Cheap business email that is not a forwarding hack

"Cheap business email" returns two very different kinds of product: real mailboxes sold at a low price, and forwarding services that are cheap because they store nothing. Both are legitimate. Buying the second while expecting the first is where people get hurt.

What you are actually paying for

• Storage — someone keeps your mail, indefinitely, and backs it up.
• Deliverability — DKIM signing, IP reputation, bounce handling, blocklist monitoring.
• Abuse control — keeping spammers off the platform so your mail keeps landing.
• Support — someone to ask when a customer says your email went to spam.

Deliverability is the invisible one and the one that matters most. A provider that lets anyone sign up and blast mail will eventually get its sending reputation wrecked, and your legitimate invoices go to spam alongside their spam. Cheap is fine; cheap with no abuse policy is a time bomb.

Questions that separate the two

• Is my mail stored on your side, or forwarded to another inbox?
• If I stop paying, can I still download everything?
• What are your sending limits, and why?
• Do you allow bulk or marketing sending? (The right answer is no.)

That last one sounds backwards — why would you want a provider that limits you? Because a provider that permits bulk sending is sharing its sending reputation with whoever is sending it. Limits on new accounts are a sign that someone is protecting the thing you are actually buying.

A reasonable price floor

Somewhere around $10 per domain per month is where a provider can cover storage, sending and support without cutting corners on abuse handling. Meaningfully below that, something is being subsidised — usually either your data, your deliverability, or a free tier that will be withdrawn.