Buying a cheap SMTP mailbox service when your client checks every row

Start from the handover, not the price. Your client wants a list where every row has a source and an address that actually received mail. LocalSMTP gives you standard SMTP and IMAP mailboxes plus browser webmail, so you can send a quiet test to a candidate address and watch whether it arrives before the row goes into the deliverable.

Because the tiers count mailboxes rather than sends or contacts, the decision is how many separate sending identities your contracts need. One mailbox per client keeps replies, bounces and test messages apart, which makes a disputed row easy to trace back to its source when the client asks.

Warm-up and authentication checks sit alongside setup, so a new mailbox is not thrown straight into a live campaign. You run those checks first, then start sending to your own research list. The tier supplies the mailbox; the rows, the verification and the sourcing notes stay your work and your responsibility.

Moving up a tier buys more mailboxes, and for a contractor that usually means more clients served at once. Starter holds five, Studio holds fifteen and Floor holds fifty, all sold as lifetime tiers according to the table published on softwareprogrammer.app. The jump is in count, so work out how many identities your current contracts need before you choose.

With more mailboxes you can give each client a dedicated sending identity and keep test traffic away from live outreach. Separate mailboxes also let you compare how different domains and setups treat the same message, which is useful evidence when a client questions whether an address is reachable at all.

A larger tier does not add recipients, verification credits or list data. If your workload grows because you are sourcing more rows rather than serving more clients, extra mailboxes will not shorten that work. Match the tier to the number of sending identities you can actually manage, not to the size of the list you hope to deliver.

The worry is usually that a mailbox service will somehow make rows look verified when they are not. It will not, and it should not. Treat each mailbox as a testing instrument: you send, you observe, you record the result with the source. A row that fails the test is removed or flagged, and the client sees the method rather than a claim.

Write your handover notes around that method. State which mailbox was used, when the test went out and what happened. If the client later asks how a row was checked, you can point to a specific mailbox and a specific message rather than describing a process in general terms. That is what protects the relationship when a row is challenged.

Set expectations on placement too. Authentication checks and warm-up improve your setup but do not promise the inbox. Tell the client that a delivered message can still be filtered, and that your verification records what happened on the day of the test rather than guaranteeing a future reply.

Compare Starter and Studio by contract load. Starter gives five mailboxes, which suits a contractor running a small number of client accounts at a time, with one identity per client and a spare for testing. Studio gives fifteen, which fits a busier book of work where several campaigns run in parallel and each needs its own sending identity.

Floor, at fifty mailboxes, is the tier for someone whose client list has grown well beyond a handful. Read the published table on softwareprogrammer.app for the terms attached to each tier, since extra services beyond the mailbox count are priced separately and may change what you actually need.

Whichever tier you pick, the work is the same: research the rows, test them through a mailbox, record the outcome and hand over the evidence. The tier decides how many separate identities you can run, not how many contacts you can deliver. Choose the smallest count that covers your current clients with room for a test mailbox.