People pricing a Mailfence alternative usually arrive from the free plan, having discovered its two boundaries: 500 MB of storage, and no custom domain.
What Mailfence does give away for free is the part most providers charge for — encryption and digital signing on every plan, including the free one. That's an unusual choice and it deserves crediting before anything else.
What a Mailfence Alternative Is Priced Against
From Mailfence, per user per month:
| Plan | Price | Storage | Custom domain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | €0 | 500 MB | No |
| Entry | €3.50 | 40 GB | Yes |
| Pro | €9.50 | 78 GB | Yes |
| Ultra | €29.00 | 225 GB | Yes |
The tiers are storage steps, and the storage is generous — 40 GB at €3.50 compares well against Gandi's 10 GB at €4.99 and IONOS's 2 GB. Encryption and digital signing are on every tier rather than sold as an upgrade, which is the opposite of how most of this market prices security.
What multiplies is people. Twenty users on Entry is €840 a year, and on Pro €2,280.
The Free Plan's Two Walls
500 MB. That's a few months of ordinary correspondence with attachments, and it's the smaller of the two problems because it's obvious from the start.
No custom domain. This is the one that decides things. A free Mailfence address ends in @mailfence.com, so it cannot be a business address at all — the domain is a paid feature.
That pattern repeats across the privacy tier and it's worth recognising: Tuta's free plan gives zero custom domains and zero aliases, Proton's free tier gives none either and no IMAP. Posteo refuses custom domains on every plan for principled reasons. If you want mail on a domain you own, the privacy tier's free plans are all signup funnels rather than usable products.
Ours is free too and shaped differently — 10 domains at 10 mailboxes each, on domains you own, with no card. The honest limit: it receives over IMAP and doesn't send through our platform SMTP, so sending needs a paid plan or your own SMTP credentials.
Belgian Law, and Whether You Need It
Mailfence is protected by Belgian privacy law, and that's the same category of argument as Infomaniak's Swiss hosting or mailbox.org's German position: jurisdiction, not marketing.
If a contract, a regulator or a professional obligation names where mail may be stored, that requirement outranks every feature comparison, and a Mailfence alternative hosted elsewhere is simply the wrong answer. Be honest with yourself about whether it's a requirement or a preference — both are legitimate, but only one should decide.
The same goes for their encryption and digital signing. If you actually sign mail, that's a workflow no ordinary mail host replaces.
Where a Mailfence Alternative Changes Shape
Four differences, and none of them is about security.
Your own domain on the free plan. Ten of them, in fact, which is the direct answer to Mailfence's paywall on the thing that makes an address a business address.
Nothing is priced per person. Role addresses, aliases and catch-all routing cost nothing, so twenty people don't cost twenty times one.
Addresses a team answers. support@ answered by several people who all see the same thread. See shared mailboxes.
DNS applied for you through a previewed Cloudflare change or one Domain Connect click. See DNS setup.
Plus reading mailboxes hosted elsewhere, bulk provisioning with setup invites, and address verification in the same account.
Storage Is the Only Thing the Tiers Change
Worth noticing, because it is rarer than it sounds: Entry, Pro and Ultra differ by storage and nothing else. Encryption, digital signing, IMAP and the rest arrive at every level.
Gandi does the same and almost nobody else in this comparison does. Neo puts backup four tiers up, Bluehost puts two-factor authentication behind a paywall, and Fastmail withholds IMAP from its cheapest business plan. Paying only for gigabytes is a cleaner deal than paying to switch features on, and it is a point in their favour that a Mailfence alternative has to acknowledge.
The Verdict, Whoever You Are
One person who signs or encrypts mail. Stay with Mailfence. Encryption and digital signing on every tier, under Belgian law, at €3.50 with 40 GB is coherent and a Mailfence alternative doesn't replicate it.
One person on the free plan wanting a business address. You have to pay them or move, because the custom domain is the paywall. Compare €3.50 a month against a free tier that covers ten domains you already own.
A team. Twenty users is €840 a year on Entry and €2,280 on Pro, against $120 flat. Role addresses stop costing anything, storage carries a ceiling per address, and filters apply at delivery on every device at once.
Anyone with a jurisdiction requirement. Belgian law is the product. No price table outranks a contractual obligation, and this article isn't trying to.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mailfence really free?
Yes, permanently, with 500 MB of storage and full encryption and digital signing. What it doesn't include is a custom domain, so it can't be a business address.
How much does Mailfence cost?
€3.50 a month for Entry with 40 GB, €9.50 for Pro with 78 GB and €29 for Ultra with 225 GB, all per user.
Does Mailfence support custom domains?
On paid plans only. That's the wall most free users hit first.
Is a Mailfence alternative less secure?
Differently secure. Their encryption and digital signing are included at every tier and are genuinely the point of the product. We encrypt in transit and at rest but hold the keys, which is the trade that makes server-side search and IMAP possible.
Is it cheaper?
Past two or three people, yes, and the gap widens with every seat. At one user with real encryption needs, Mailfence is the better buy.
Where is my data stored?
Theirs is in Belgium under Belgian privacy law. If a contract names a jurisdiction, check any alternative against it before moving rather than after.
Can I move my mail out?
Yes — standard IMAP means an ordinary mailbox copy that keeps folders and read state, reconciled against the source afterwards. See bulk migration. Signed and encrypted messages need testing specifically, since keys are involved.
