Is Purelymail really $10 a year?

Yes. Purelymail's own pricing page states $10/year flat under its "Simple pricing" plan with no per-user, per-domain, or per-GB charge and no advertised hard limit — their words are "no hard limits. Not on users, custom domains, storage, or anything else." Usage well beyond fair use is expected to move to their separate, metered "advanced pricing." Confirm current terms on purelymail.com/pricing before committing, since usage-based pricing is the part most likely to change.

Why does Fastmail's price look different when I check it?

Fastmail bills in several local currencies and serves regionally set prices from its pricing URL based on where you load it. Loading the same page from Australia returns A$90/yr for Individual where the United States shows $60/yr — and A$90 is a separately set local price, not a currency conversion of $60. The figures on this page are taken from Fastmail's US pricing path specifically, which is linked in the sources below. Check your own regional price before comparing.

Does Purelymail have calendar and contacts sync like Fastmail?

Purelymail documents CalDAV and CardDAV support directly on its features page, along with basic file storage up to 50 MB per file. What it doesn't have is Fastmail's first-party calendar interface — Purelymail gives you standards-compliant endpoints to point a client at, while Fastmail ships a calendar product with shared calendars on Duo and Family plans. Both sync; only one has a UI of its own.

Which is better value for a family or a small team?

On price, Purelymail, and not by a small margin — its flat $10/yr covers unlimited users, where Fastmail Family is $132/yr for up to six people and Business plans bill $36–$108 per user per year. What Fastmail's per-seat price buys is shared calendars, per-user admin controls, and a compliance retention archive on the Professional tier, none of which Purelymail publishes. If the group just needs mailboxes, Purelymail wins outright; if it needs to be administered as an organization, Fastmail is built for that.

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

Fastmail's pricing page confirms custom-domain support on every plan but does not publish a specific numeric domain cap, whereas Purelymail explicitly advertises unlimited domains at no extra charge. If a large number of domains is specifically what you need, verify Fastmail's current limits with their support before committing rather than assuming parity.

What does Folio cost compared to these two?

Folio is $2.99/month billed annually ($35.88/yr) for up to 3 domains, $12/month for up to 10, and $29/month for unlimited — roughly 3.5× Purelymail's $10/yr, and less than Fastmail's $60/yr Individual plan. We publish this page and we are not the cheapest option on it. The difference the price buys is one inbox across every domain instead of one account per domain, reply-From chosen automatically by the receiving domain, and per-domain DKIM generated at bind time. We do not have Fastmail's calendar, contacts, search, or mobile apps — if you want a finished all-in-one mailbox for a single identity, Fastmail is the stronger product.

Folio

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Third-party comparison · not affiliated with either

Purelymail vs. Fastmail: the cheapest serious mailbox vs. the most finished one.

Purelymail is a flat $10/yr with no hard limits on users, domains, or storage under fair use, including IMAP/POP/SMTP, DKIM, SPF, static sending IPs, CalDAV/CardDAV, and SpamAssassin. Fastmail starts at $60/yr for one person with 60 GB, adding fast full-text search, first-party iOS and Android apps, a full calendar and contacts UI, Masked Email, and — on Business Professional at $108/yr per user — a compliance retention archive. Purelymail is six times cheaper and covers the standards checklist; Fastmail is the more finished product if you read mail in the provider's own interface rather than a third-party client.Folio, which publishes this comparison, answers a narrower question than either: not "where do I host a mailbox" but "how does one person read and reply across several businesses without switching accounts." One inbox spans every domain, reply-From follows the domain a message arrived on, and each domain is DKIM-signed with its own key. It costs $2.99/month billed annually ($35.88/yr) for up to 3 domains, $12/month for up to 10, $29/month for unlimited. That's more than Purelymail and less than Fastmail, but it isn't competing with either on the same axis — and if one domain is all you need, both of them are better buys.

This is the widest price gap in this comparison set: Purelymail is a flat $10 a year with no hard limits on users, domains, or storage, and Fastmail is $60 a year for a single person. Six times the price. The honest question isn't which is cheaper — it's whether what Fastmail adds is worth $50 a year to you, and for a lot of people the answer is genuinely yes.

We make Folio, a different kind of product: one inbox for an operator who runs several businesses. We're disclosing that up front rather than burying it, and it changes nothing below — both vendors are scored on their own published pricing and docs, and both beat us on price. If you want one cheap mailbox or one excellent mailbox, this page is meant to tell you which of these two to buy.

Updated August 16, 2026 (2026-08-16)

Where Folio fits — and what it costs More head-to-heads

I · The verdict

In one sentence.

Purelymail is the cheapest serious custom-domain mail you can buy — $10/yr flat, no per-user or per-domain charge, with IMAP/POP/SMTP, DKIM, CalDAV/CardDAV, and SpamAssassin all included. Fastmail is a materially more finished product — fast full-text search, first-party iOS and Android apps, Masked Email, shared calendars, and a compliance retention archive on its Professional tier. Buy Purelymail if you live in a third-party mail client and want the bill to disappear. Buy Fastmail if the mailbox itself is where you spend your day.

II · Feature by feature

Feature by feature.

CAPABILITYPurelymailFastmail

Entry price$10/yr flat (Simple plan, any number of users)$60/yr billed annually (Individual, one person, $5/mo effective)
Pricing modelOne flat annual fee, or usage-based “advanced pricing” for heavy accountsPer person (Individual/Duo/Family) or per user (Business plans)
Mailboxes / usersUnlimited users, explicitly no per-user fee1 on Individual, 2 on Duo, up to 6 on Family; Business bills per seat
Domains per accountUnlimited, explicitly “no extra charge”Custom domains supported on every plan; exact cap not published on the pricing page
Storage, entry tierNo stated hard limit under fair use; heavy usage moves to metered pricing60 GB total — 50 GB mail/calendar/contacts + 10 GB files
Calendar & contactsCalDAV + CardDAV documented, plus basic file storage (up to 50 MB/file)Full CalDAV/CardDAV with a first-party UI, shared calendars on Duo/Family
SearchStandard IMAP search via your mail clientFast built-in full-text search, a long-standing Fastmail strength
Native mobile appsNot advertised; standard IMAP/webmail accessFirst-party iOS and Android apps
Alias / maskingUnlimited addresses and custom routing rules, including catch-allMasked Email — generated per-site addresses, integrated with 1Password
Deliverability controlsDKIM, SPF, and static sending IPs named explicitlyDKIM and SPF handled automatically for hosted domains
Spam filteringSpamAssassin, named explicitlyIn-house filtering, engine not publicly named
Retention / compliance archiveNot advertised — a lean, independent hostBusiness Professional includes an email retention archive for legal compliance

III · How to choose

Pick the right one.

Choose Purelymail if

You want the cheapest serious mailbox and you already live in a third-party mail client.

$10/yr flat with no per-user or per-domain surcharge is the lowest real price in this category.
You read mail in Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or mutt, so a polished first-party webmail adds little for you.
You're a lighter sender — heavy senders should read Purelymail's advanced/resource pricing before committing.

Choose Fastmail if

The mailbox itself is where you spend your day, and you want it to be excellent.

You want fast full-text search and native mobile apps rather than whatever your IMAP client provides.
You're paying for 1–6 people and want shared calendars that work without configuration.
You need a compliance retention archive, which only Fastmail's Business Professional tier documents.

IV · A deeper look

What the extra $50 a year actually buys

It's tempting to frame this as cheap-versus-overpriced, but the feature list doesn't support that. Purelymail covers more of the standards checklist than its price suggests — DKIM, SPF, static sending IPs, CalDAV, CardDAV, SpamAssassin, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, WebDAV — and the flat fee covers unlimited users and domains, which Fastmail charges per head for.

What Fastmail adds is finish rather than capability: a genuinely fast search index, first-party iOS and Android apps, a calendar UI rather than a CalDAV endpoint you point something else at, Masked Email with 1Password integration, Scheduled Send, and Snooze. If you read mail in a third-party client, most of that is invisible to you and Purelymail's $10/yr is the obvious buy. If you read mail in the provider's own interface, it's most of the product and $50/yr is a reasonable price for it.

V · A deeper look

Flat-plus-metered vs. per-person

Purelymail's Simple plan states, in their own words, “no hard limits. Not on users, custom domains, storage, or anything else,” bounded by fair use, with a separate pay-per-resource tier if you exceed it. Fastmail's ladder is fixed and legible: Individual $60/yr for one person, Duo $96/yr for two, Family $132/yr for up to six, and Business plans at $36, $60, and $108 per user per year for Basic, Standard, and Professional.

The trade is predictability against price. Fastmail's bill is knowable a year ahead and multiplies by headcount. Purelymail's is far lower and stays flat as you add people, but the ceiling is usage you discover after the fact rather than a tier you chose in advance. For a household of four, Fastmail Family is $132/yr and Purelymail is $10/yr — a gap large enough that it should be a deliberate decision about the product, not an accident of not having compared them.

VI · A deeper look

A pricing gotcha worth knowing before you compare

Fastmail bills in several local currencies and its pricing page serves figures based on where you load it from. The same URL that shows $60/yr for Individual in the United States shows A$90/yr from Australia — and A$90 is not $60 converted, it's a separately set local price. We hit this directly while checking figures for this page, and the numbers here are taken from Fastmail's US pricing path specifically, cited below.

The practical consequence: if you're comparing Fastmail against Purelymail's flat $10/yr from outside the US, confirm your own local Fastmail price rather than trusting a figure from a comparison article, including this one. Purelymail publishes a single flat figure with no regional variation we could find.

VII · Annual cost, low to high

The numbers, in US dollars.

Tier	Purelymail	Fastmail
Entry	Simple — $10/yr flat, any user count, no hard limit	Individual — $60/yr, 60 GB, 1 person
Two people	— (same flat plan)	Duo — $96/yr, 120 GB (60 GB per person)
Household	— (same flat plan)	Family — $132/yr, up to 360 GB (60 GB per person), up to 6 people
Business entry	— (same flat plan)	Business Basic — $36/yr per user, 6 GB per user
Business top	Advanced/resource pricing for heavy usage	Business Professional — $108/yr per user, 150 GB per user

VIII · A note from the people who make Folio

We make Folio · here are its limits too

Neither one is built for one person running several unrelated brands — that's the gap Folio fills.

Purelymail and Fastmail sit at opposite ends of the same market: the cheapest serious mailbox and the most finished one. Folio isn't a third point on that line — it targets 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 reply-From chosen automatically per message.
You want per-domain DKIM handled for you at bind time 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

Price is the deciding factor. Folio is roughly 3.5× Purelymail's headline number, and Purelymail covers more of the standards checklist than we do for a fraction of the cost.
You want the most mature single-mailbox product, with calendar, contacts, search, and native apps as first-class features — that's Fastmail's core strength and we don't match it.
You need calendar and contacts sync today. Purelymail ships CalDAV/CardDAV and Fastmail ships a full calendar product; Folio does not.

Start free — no card See who Folio is actually for

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

Common questions

Questions readers ask.

Is Purelymail really $10 a year?: Yes. Purelymail's own pricing page states $10/year flat under its "Simple pricing" plan with no per-user, per-domain, or per-GB charge and no advertised hard limit — their words are "no hard limits. Not on users, custom domains, storage, or anything else." Usage well beyond fair use is expected to move to their separate, metered "advanced pricing." Confirm current terms on purelymail.com/pricing before committing, since usage-based pricing is the part most likely to change.
Why does Fastmail's price look different when I check it?: Fastmail bills in several local currencies and serves regionally set prices from its pricing URL based on where you load it. Loading the same page from Australia returns A$90/yr for Individual where the United States shows $60/yr — and A$90 is a separately set local price, not a currency conversion of $60. The figures on this page are taken from Fastmail's US pricing path specifically, which is linked in the sources below. Check your own regional price before comparing.
Does Purelymail have calendar and contacts sync like Fastmail?: Purelymail documents CalDAV and CardDAV support directly on its features page, along with basic file storage up to 50 MB per file. What it doesn't have is Fastmail's first-party calendar interface — Purelymail gives you standards-compliant endpoints to point a client at, while Fastmail ships a calendar product with shared calendars on Duo and Family plans. Both sync; only one has a UI of its own.
Which is better value for a family or a small team?: On price, Purelymail, and not by a small margin — its flat $10/yr covers unlimited users, where Fastmail Family is $132/yr for up to six people and Business plans bill $36–$108 per user per year. What Fastmail's per-seat price buys is shared calendars, per-user admin controls, and a compliance retention archive on the Professional tier, none of which Purelymail publishes. If the group just needs mailboxes, Purelymail wins outright; if it needs to be administered as an organization, Fastmail is built for that.
Can I use unlimited domains on Fastmail like I can on Purelymail?: Fastmail's pricing page confirms custom-domain support on every plan but does not publish a specific numeric domain cap, whereas Purelymail explicitly advertises unlimited domains at no extra charge. If a large number of domains is specifically what you need, verify Fastmail's current limits with their support before committing rather than assuming parity.
What does Folio cost compared to these two?: Folio is $2.99/month billed annually ($35.88/yr) for up to 3 domains, $12/month for up to 10, and $29/month for unlimited — roughly 3.5× Purelymail's $10/yr, and less than Fastmail's $60/yr Individual plan. We publish this page and we are not the cheapest option on it. The difference the price buys is one inbox across every domain instead of one account per domain, reply-From chosen automatically by the receiving domain, and per-domain DKIM generated at bind time. We do not have Fastmail's calendar, contacts, search, or mobile apps — if you want a finished all-in-one mailbox for a single identity, Fastmail is the stronger product.

Sources & further reading

Where the claims come from.

Adjacent comparisons

Other head-to-heads.

Open the first letter

Check the price you would pay, not the one in the article.

Fastmail's figures vary by region and both vendors can change plans without notice. Every number above links back to the vendor's own page as of the checked-on date — open them and confirm before you commit a domain.

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Updated August 16, 2026 (2026-08-16)