Pick the mailbox count you will actually fill

Your stuck point is simple: every mailbox service you have looked at quotes per user per month, and you cannot justify that for two people sending quotes and follow-ups around one city. LocalSMTP answers that by selling lifetime tiers by mailbox count, so the question shifts from what the software costs each month to how many mailboxes you will genuinely fill.

You open a mailbox in a browser or add it to a mail client over standard SMTP and IMAP, which means the person answering enquiries and the person quoting jobs both work from the same setup. The warm-up and authentication checks run alongside that setup rather than as a separate purchase, so a small team can send without learning a second tool.

What you are deciding is a count, not a contract length. Count the mailboxes you would use today, add the one or two you expect when you hire, and choose the tier that covers that number. The lifetime framing means the tier you pick now is the one you keep, so an honest count matters more than a generous guess.

Moving up a tier buys more mailboxes and nothing else changes in kind. Starter covers five, Studio covers fifteen and Floor covers fifty, and each tier still gives you the same standard SMTP and IMAP mailboxes, the browser webmail, and the warm-up and authentication checks. The step between tiers is capacity for more people sending, not a different product.

That matters when you run more than one address per person. A booking inbox, a quotes inbox and a general enquiries inbox can each be its own mailbox, and a business with three staff can fill a higher tier quickly without hiring anyone. If you share logins today because you have run out of addresses, the larger tier removes that habit.

The larger tiers are worth paying for when you can name who will use each mailbox. If you cannot, stay on the smaller tier and add capacity later on whatever terms are published at the time. Choosing by headcount plus shared inboxes keeps you from buying mailboxes that sit unused for the life of the tier.

The hesitation is price framed for enterprises, and the way through it is to compare the tier against the monthly quotes you have already collected for the same number of mailboxes. A lifetime tier is a different shape of cost, and for a business that intends to keep the same addresses for years the comparison is not difficult once you put the two side by side.

Separate what you are buying from what you hope it does. You are buying mailboxes you can sign into and configure, with checks that help your sending setup. You are not buying a guaranteed place in the inbox, and no tier hands you a list of nearby companies to write to. Your prospect research stays your own work, and that is true at every tier.

The practical answer to the enterprise-pricing worry is to buy small and prove the setup with the enquiries you already handle. Run your quotes and follow-ups through the mailboxes for a while, watch how the checks behave, and only then decide whether the next tier up is worth it for your city and your team.

Starter and Studio differ by mailbox count: five against fifteen. Picture a two-person repair firm with a quotes inbox, a bookings inbox and a general enquiries inbox. That is three mailboxes in regular use, with room for a shared address and a spare. Starter covers the whole arrangement, and nobody is juggling a single login to make it work.

Now picture the same firm after two hires, with a second city postcode added and a separate address for each engineer. Fifteen mailboxes absorb that growth without a second purchase, and the browser webmail means the new starters can be sending from day one without installing anything. The same SMTP and IMAP mailboxes and the same checks apply at both tiers.

Floor sits above both at fifty mailboxes and suits a business that has stopped counting addresses per person. For most single-city firms, the choice is Starter against Studio, and it comes down to whether you can name the people and shared inboxes that will fill fifteen. If you can, the larger tier saves a later step. If not, start smaller.