Migadu is a Swiss email hosting company that charges a flat monthly fee per account and hands out unlimited email addresses across unlimited custom domains at every paid tier. Migadu’s pricing shape is unusual: where Fastmail charges per user and Google Workspace charges per seat, Migadu asks the account holder to size themselves by daily message volume and storage, then stops charging for scale after that. For an operator running a personal domain, a business domain, and two side-project domains all off one inbox, this is a materially different number.
It sits in the forwarding services roundup for the same reason Fastmail does: it is a full mailbox host with IMAP, calendars, contacts, and outbound SMTP, not a forwarding-only service. ImprovMX and Forward Email forward the mail somewhere else. Migadu is the somewhere else. (For a category overview, see the email forwarding services roundup.)
Founded in 2014 and registered in Switzerland, Migadu is bootstrapped and independent, and support is handled by the same people who run the mail servers rather than by a separate tier of contractors.
Where Migadu fits in a WordPress stack
Inbound email hosting. For a WordPress operator who wants [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] all to be real mailboxes with IMAP access, Migadu covers that layer. Every paid plan supports unlimited addresses on unlimited custom domains, so multiple sites managed by the same operator collapse into one account. The web client, mobile IMAP setup, and desktop client configuration are documented at imap.migadu.com port 993 with TLS.
Outbound SMTP. Migadu’s SMTP server (smtp.migadu.com, ports 465 and 587) can send mail from the domain, and a WordPress SMTP plugin can be configured to relay through it. This is the same trap Fastmail sets, and the answer is the same. Migadu publishes hard per-day sending quotas at each tier (100 messages per day on Mini, 500 on Standard, 2,000 on Maxi) and does not offer bounce webhooks, suppression lists, or dedicated IPs. A WordPress site sending A transactional email is the automated message a WordPress site sends in response to a single user action – a password reset, an order confirmation, a form receipt – addressed to the user who triggered it. Read full reference → (order confirmations, password resets, form receipts) should use a dedicated relay (Postmark, SMTP2GO, Mailgun) sized for that traffic pattern. Use Migadu for the human mailboxes on the domain; use a relay for anything WordPress itself generates.
Pricing
Migadu operates a flat-rate pricing model that is unusual in this category. The plan sizes the account by daily message volume, storage, and support tier. Address count, mailbox count, and domain count are unlimited on every paid plan (with a soft limit on domains on the entry Micro plan). There is no per-user or per-mailbox fee.
There is no perpetual free tier. Migadu offers a free trial that does not require a credit card.
| Plan | Price | Incoming / day | Outgoing / day | Storage | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Micro | $19 / year (annual only) | 200 | 20 | 5 GB | Best effort |
| Mini | $9 / month or $90 / year | 1,000 | 100 | 30 GB | Best effort |
| Standard | $29 / month or $290 / year | 3,000 | 500 | 100 GB | Office hours |
| Maxi | $99 / month or $990 / year | 10,000 | 2,000 | 500 GB | Priority, 24/7 |
Storage is soft; Migadu describes the limits as guidance rather than hard cutoffs. Non-profits and students receive a discount with valid ID.
The shape of the arithmetic changes with scale. For a single-user, single-domain setup with a handful of aliases, ImprovMX free or Fastmail Individual at €5 per month is often cheaper. The break-even point is somewhere around three to four mailboxes across two or more domains, where per-seat plans start to compound. A five-user agency with three custom domains lands at €25 per month on Fastmail Business Standard, five separate accounts, and at $9 per month on Migadu Mini in a single account. A twenty-mailbox operation across ten domains is $29 per month on Standard.
For context: ImprovMX forwards one domain and 25 aliases for free and $9 per month for SMTP sending, with no mailbox layer. Forward Email provides unlimited free forwarding and $3 per month per user for mailbox hosting. Fastmail is €5 per user per month at annual billing. Google Workspace starts at $7 per user per month.
DNS setup
Migadu delegates the DNS configuration to the account holder. Each domain added in the admin panel produces a set of records specific to that domain (a hosted-email verification token is issued per domain), but the general shape is stable and worth walking through before touching a registrar.
Two MX records, one SPF include, three DKIM CNAMEs, and a DMARC record:
| Record type | Host | Value | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| MX | @ |
aspmx1.migadu.com |
10 |
| MX | @ |
aspmx2.migadu.com |
20 |
| TXT (SPF) | @ |
v=spf1 include:spf.migadu.com -all |
– |
| CNAME | key1._domainkey |
key1.<yourdomain>._domainkey.migadu.com |
– |
| CNAME | key2._domainkey |
key2.<yourdomain>._domainkey.migadu.com |
– |
| CNAME | key3._domainkey |
key3.<yourdomain>._domainkey.migadu.com |
– |
| TXT | _dmarc |
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected] |
– |
| TXT | @ |
hosted-email-verify=<per-domain token from admin panel> |
– |
The two-MX pattern matches Migadu’s own infrastructure split between two data centres (both hosted on OVH in France; there is no US region option). Publishing both records with different priorities gives receiving mail the failover path Migadu’s own operations rely on.
The SPF record above ends in -all (hardfail), which is the correct terminator once every sender that ever sends From: the domain is listed. While an operator is still enumerating other senders (a WordPress SMTP relay in particular), softening temporarily to ~all (softfail) is a common intermediate step; tighten back to -all once the sender list is stable. SPF allows up to 10 DNS lookups per 
RFC 7208 section 4.6.4, and Migadu’s include consumes one.
Three DKIM selectors (key1, key2, key3) as CNAMEs allow Migadu to rotate signing keys on their side without the customer having to touch DNS again. The record targets embed the customer’s domain into the hostname (key1.<yourdomain>._domainkey.migadu.com), which is how Migadu keeps per-customer keys separated on shared signing infrastructure.
The p=none DMARC policy is appropriate during initial setup and monitoring; tighten to p=quarantine or p=reject once aggregate reports confirm SPF and DKIM pass consistently for legitimate mail.
The hosted-email-verify token is Migadu’s proof-of-ownership record and is issued per domain in the admin panel. Migadu detects the records automatically around thirty minutes after they propagate.
Addresses, aliases, catch-all, and forwarding
Every paid Migadu plan grants unlimited addresses on every domain in the account. There is no separate alias quota to burn through, no distinction between primary mailboxes and secondary addresses at the pricing level, and no cap on the number of domains parked on the account (Micro carries a soft limit; Mini and above are uncapped).
Mailboxes and addresses. A mailbox is a real IMAP endpoint with credentials and storage. An address is a delivery route into a mailbox. The two are configured separately in the admin panel, so one mailbox can receive mail addressed to hello@, support@, orders@, and admin@ without any extra cost or configuration hop. Multiple people sharing one mailbox is supported through per-person identities with distinct login credentials.
Catch-all. Any address on a custom domain that does not match a configured route can be delivered to a nominated mailbox. This is the standard vanity-domain pattern (mail addressed to [email protected] reaches the catch-all mailbox even when there is no bob address configured) and works out of the box.
Wildcard sending. Migadu also allows sending as any address on the domain without pre-registering each identity. Combined with catch-all, an operator can reply from whichever address the incoming mail was addressed to (a customer wrote to bob@; the reply comes from bob@, not admin@).
External forwarding. Migadu supports forwarding a mailbox or address to an external destination, but with two caveats worth understanding before relying on it. First, the destination has to confirm the forward by clicking a link in a message Migadu sends when the rule is created. Second, forwarding is implemented as Sieve scripts running after the message has been delivered to the mailbox, not as SMTP-level relaying. Messages that hit the spam folder are not forwarded. Messages that fail to deliver at the forwarded destination are kept in the original mailbox. Migadu caps external destinations at 25 per mailbox, and its own documentation actively discourages external forwarding for authentication reasons: SPF alignment breaks on forwarded mail, and receiving providers running strict DMARC policies (Gmail in particular) may reject forwarded messages regardless of what the sending domain publishes. If forwarding is the primary requirement, ImprovMX or Forward Email do the job better.
Identities, not privacy aliases
Migadu identities are role-based (letting the same mailbox send as billing@ and support@) and access-based (letting a device connect with credentials scoped to IMAP only, for example). They are not the Fastmail Masked Email or SimpleLogin style of one-time disposable address designed to be handed out at signup screens and burned when the sender starts spamming. An operator who wants that model on top of Migadu can layer SimpleLogin or an equivalent in front, forwarding masked-address mail into the Migadu mailbox.
API and protocol support
IMAP, POP3, and SMTP over TLS cover the mail layer; there is no JMAP endpoint and no proprietary protocol. CalDAV and CardDAV cover calendars and contacts. The absence of a richer proprietary protocol is deliberate: Migadu positions the account as portable to any standards-compliant client.
The REST API covers domain management, mailbox creation, identity management, alias configuration, and address rewriting. It uses HTTP Basic Auth over HTTPS with the account email address as the username and a per-account API key (generated in the dashboard, not the login password) as the password, and returns JSON. The scope is administrative: managing what exists on the account, not reading or sending mail (that goes through IMAP and SMTP as with any other client).
Delivery logs are available in the admin panel for troubleshooting individual messages. There is no bulk log export API or webhook stream. Operators who need bounce-handling automation want a transactional relay, not a mailbox host.
What Migadu does not do
Free forwarding. Every use case requires a paid account. If all that is needed is [email protected] forwarding to Gmail, ImprovMX or Forward Email handle this at no cost and without the mailbox layer overhead.
Privacy aliases. No Masked Email or Firefox Relay style disposable addresses. Layer SimpleLogin or an equivalent in front if this is a requirement.
Transactional email relay. No dedicated IPs, no suppression lists, no bounce webhooks, hard per-day sending quotas. WordPress wp_mail() should not route through Migadu.
JMAP. Fastmail’s modern API alternative to IMAP is absent from Migadu’s stack. Clients that specifically want JMAP (Cypht, Thunderbird’s experimental support, various indie clients) will need to fall back to IMAP.
US data residency. Migadu’s mail servers are hosted on OVH in France. Operators with a specific US-residency requirement should look elsewhere; operators with a specific EU-residency preference will find this useful.
Open source. Migadu’s stack is proprietary. The standards it speaks (IMAP, SMTP, Sieve, CalDAV) are open, but the implementation is not. Forward Email remains the only entrant in this category with a published codebase.
Verdict
Migadu is the flat-rate independent alternative to per-user mailbox hosting for operators whose scale has passed the point where per-seat pricing bites. Three or four mailboxes on two domains is roughly where the arithmetic tips in its favour; a twenty-mailbox operation across ten domains lands at $29 per month, which no per-seat competitor comes close to matching. EU hosting, no ad model, and support run by the postmasters rather than a call centre are all bonuses.
The trade-offs are legible. There is no Masked Email equivalent, no JMAP, no US data centre, and no transactional-sending capability worth relying on. Operators who genuinely need any one of those should look at Fastmail (Masked Email, JMAP, US region option) or at a dedicated relay layered alongside. For every other operator running email across multiple custom domains, Migadu is the price-shape most likely to be worth switching to.