Is Forward Email's free plan actually usable, or is it a trial?

It's a permanent free tier, not a trial, but it is forwarding only. You get unlimited domains and aliases, spam protection, catch-all addresses, multiple recipients per alias, regex filtering, and webhook delivery — and you cannot send mail from your domain or store mail on their servers. If routing several domains into a Gmail or Outlook inbox you already have is genuinely all you need, it costs nothing indefinitely. Purelymail has no equivalent: signing up grants a limited credit balance that their site describes as roughly a month at light use.

Which one is cheaper if I store a lot of email?

Purelymail, by a wide margin. Its metered rate is $0.56 per compressed GB per year on top of a $4/yr account fee. Forward Email includes 10 GB pooled on the $36/yr Enhanced Protection plan and charges $3/month per additional 10 GB after that, which works out to $3.60 per GB per year — about six times Purelymail's rate. At roughly 50 GB the two land near $32/yr and $180/yr respectively. Note that Purelymail bills compressed rather than raw bytes, so your effective rate depends on how compressible your archive is.

What are Forward Email's outbound sending limits?

The marketing figure is "9,000+ outbound per month," but the limit that actually applies is daily: 300 messages per day per user and 300 per day per domain by default, counted from midnight UTC, with the first limit reached returning a 421 "try again later" deferral rather than a hard bounce. Domain administrators can set per-alias overrides, and Team plan domains inherit the highest limit among their admins. Purelymail publishes no equivalent number — its terms say only that rate limiting applies to large volumes of externally sent mail.

Do I have to wait for approval before sending with Forward Email?

Yes. Forward Email runs a manual per-domain review before enabling outbound SMTP, which they describe as typically under 24 hours and most often 1–2 hours. Sending a newsletter from a domain triggers a second one-time review. They frame both as IP-reputation protection. Purelymail documents no such gate — once your DNS records are in place you can send, which is the more convenient path if you need to be live the same day.

Can either one be self-hosted?

Forward Email can. It is 100% open-source software and has offered a supported self-hosted option since March 2025, with a Docker-based guide plus Ubuntu and Debian walkthroughs. Purelymail is a closed-source hosted service running on AWS; there is no self-hosting path. If auditable code or the ability to leave with your infrastructure intact matters to you, that is the clearest difference between the two.

What happens if I'm unhappy after paying?

Forward Email issues an automatic refund if you upgrade, downgrade, or cancel within 30 days of when your plan first started, for first-time customers. Purelymail's terms state that payments are non-refundable except at the company's sole discretion. Combined with the suspension clause for prohibited sending, that means a Purelymail account closed for a terms violation does not come with the year back — worth weighing before you prepay.

What does Folio cost next to these two?

Folio is $2.99/month billed annually ($35.88/yr) for up to 3 domains and 1,000 sends a month, $12/month for up to 10 domains, and $29/month for unlimited. That is more than Purelymail's $10/yr and more than Forward Email's $0 forwarding tier, and we publish this page knowing we are the most expensive option on it. What the price buys is a different shape rather than more of the same thing: one inbox spanning every brand domain, reply-From chosen by the receiving domain, and a per-domain DKIM key generated at bind time. We do not offer calendar or contacts sync, open-source code, or a self-hosted option, all of which one or both of these vendors do.

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Third-party comparison · not affiliated with either

Purelymail vs. Forward Email: the cheapest mailbox vs. the free forwarder.

Forward Email's free tier costs $0 for unlimited domains but only forwards mail — it cannot send until you upgrade to Enhanced Protection at $3/month ($36/yr), which adds 10 GB pooled storage, IMAP, and outbound SMTP capped at 300 messages per day. Purelymail has no free tier and charges a flat $10/year for unlimited users and domains with IMAP, POP3, SMTP, CalDAV/CardDAV, and SpamAssassin included, or metered pricing at $0.56 per compressed GB per year. The decisive difference is not price: Purelymail's terms of service forbid mailing-list, advertising, and marketing email with immediate suspension, while Forward Email explicitly permits email marketing on opt-in lists with a List-Unsubscribe header and a one-time per-domain review. Forward Email is also 100% open source and self-hostable, with a 99.99% SLA and a 30-day refund window; Purelymail is closed source, publishes no SLA, and is non-refundable.Folio, which publishes this comparison, is a third shape rather than a cheaper one: real mailboxes across several brand domains in a single reading view, with reply-From selected by the domain a message arrived on and a separate DKIM key generated per domain at bind time. It costs $2.99/month billed annually ($35.88/yr) for up to 3 domains and 1,000 sends a month, $12/month for up to 10 domains, or $29/month for unlimited. That is more than Purelymail's $10/yr and more than Forward Email's free tier, and if one domain or plain forwarding is all you need, both of them are the better buy.

These two get shortlisted together constantly — both independent, both radically cheaper than the incumbents, both allergic to per-user pricing. But they are not two points on one price ladder. Forward Email's free tier costs nothing and cannot send mail at all; Purelymail's $10 a year is a full mailbox from the first day but has no free tier.

There is also a clause most comparisons skip. Purelymail's terms of service forbid mailing-list, advertising, and marketing email and reserve the right to suspend immediately; Forward Email's terms explicitly permit email marketing on its outbound SMTP, subject to opt-in and a review step. If you run a newsletter, that decides this page before price does. We make Folio, a different product, and we say so up front — every figure below is from the two vendors' own pages, dated and linked.

Updated 7 September 2026 (2026-09-07)

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

I · The verdict

In one sentence.

Purelymail is the cheaper mailbox by a wide margin — $10/yr flat for unlimited users and domains with IMAP, POP3, SMTP, CalDAV/CardDAV, SpamAssassin, and at-rest encryption, against $36/yr for Forward Email's cheapest sending plan. Forward Email is the more permissive and more auditable service — a genuinely free forwarding tier, 100% open-source code you can self-host, a published 99.99% SLA with service credits, a 30-day refund window, and explicit permission to send newsletters. Buy Purelymail if you want the cheapest real mailbox and you send ordinary one-to-one mail. Buy Forward Email if you want to pay nothing until you need storage, or if anything you send looks like a mailing list.

II · Feature by feature

Feature by feature.

CAPABILITYPurelymailForward Email

Free tierNone — a signup trial grants limited credits, roughly a month at light useYes, permanent — unlimited domains and aliases, forwarding only
Cheapest plan that can send mail$10/yr (Simple pricing, any number of users)$36/yr ($3/mo Enhanced Protection)
Pricing modelFlat $10/yr, or metered “advanced pricing” billed per resourceFlat monthly per account ($0 / $3 / $9 / $250), never per user
Storage on the entry sending planNo hard limit under fair use; heavy accounts move to metered pricing10 GB pooled across all domains and aliases
Cost of extra storage$0.56 per compressed GB per year (advanced pricing)$3/mo per additional 10 GB — i.e. $3.60 per GB per year
Published outbound send limitNo number published; terms state rate limiting applies to large external volumes300/day per user and per domain (~9,000/month), 421 deferral when hit
Newsletters & marketing emailForbidden by the terms of service — mailing lists, advertising, and domain warming, with immediate suspensionExplicitly permitted on outbound SMTP with opt-in lists, a List-Unsubscribe header, and one-time per-domain review
Setup friction before you can sendNone documented beyond DNS recordsManual per-domain SMTP approval, stated as usually 1–2 hours
Open sourceClosed source; runs on AWS100% open-source, with a supported self-hosted Docker option since March 2025
ProtocolsIMAP (with IDLE), POP3, SMTP, Sieve, WebDAV/CalDAV/CardDAV, Roundcube webmailIMAP, POP3, SMTP, Sieve, CalDAV (incl. VTODO), CardDAV, plus a developer API
Alias generationListed as not yet supported — emulate it with disposable users and routing rulesUnlimited aliases at $0/user; regex filtering, catch-all, and webhook targets
Deliverability controlsSPF, DKIM, DMARC, static sending IPs, SpamAssassin with automatic learningSPF, DKIM, DMARC with reporting, MTA-STS, SRS, ARC-signed forwarding
Encryption at restXSalsa20-Poly1305 and AES-GCM, with an optional mode where Purelymail cannot read your mail without your passwordAES-256 per-mailbox encrypted SQLite, marketed as zero-knowledge
Uptime commitmentStatus page and history, but no published SLA99.99% SLA with tiered service credits for paying customers
RefundsNon-refundable except at the company's discretionAutomatic refund on upgrade, downgrade, or cancel within 30 days, first-time customers

III · How to choose

Pick the right one.

Choose Purelymail if

You want the cheapest real mailbox that exists, and your mail is ordinary person-to-person correspondence.

$10/yr flat covers unlimited users on unlimited domains — Forward Email's cheapest sending plan is 3.6× that.
You expect to store a lot of mail: at $0.56 per compressed GB/yr, Purelymail's metered rate is roughly a sixth of Forward Email's $3.60/GB/yr.
You want to sign up and send today, without waiting on a manual SMTP approval.
You read mail in a third-party client and don't need generated aliases — Purelymail lists automatic alias support as not yet built.

Choose Forward Email if

You want to start at zero, audit the code, or send anything that resembles a mailing list.

The free tier really is free and really is unlimited domains — if forwarding into an inbox you already own is enough, you never pay.
You send a newsletter or opt-in announcements. Purelymail's terms forbid that outright; Forward Email's permit it in writing.
You want 100% open-source code, and the option to self-host the whole thing on your own Docker box.
You want a written 99.99% SLA and a 30-day refund window rather than a non-refundable annual fee.

IV · A deeper look

The clause that decides this more often than price does

Purelymail's terms of service are unusually direct: you agree “not to use the Service to send junk mail, spam, mailing list emails, or any other forms of unsolicited emails, and to not send emails for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware or viruses, or domain reputation warming,” and they “reserve the right to immediately suspend any account found sending these types of email.” Their payment terms are non-refundable except at their discretion. Their own homepage repeats it in plainer words: you can't run a mailing list, and you can't send marketing or advertising mail, though ordinary transactional mail to customers is fine.

Forward Email's terms go the other way and say so explicitly: “You are permitted to use it for transactional email and email marketing.” The conditions are real but ordinary — subscribers must be opt-in, a List-Unsubscribe header is required, you must comply with CAN-SPAM, opt-outs must be honoured within 24 hours, and the first newsletter send from a domain triggers a one-time manual review. They even recommend a specific open-source list manager, ListMonk.

So a founder who wants one cheap mailbox and also sends a monthly update to 400 opt-in subscribers is not choosing between $10 and $36. They are choosing between a service that permits the second half of that sentence and one that prohibits it. The $26 saving is irrelevant if the account is suspended, and Purelymail's refund policy means the year isn't coming back.

V · A deeper look

Where the storage arithmetic crosses over

Both vendors publish enough to do this properly, so here it is. Forward Email's Enhanced Protection is $36/yr and includes 10 GB pooled across every domain and alias; beyond that, additional storage is $3/month per 10 GB, which is $3.60 per GB per year. Purelymail's flat plan states no hard storage limit under fair use, and its metered “advanced pricing” charges $0.56 per compressed GB per year on top of a $4/yr account fee.

Working from Purelymail's own metered rates, the $10 flat fee corresponds to roughly ten gigabytes of compressed mail before the resource cost would exceed it — the same storage Forward Email includes for $36. That's our arithmetic on their published numbers, not a claim either vendor makes, and Purelymail prices compressed rather than raw bytes, so your real ceiling depends on how compressible your mail is. Past that point the gap widens rather than closes: 50 GB is about $32/yr on Purelymail's metered rates and $180/yr on Forward Email ($36 plus four extra 10 GB blocks).

The honest counterweight is predictability. Forward Email's bill is a number you choose in advance. Purelymail's flat plan is cheaper until the day you're told to move to metered pricing, and that day is discovered rather than scheduled. If you are archiving decades of mail, Purelymail is dramatically cheaper; if you want to know your 2027 invoice today, Forward Email is legible in a way metered billing isn't.

VI · A deeper look

Two different honesty styles — read both sets of caveats

Purelymail publishes its weak points on its own homepage, which is rare enough to be worth crediting: obscure receiving servers occasionally block their mail and it can take a day or two to resolve, there is no 24/7 support staff, and they concede the UI is not always intuitive. They also note that Apple broke IMAP IDLE push in the default iOS Mail app and that they have no license to fix it — so on an iPhone you are polling, or using a different client. What they don't publish is an SLA or an outbound send limit.

Forward Email publishes the numbers instead. Outbound SMTP defaults to 300 messages per day per user and per domain, checked against a UTC-midnight counter, and exceeding it returns a 421 “try again later” rather than dropping the mail. Sending at all requires a one-time manual per-domain approval — stated as under 24 hours and usually 1–2 hours, but it is a gate between signing up and your first sent message. Their “unlimited” wording carries the same fair-use escape hatch every host uses: they may rate limit or slow usage at their sole discretion.

Neither posture is better. Purelymail tells you what is bad about the service and not what the limits are; Forward Email tells you what the limits are and makes you clear a review to reach them. Both are more forthcoming than most of this market.

VII · Annual cost, low to high

The numbers, in US dollars.

Scenario	Purelymail	Forward Email
Forwarding only, no mailbox	$10/yr — routing rules and catch-all, but no free tier	$0 — unlimited domains, cannot send
One mailbox that can send	$10/yr flat (Simple)	$36/yr (Enhanced Protection, $3/mo)
Five people, one domain	$10/yr flat — no per-user fee	$36/yr — unlimited aliases, no per-user fee
Team management & shared access	— (not a documented feature)	$108/yr (Team, $9/mo)
About 50 GB of stored mail	≈$32/yr on metered pricing ($4 fee + 50 GB × $0.56)	$180/yr ($36 + four extra 10 GB blocks at $36/yr each)
Sending a newsletter	Not permitted under the terms of service	$36/yr plus one-time newsletter approval

VIII · A note from the people who make Folio

We make Folio · here are its limits too

Both host mail well for one identity — Folio is for one person with several separate businesses.

Purelymail and Forward Email are the two cheapest credible ways to run custom-domain mail, and on price we lose to both. Folio answers a narrower question: how one operator reads and replies across several unrelated brands without switching accounts or maintaining forwarding rules by hand.

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 one reading pane across all of them, with the reply-From address chosen automatically by the domain a message arrived on.
You want each domain to get its own DKIM key generated at bind time, rather than hand-writing DNS TXT records per domain or pooling every brand behind one signing identity.
You want per-domain identity to be visible while you read, instead of remembering which account tab or forwarding rule a message came through.

Where Folio doesn't fit

Price is the deciding factor. Folio's entry plan is roughly 3.5× Purelymail's $10/yr, and Forward Email's forwarding tier is free — neither of which we can match.
You want auditable or self-hostable code. Forward Email is 100% open source with a supported self-hosted Docker option; Folio is not.
You send high outbound volume. Folio's entry plan includes 1,000 sends a month, below Forward Email's ~9,000, and we do not offer Purelymail's metered pay-per-send model.
You need calendar and contacts sync. Both vendors ship CalDAV and CardDAV; Folio does not.

Start free — no card How Folio handles mail for multiple LLCs

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

Common questions

Questions readers ask.

Can I send a newsletter from Purelymail?: No. Purelymail's terms of service state you agree not to send "junk mail, spam, mailing list emails, or any other forms of unsolicited emails" and not to send email "for the purposes of advertising," and they reserve the right to immediately suspend an account found doing so. Their homepage repeats it plainly: you can't run a mailing list, and you can't send marketing or advertising email, though transactional email to customers is generally fine. Forward Email permits newsletters explicitly on its outbound SMTP, provided your list is opt-in, you include a List-Unsubscribe header, you comply with CAN-SPAM, and you clear a one-time manual review for the domain.
Is Forward Email's free plan actually usable, or is it a trial?: It's a permanent free tier, not a trial, but it is forwarding only. You get unlimited domains and aliases, spam protection, catch-all addresses, multiple recipients per alias, regex filtering, and webhook delivery — and you cannot send mail from your domain or store mail on their servers. If routing several domains into a Gmail or Outlook inbox you already have is genuinely all you need, it costs nothing indefinitely. Purelymail has no equivalent: signing up grants a limited credit balance that their site describes as roughly a month at light use.
Which one is cheaper if I store a lot of email?: Purelymail, by a wide margin. Its metered rate is $0.56 per compressed GB per year on top of a $4/yr account fee. Forward Email includes 10 GB pooled on the $36/yr Enhanced Protection plan and charges $3/month per additional 10 GB after that, which works out to $3.60 per GB per year — about six times Purelymail's rate. At roughly 50 GB the two land near $32/yr and $180/yr respectively. Note that Purelymail bills compressed rather than raw bytes, so your effective rate depends on how compressible your archive is.
What are Forward Email's outbound sending limits?: The marketing figure is "9,000+ outbound per month," but the limit that actually applies is daily: 300 messages per day per user and 300 per day per domain by default, counted from midnight UTC, with the first limit reached returning a 421 "try again later" deferral rather than a hard bounce. Domain administrators can set per-alias overrides, and Team plan domains inherit the highest limit among their admins. Purelymail publishes no equivalent number — its terms say only that rate limiting applies to large volumes of externally sent mail.
Do I have to wait for approval before sending with Forward Email?: Yes. Forward Email runs a manual per-domain review before enabling outbound SMTP, which they describe as typically under 24 hours and most often 1–2 hours. Sending a newsletter from a domain triggers a second one-time review. They frame both as IP-reputation protection. Purelymail documents no such gate — once your DNS records are in place you can send, which is the more convenient path if you need to be live the same day.
Can either one be self-hosted?: Forward Email can. It is 100% open-source software and has offered a supported self-hosted option since March 2025, with a Docker-based guide plus Ubuntu and Debian walkthroughs. Purelymail is a closed-source hosted service running on AWS; there is no self-hosting path. If auditable code or the ability to leave with your infrastructure intact matters to you, that is the clearest difference between the two.
What happens if I'm unhappy after paying?: Forward Email issues an automatic refund if you upgrade, downgrade, or cancel within 30 days of when your plan first started, for first-time customers. Purelymail's terms state that payments are non-refundable except at the company's sole discretion. Combined with the suspension clause for prohibited sending, that means a Purelymail account closed for a terms violation does not come with the year back — worth weighing before you prepay.
What does Folio cost next to these two?: Folio is $2.99/month billed annually ($35.88/yr) for up to 3 domains and 1,000 sends a month, $12/month for up to 10 domains, and $29/month for unlimited. That is more than Purelymail's $10/yr and more than Forward Email's $0 forwarding tier, and we publish this page knowing we are the most expensive option on it. What the price buys is a different shape rather than more of the same thing: one inbox spanning every brand domain, reply-From chosen by the receiving domain, and a per-domain DKIM key generated at bind time. We do not offer calendar or contacts sync, open-source code, or a self-hosted option, all of which one or both of these vendors do.

Sources & further reading

Where the claims come from.

Adjacent comparisons

Other head-to-heads.

Open the first letter

Read the terms of service, not just the pricing page.

This is the one pairing in this set where the cheaper option can be the wrong buy for a reason that never appears on a pricing table. Both vendors' terms, pricing, and limit pages are linked below with the date we checked them — open them and confirm before you move a domain.

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