How we compare
Where MailToYou fits
An honest look at what you get from us, and where somebody else is the better answer. We'd rather you picked the right thing than churned in a month.
Against free webmail
Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo are free because your attention is the product. They're competent mail services — but the deal is that your inbox feeds an advertising business, your address is locked to their domain, and support is a help centre article.
We charge a small annual fee instead. Nothing scans your mail to profile you, nothing trains a model on it, and there's a person on the other end of a support ticket. With a domain plan your address is yours permanently — if we ever disappoint you, take your domain elsewhere and your address goes with it.
Against the big privacy providers
Proton Mail and Tuta do something we don't: zero-access encryption, where the provider mathematically cannot read your stored mail. If your threat model calls for that, use them — we'd rather tell you so than sell you the wrong thing.
The trade-off is that this generally requires their apps or a bridge, because standard IMAP doesn't work that way. We take the opposite approach: plain IMAP, POP3, SMTP, ActiveSync, CalDAV and CardDAV, so every mail app on earth just works. Our privacy promise is a business-model one — we don't monetise your mail and we don't ask who you are — rather than a cryptographic one. That's a real distinction and you should know which you're buying.
Against other independent hosts
There’s a healthy field of small, operator-run email hosts and we like most of them. Our approach is simple: more storage for less money. Independent hosts typically start around 5 GB for $12–$19 a year; we start at 10 GB for $9, and the gap widens on every tier above that. The numbers are laid out below.
We can do that because storage is the cheapest part of running a mail service and we’d rather compete on it than on hidden limits. What we include as standard — calendar, contacts, cloud file storage with sharing, online document editing, video meetings, SpamExperts filtering, self-filing +addresses — is the whole suite, not an upsell ladder.
Where some competitors advertise unlimited domains and we cap ours, that cap is deliberate — and narrower than it looks. The number we publish is primary domains: domains with their own mailboxes. Domain aliases are unlimited on every plan, so if you own several domains pointing at one inbox they cost you nothing. We’d rather publish a number we can actually honour than promise “unlimited” and quietly throttle you later.
On deliverability
The thing that actually decides whether email is any good is whether it lands in the inbox. Our sending IPs are clean — unlisted on Spamhaus, SpamCop, Barracuda and the rest — and every message is DKIM-signed with SPF and DMARC alignment.
Reputation is easy to lose and slow to rebuild, which is why our no-bulk-mail rule is strict to the point of being annoying. On shared infrastructure one customer’s campaign is everyone else’s spam folder. Providers that quietly tolerate bulk senders are cheaper to run and worse to receive mail from.
Side by side
| Free webmail | Encrypted providers | MailToYou | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reads your mail for ads | Yes | No | No |
| Works in any mail app | Mostly | App or bridge needed | Yes — plain IMAP |
| Zero-access encryption | No | Yes | No |
| Your own domain | Paid tiers only | Paid tiers only | From $54/yr |
| Calendar & contacts sync | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud file storage included | Separate quota | Separate product | Same storage pool |
| Pay in crypto | No | Sometimes | Yes |
| Signup without a phone number | Often not | Sometimes | Always |
| Bulk / marketing mail | No | No | No |
| Starting price | $0 | ~$4–5/mo | $9/year |
The columns above describe categories, not specific companies. For named providers and real numbers, see the table below.
What a gigabyte actually costs
Storage is the one thing every mail host can be compared on directly. These are the entry paid plans as published by each provider, converted to a yearly price and divided by the storage you get. Annual billing where offered.
| Provider & plan | Per year | Storage | Cost per GB/year |
|---|---|---|---|
| MailToYou Personal | $9 | 10 GB | $0.90 |
| Zoho Mail Lite | $12 | 5 GB | $2.40 |
| Migadu Micro | $19 | 5 GB | $3.80 |
| Proton Mail Plus | $47.88 | 15 GB | $3.19 |
| Fastmail Individual | $60 | 50 GB | $1.20 |
| Migadu Mini | $90 | 30 GB | $3.00 |
Our entry plan works out 2.7× cheaper per gigabyte than the next-cheapest option, and it only widens further up: our 50 GB plan is $15 against $60 for the same storage at Fastmail, and our 100 GB plan lands at $0.25 per GB.
Prices checked against each provider's own pricing page in August 2026 and shown in USD; Proton Mail Plus is billed at $3.99/month on the annual plan. Providers change prices and bundle differently — Proton includes zero-access encryption and a VPN, Fastmail and Zoho are sold per user for teams — so compare the whole offering, not only this column. Check their sites for current terms.
When we're the wrong choice
- You need to send newsletters or campaigns. We don't allow bulk mail of any kind. Use Mailchimp, Postmark, SendGrid or similar.
- You need zero-access encryption at rest. Use Proton or Tuta.
- You need a signed HIPAA BAA or similar compliance paperwork. We don't currently offer one.
- You want a free plan. We don't have one. The fee is the business model.