Choosing a mailbox tier when you deliver contact lists

A contractor comparing the tiers soon notices that the difference is never about volume of outreach. Every tier gives you the same standard SMTP and IMAP mailboxes, the same browser webmail, and the same warm-up and authentication checks during setup. What changes from one line to the next is how many separate mailboxes you can open and keep running under your own control.

Because you deliver lists to clients, each client stream usually wants its own sending identity. One mailbox per client keeps replies, bounces and complaints separated, so a problem on one account does not touch the others. Counting those streams before you choose a tier matters more than counting how many messages you hope to send in a month.

The published table on softwareprogrammer.app lists the tiers by mailbox count and nothing else. Read it slowly and ask how many identities you will genuinely run across your current client base. If a new contract arrives, you move up a tier rather than squeezing two streams into one mailbox and blurring the record you hand over.

Start with the number of clients you serve in a normal month. Starter gives you five mailboxes, which suits a contractor whose work sits with a small and steady group of accounts. Those five can be split by client, by sending purpose, or by the person who answers replies, and nothing forces a structure on you.

Once client work regularly spreads across more than five streams, Studio with fifteen mailboxes becomes the natural resting point. Fifteen identities let you keep a sending mailbox and a reply mailbox for each account without borrowing capacity from a neighbour. For a contractor who takes on several parallel briefs, that headroom avoids repeated reshuffling.

Floor, with fifty mailboxes, reads as the tier for someone whose operation has grown well past a handful of clients. If your monthly roster of accounts stays far below that figure, pay for Studio and keep the difference for research time. Choosing a tier you cannot fill only adds administrative work you did not need.

The doubt that matters here is provenance. Your client wants a source behind every row, and a mailbox service cannot supply that source. LocalSMTP gives you the sending and receiving infrastructure, while the names, roles and company records stay the product of your own research and your own notes. Nothing in the tiers hands you a contact list.

The second doubt is delivery. Warm-up and authentication checks improve the odds of reaching a person, yet no one can promise a place in the inbox. Some messages will be filtered regardless. Tell your client this before you send anything, and keep a record of which addresses produced replies so the delivered list shows its own history.

Practically, that means you build a source column into the spreadsheet from the first row, note where each address came from, and treat bounces as information rather than failure. Confirm what extra services sit outside your tier, since those are priced separately, and budget for them before you quote a client.

Put Starter and Studio side by side and the contrast is straightforward. Five mailboxes against fifteen, with the same mail features and the same checks in both. The smaller tier suits a contractor with a tight client roster, while the larger one absorbs parallel briefs without forcing you to merge two client identities into one mailbox.

Compare Studio with Floor and the gap widens to a scale question. Fifty mailboxes only pays off when your roster is deep enough to occupy them, or when you are running several sending purposes per client. If you cannot name the mailboxes you would open next month, the larger tier is paying for unused space.

Work backwards from the client list rather than forwards from the price. Name each stream, count them, and pick the smallest tier that holds them with a little room. When the count creeps past your tier, upgrade deliberately and tell the client that their sending identity stays separate from the rest.