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Comparison

FranklyMail vs Purelymail

Purelymail is about $10 a year. FranklyMail is $9. That is not a difference and we are not going to dress it up as one.

Both price the resource instead of the headcount, both give you unlimited users and unlimited domains, and both are small operations run by people who mean it.

The real differences are the first ten minutes, what happens when a DNS record breaks, and what you can get back if you hate it.

Side by side.

A year of email for you and four others. List prices, read off each provider’s own page on 12 August 2026.

FranklyMail vs Purelymail: annual cost and features for 5 people.
Per year, 5 peopleFranklyMailPurelymail
Price per year, 5 people$9~$10
Pricing modelFlat, plus storage you useFlat, or advanced per-resource billing
People includedUnlimitedUnlimited
Custom domainsUnlimitedUnlimited
Storage10 GB pooled, then $0.40/GB/yrNo hard limit, fair use
IMAP, POP3, SMTPYesYes
JMAPYesNo
Sieve filtersYesYes
DNS setupChecked live, instructions per registrarRecords to copy yourself
Money back30 days, unconditionalPrepaid credit
Running since20262019

The price is a tie

Most comparison pages would find a way to make $9 against $10 sound like a landslide — a percentage, a five-year projection, a chart with a cropped axis. A dollar a year is a rounding error and you already know it.

Worse for us: Purelymail’s advanced per-resource billing can come out cheaper than our $9 for a genuinely light account. If you are one person with one small mailbox and you enjoy reading a billing table, they may simply be the cheaper option. That is the honest read of their pricing page.

So this page is not about price. If price is your only axis, flip a coin — you will be right either way, and both of us are an order of magnitude below what you were paying before.

Where we actually differ: the first ten minutes

Purelymail hands you the DNS records you need. That is the industry norm, and for someone who has set up mail before it is completely sufficient.

We do a different thing with those same four records. The panel checks them live against the internet, tells you which of the four are in place and which are not, and gives you the instructions for the registrar you are actually using — Cloudflare, Namecheap, Porkbun, GoDaddy — because every one of them calls the fields something different and puts the trailing dot in a different place.

That difference matters exactly once per domain, and then never again. Whether it is worth choosing a provider over depends entirely on how your last DNS afternoon went.

The bus factor, in both directions

Purelymail is a very small operation. So are we. Anybody telling you otherwise about either of us is selling something.

The difference is that they have been doing it since 2019 and we have not. Seven years of continuous operation is real evidence and we have no equivalent. If longevity is what you are buying, that argument runs against us and we would rather write it down than hope you do not check.

What we can offer against it is smaller and more concrete: a 30-day unconditional refund, cancellation in one click with no retention maze, and IMAP — which means the archive was portable the whole time. If we disappoint you, the exit costs you a DNS change and an afternoon.

What Purelymail does better.

Every comparison page on the internet skips this section. Here is ours.

  • Seven years of continuous operation. We have none of that, and it is the thing that should matter most to you.
  • Genuinely no hard limits — not on storage, not on anything. We meter storage above 10 GB and charge for it.
  • Advanced per-resource billing, which for a light single user can land below our $9.
  • A reputation earned quietly on Hacker News and r/selfhosted over years, rather than asserted on a page like this one.

Stay on Purelymail if…

  • You are already on Purelymail and it works. Genuinely — switching working email is a bad trade for a dollar.
  • Operating history is what you are buying. Theirs is longer, and that is not close.
  • You want zero metered limits of any kind and are happy to be trusted on fair use.
  • Their advanced pricing already puts you under $9.

Come to us if…

  • You are setting up a domain for the first time and would rather be told what is missing than guess.
  • You want a flat number you can forget, instead of a resource model to reason about.
  • You want a refund you can actually take, not a credit balance.
  • You want a panel built for the registrar you use, not a generic list of records.

Fair questions.

Should I switch from Purelymail?
If it is working, probably not. That is the honest answer and it costs us the sale. Moving email is a real afternoon of your life and a dollar a year does not buy it back. Come to us for the setup experience or the refund, not for the price difference.
Are you cheaper than Purelymail?
By a dollar on the flat plan, and possibly not at all under their advanced per-resource pricing. Anyone claiming a big price win between these two products is doing arithmetic on your behalf that you should do yourself.
You are newer. Why should I trust you with my email?
Start by not trusting us. Take the 30-day refund as what it is — a month to find out — and keep your archive on IMAP where you can pull it down any time. Trust in an email host should be earned over years, and we have not had years yet.

Nine dollars. One year. Every mailbox you need.

30-day refund, and cancel in one click.

Get started, $9/yr