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 plans undercut the closest comparable provider by $5 on every tier, and we include the whole productivity suite — calendar, contacts, cloud file storage with sharing, online document editing, video meetings and premium SpamExperts spam filtering (free on every plan) — rather than mail alone.
Where some competitors advertise unlimited domains and we cap ours, that cap is deliberate. We'd rather publish a number we can actually honour than promise "unlimited" and quietly throttle you later.
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 |
Competitor details above are general characteristics of those categories as of 2026 and are not quoted from any specific provider's current price list. Check their sites for exact 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.