Google Workspace pricing for cold email: buying from Google vs buying inboxes

A Google Workspace inbox for cold email costs $7 to $8.40 per user per month bought directly from Google on Business Starter, before you have set anything up. Bought set up from us it is $3 per inbox per month. This post lays out both at real order sizes, and what each price actually includes.

How much does Google Workspace cost per inbox?

Business Starter, the cheapest plan with a custom domain, is $7 per user per month on a one-year commitment and $8.40 on the month-to-month Flexible plan, in US list prices before tax. Every inbox is a user, so every inbox is a seat. Higher plans add storage and features a sending inbox does not use.

Prices as listed on Google’s pricing page, workspace.google.com/pricing, in November 2026. Google regularly runs introductory discounts for new customers, at the time of writing up to 50% off the first three months, after which list price applies. Plan on the list price, because that is what a pool pays for most of its life.

Google directly vs coldemailinboxes.io, at real order sizes

At 3 inboxes per domain and 15 campaign sends per inbox a day, these are the monthly inbox costs for the same pool bought three ways.

Per email of daily sending capacity, that is about $0.47 a month on Google annual, $0.56 on Flexible, and $0.20 with us. Domains are on top in every column: roughly $10-15 a year at a registrar if you buy them yourself, or $12 once if we register one for you, in your name.

What the Google price includes that cold email does not use

A Workspace seat is priced as a full productivity seat: Drive storage, Meet, Docs, Calendar. A sending inbox uses the mailbox. If those inboxes exist only to send and receive cold email, most of the seat price buys things nobody will open.

The cost that is not on the invoice: setup time

Buying from Google gets you empty accounts. MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, users, sender names, sequencer connection and checking are still yours, at roughly two to three hours per domain. For the 10-domain pool above that is 20 to 30 hours of work, and the mistakes in it are silent. The steps and the failure modes are in how to set up Google Workspace for cold email.

What changes when you do not buy from Google

The bill. You pay us rather than Google, and the inboxes run for as long as the subscription is active. Admin access does not change: every Google order from us includes full admin access, including the Admin console. You keep the domain and the reputation built on it either way, and the accounts are Google Workspace accounts sending through Google.

If you want to pay Google directly, or you are running one or two domains and have the afternoon, buying from Google is the right answer. If you are building a pool, the inbox price and the hours both point the other way.

Google or Microsoft, on price alone

If price per daily send is the whole question, Microsoft is cheaper with us: 100 inboxes on one domain for $30 a month is 300 sends a day, $0.10 per email of daily capacity against Google’s $0.20. People choose Google because they want the mail to come from Google, usually because their list is mostly Gmail. We have not measured a placement difference between the two and do not claim one. The full comparison is in Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace for cold email.