Introduction
FounderMail hosts email on a domain you own. You publish a few DNS records, create mailboxes
such as hello@yourdomain.com, and read and answer them either in the FounderMail
dashboard or in any IMAP client. The dashboard groups mail by the customer who wrote,
across every mailbox in the account, and adds the workflow a small team needs: assignment,
follow-ups, internal notes, labels and a Done state.
How an account is structured
| Object | What it is | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace | Your account: one subscription, one team, and everything below. Billed per workspace, never per mailbox. | Settings, Billing |
| Domain | A domain you own and have proved you own. Mail for it is received once its MX record points at FounderMail; mail is sent from it once its DKIM records are published. | Domains and DNS |
| Mailbox | An address on one of your domains, with its own IMAP and SMTP login. Shared with the team, or personal to one person. Unlimited on every plan. | Mailboxes |
| Conversation | A thread of messages, across any of your mailboxes, with the workflow state on it: assignee, follow-up date, status, notes, labels. | The inbox |
| Contact | A person who has written to you, with every address they have used and, if you link it, your own record of them. | Contacts |
| Team member | A person who can sign in to the workspace, as owner, admin or member. Threads can be assigned to them. | Team |
| Reply companion | An experimental assistant that drafts a reply from a thread, asks when it lacks a fact, and remembers only what you accept. Off until an owner or admin switches it on. | The reply companion |
Plans at a glance
Every plan includes unlimited domains, mailboxes and aliases, IMAP and SMTP on each mailbox, the dashboard, the REST API and the MCP server. What differs is volume, storage, retention, seats, personal mailboxes, forwarders and webhooks.
| Free | Plus | Pro | Scale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $4 / month or $44 / year | $12 / month or $132 / year | $39 / month or $429 / year |
| Messages received / month | 500 | 500 | 15,000 | 100,000 |
| Messages sent / month | 3,000 | 3,000 | 40,000 | 120,000 |
| Messages sent / day | 100 | 100 | No limit | No limit |
| Storage, pooled across the workspace | 1 GB | 15 GB | 50 GB | 250 GB |
| Retention | 12 months | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Team members | 1 | 3 | 10 | 50 |
| Personal mailboxes, per person | — | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Forwarders | 1 | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Aliases | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| REST API, MCP server | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Webhooks | — | — | 3 | Unlimited |
| AI companion / month (experimental) | Included | 3× Free | 10× Free | 33× Free |
| Send later, messages waiting at once | 1 | 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Junk mail counts toward nothing. What happens when a limit is reached, and how plans are changed, is in Analytics, plans and billing.
Two things to know before you start
Sending starts in reply-only mode
A newly verified domain can send replies to any address that has written to one of its mailboxes. It cannot yet write to an address that has never contacted you. To send to new contacts (invoices, onboarding, outreach), request outbound access from the domain page; it is reviewed per domain and is available on every plan. See Sending and outbound access.
The API and the MCP server read and draft; only people send
The REST API and the MCP server can list mailboxes, read messages, write drafts and attach your customer records to contacts. Neither has a send operation and no API key can be given one. A draft written by an integration appears in the mailbox's Drafts folder and is sent by a person from the dashboard or a mail client. See REST API and MCP server.
Where to go next
- Getting started: account, first domain, DNS, first mailbox.
- Moving in from another host: the cutover order and how to import your old mail.
- Importing mail from another provider: Gmail, Outlook and Microsoft 365, Yahoo, iCloud, Zoho, Fastmail or any IMAP server, step by step.
- The inbox: views, grouping, labels, follow-ups, assignment, notes, keyboard shortcuts.
- The reply companion: drafting replies with AI, what it remembers, and the allowance per plan.
Getting help
Signed in, use Need help? at the foot of the dashboard sidebar: your message arrives with your account and domain details attached, and the answer comes by email. Before you have an account, use the contact form. Either way, say what you were doing, what you expected and what happened; if it concerns DNS, include the domain.