Paying for SMTP mailboxes when you sell SaaS as a pair

What you pay for is a set of standard SMTP and IMAP mailboxes you can sign into and configure, with browser webmail included in the same tier. The tier is sized by mailbox count, not by contact volume, so the number of people you plan to write to does not move the cost.

Because the tiers are lifetime, the cost is a single decision rather than a recurring charge you renegotiate each month. Extra services sit outside the tiers and are priced separately, so the published tier is your base and anything beyond it is a second line you should confirm before paying.

For a two-person team, the mailbox count maps to how many sending identities you want to run at once. Warm-up and authentication checks are part of the product, which is why the mailbox itself is the unit of pricing rather than a seat or a monthly send allowance.

Moving up a tier changes the number of mailboxes you hold. Starter covers five, Studio covers fifteen and Floor covers fifty, and each step upward widens how many separate sending identities two people can manage across named countries without sharing one address between markets.

The checks around warm-up and authentication stay part of the product as you climb. What does not change is the nature of the asset: every tier gives you mailboxes, and none of them supplies the operations managers you want to reach, so the outreach work stays with you and your colleague.

A larger tier also suits a team that expects to add a mailbox per country or per language rather than one shared inbox. That is a planning choice about future sending identities, not a claim that more mailboxes will produce more replies from decision makers.

Your objection is fair: a large list can contain no decision makers at all. LocalSMTP does not answer that objection, because it does not sell lists. The tier decides how many mailboxes you run, and the quality of the people you write to remains something your team builds and verifies itself.

That reframes the purchase. You are buying sending infrastructure with webmail and authentication checks, not a source of operations managers in named countries. If your current problem is that your list lacks decision makers, a mailbox tier will not fix it, and paying for a larger tier will not either.

The sensible reading is to buy mailboxes for the outreach you can already support with researched contacts. Warm-up and authentication checks help the mechanics of delivery, while targeting stays a separate job your two-person team owns and measures on its own terms.

Start by counting the sending identities you genuinely need. Two people covering several named countries may want one mailbox per country or per language, which can push you past five and toward fifteen. If that count is close to five, Starter is the honest choice and you can revisit later.

If you expect to run separate identities for each market and keep a spare for testing, Studio gives you the fifteen that covers that pattern. Floor only makes sense if you foresee many identities in active use, since unused mailboxes do not themselves produce conversations with operations managers.

Write the count down before you compare, then pick the smallest tier that holds it. Read the tier table on softwareprogrammer.app, note which extras are priced separately, and treat the mailbox number as the one variable that decides your choice.