu vs. Fastmail?

Migadu publishes a daily cap on every tier, counted across the whole account: 20 outgoing and 200 incoming per day on the $19/yr Micro plan, 100 out / 1,000 in on Mini, 500 out / 3,000 in on Standard, and 2,000 out / 10,000 in on Maxi. Fastmail's account-limits page lists 4,000 messages a day on Basic and 8,000 on Individual, Duo and Family, with Business Professional at 16,000 — plus hourly and ten-minute limits at half and a quarter of the daily number. Neither vendor permits bulk marketing mail.

Which is better for a small team?

Fastmail's Business tiers (Basic/Standard/Professional, billed per user) are purpose-built for teams with shared calendars and app integrations. Migadu doesn't publish a team-specific plan — its flat per-account pricing works for a team only if you're comfortable managing shared mailboxes yourself.

Sources & further reading

Where the claims come from.

Adjacent comparisons

Other head-to-heads.

Open the first letter

Pricing pages change. Verify before you buy.

Every figure above links back to the vendor's own pricing page as of the checked-on date. Prices, storage tiers, and included features can change without notice — confirm on migadu.com and fastmail.com before you commit.

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Updated September 7, 2026 (2026-09-07)