Free and forwarding

Free and forwarding options

Services that are genuinely free, or that forward mail into a mailbox you already have. They are not sold as subscriptions and are not comparable with the paid plans above.

Verified 2026-09-23

These three were previously listed on this site as paid subscriptions. That was wrong: Riseup and Disroot are free and donation-funded, and Cloudflare Email Routing is a forwarding service, not a mailbox. They are listed separately so the comparison table stays honest.

Riseup Email

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Activists and organisers who need a free, invite-only mailbox that never asks for a phone number

Free tier: Free · 1 GB · Invite only
Base storage: 1 GB
Source: official pricing page

Riseup is a collectively run email service for activists and movement organisers. It is free of charge and funded entirely by small donations from its users — there is no paid tier to upgrade to.

Accounts are issued by invitation code rather than open signup, and mailboxes are capped at 1 GB. If you need more space, the recommended route is to download mail with a desktop client rather than pay for storage.

Verified 2026-09-23 · Read directly from the vendor's own pricing page · Last updated Sep 23, 2026

Disroot Email

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Anyone who wants a free mailbox funded by donations rather than advertising

Free tier: Free · 1 GB · Donation funded
Base storage: 1 GB
Source: official pricing page

Disroot provides secure email as part of a broader set of privacy-respecting services. The mailbox is free by default with a 1 GB limit, and the project is funded by donations rather than advertising or paid tiers.

Extra mailbox storage and custom-domain linking are optional contributions, not a required subscription. If the standard 1 GB is enough, you never pay anything.

Verified 2026-09-23 · Read directly from the vendor's own pricing page · Last updated Sep 23, 2026

Cloudflare Email Routing

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Domain owners who want to route mail into an existing inbox for free

Free tier: Free · Forwarding only — not a mailbox
Base storage: Forwarding only — not a mailbox
Source: official pricing page

Cloudflare Email Routing forwards mail sent to your domain into a mailbox you already have. It is not a mailbox itself: there is no IMAP, no webmail and no storage.

It is free on any Cloudflare-managed domain, but the number of routing rules per domain is capped — so it belongs in a forwarding comparison, not next to paid mailbox hosting.

Verified 2026-09-23 · Read directly from the vendor's own pricing page · Last updated Sep 23, 2026

Self-hosted

Run your own mail server

Prefer full control? The self-hosting track covers the popular open stacks — Mailcow, Mailu, docker-mailserver and Stalwart — with setup difficulty, spam-filtering requirements and honest notes on when hosting is still the better deal.