Cloudways Email Hosting Cost: $1.50 Mailboxes + Sending

What the $1.50 mailbox buys

Rackspace is the inbox option for addresses that people read and reply from. The current Cloudways help page lists 25GB per mailbox, webmail, secure IMAP, aliases and forwarding. Billing is calculated daily from the $1.50 monthly rate, so a mailbox activated for part of a month is prorated.

This is not bundled into the server price. Five individual inboxes add **$7.50 per month**; ten add **$15 per month**, before tax. Aliases and forwarding reduce paid seats only when they do not need separate storage and login credentials.

Mailboxes and website email are different bills

A mailbox is for human correspondence. Transactional email is generated by an application: password resets, contact-form notices, receipts and WooCommerce orders. Cloudways explicitly separates these jobs. Rackspace is not intended for high-volume automated mail; Elastic Email or a configured SMTP provider handles application sending.

Cloudways currently lists Elastic Email from **$0.10 per month for 1,000 messages**. It does not create an inbox. A store may therefore need both Rackspace for staff mailboxes and transactional delivery for customer messages.

Build the real monthly email budget

Use three lines: human inboxes at mailbox count × $1.50; application sending through Elastic Email or an external SMTP provider; and domain/DNS work, because the domain is separate and MX, SPF and DKIM still require configuration.

At the current $11 entry-server reference, one mailbox produces a **$12.50** hosting-plus-inbox baseline. Five produce **$18.50**; ten produce **$26**. These examples exclude tax, domain registration, backups and sending volume. They are planning arithmetic, not checkout quotes.

Resolve the $1 versus $1.50 conflict

Some older Cloudways material and a generic pricing teaser still say email starts at $1. A dated Cloudways notice says Rackspace increased from $1.00 to $1.50 per mailbox on September 1, 2026, and current product-specific pages show $1.50.

Budget **$1.50**, then verify the live add-on screen. Titan should not be counted as an available substitute merely because Cloudways announced it: the official article uses future-availability wording and describes post-launch pricing.

When Rackspace is worth adding

Rackspace fits teams that want inboxes inside the Cloudways billing workflow, need basic business mail, and value the low per-mailbox price more than an office suite. Independent current reviews reach the same boundary: email is separate, $1.50 is the relevant mailbox price, and transactional sending still needs its own route.

It is weaker when a team depends on shared calendars, document collaboration, advanced compliance or a familiar Gmail/Microsoft interface. Compare Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or another dedicated provider before moving mail.

Trial and migration checklist

List every person who needs an inbox, every alias that can forward, and every website that sends automated messages. Create one mailbox first, test inbound and outbound delivery, and confirm IMAP in the real mail client.

Separately test password resets, forms and store receipts through the transactional route. Publish MX, SPF and DKIM carefully, lower DNS TTL before cutover, keep the old service active during verification, and retain an export or migration plan.

Should you buy Cloudways for email?

Do not choose Cloudways because email looks bundled—it is not. Choose the hosting platform for its managed-cloud workflow, then add the correct mail components.

For one to five simple business inboxes, Rackspace can be inexpensive. For a site that only sends application messages, do not buy inboxes for that job; configure Elastic Email or another SMTP provider. For teams needing a full productivity suite, price that separately.

**Bottom line:** budget $1.50 for every human mailbox, add a separate transactional-mail line when the website sends automated messages, and ignore the stale $1 wording.