What does a cold email stack cost per month?
Five lines make up the bill: domains, mailboxes, a sending tool, contact data and a CRM. Mailboxes and seats are the ones that grow.
The short answer
- A cold email stack costs the sum of five lines: sending domains, mailboxes, a sending tool, contact data and a CRM.
- Mailboxes are the steady cost: Google Workspace Business Starter is $7 a mailbox a month on monthly billing, per Google's pricing page in September 2026.
- A sending tool such as Instantly starts at $47 a month for 5,000 emails, and contact data from Apollo starts at $49 a seat a month, both checked September 2026.
- SalesCrew Core puts the sender, the inbox, the data bank and the CRM in one $299 monthly price with unlimited seats.
The five lines on the bill
Domains come first, and they're the cheapest line. You send from lookalike domains so your main domain's reputation stays clean. Cloudflare sells them at registry cost, and a .com was $9.77 a year there in September 2026.
Mailboxes are next. Each domain usually carries two or three mailboxes, and each one is a paid user on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. At $7 a month per Google mailbox, this line grows every time you add sending capacity.
Then the tools. A sending tool rotates mailboxes and runs sequences. A data source supplies contacts. A CRM holds the deals that replies turn into. Each is its own subscription, and two of them are usually priced per seat.
Cold email stack costs, line by line
Entry prices from each vendor's own pricing page, in US dollars.
| Line | Example vendor and plan | Entry price | What makes it grow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sending domains | Cloudflare Registrar, .com | $9.77 a year per domain | Number of domains |
| Mailboxes | Google Workspace Business Starter | $7 a mailbox a month (monthly billing) | Mailboxes per domain |
| Sending tool | Instantly Outreach Growth | $47 a month for 5,000 emails | Monthly emails and uploaded contacts |
| Contact data | Apollo Basic | $49 a seat a month | Seats and credits |
| CRM | Salesforce Starter Suite | $25 a user a month | Users |
| Sender, inbox, data bank and CRM (our product) | SalesCrew Core | $299 a month, unlimited seats | The plan, never the headcount |
Figures checked on cloudflare.com, workspace.google.com/pricing, instantly.ai/pricing, apollo.io/pricing and salesforce.com/sales/pricing, September 2026. SalesCrew figures from salescrew.io/pricing.
A worked example for a small program
Take three .com domains with two Google mailboxes each. The domains cost 3 × $9.77, or $29.31 a year. The six mailboxes cost 6 × $7, or $42 a month. That's the infrastructure any stack needs, whatever sits on top.
Your tool lines depend on how many people log in. A sender priced by volume stays flat as the team grows, but a data tool and a CRM priced per seat add a charge for every rep, manager and client who needs a login.
SalesCrew collapses those tool lines. Core is $299 a month with unlimited seats, and it runs cadences on your own mailbox pool with per-mailbox and per-domain daily caps. Suppression is re-checked at send time, and replies land in the same inbox as the pipeline. If you already buy from Apollo, SalesCrew uses it as a data source that imports into the data bank. Try the cold email volume calculator to size your mailboxes, then compare SalesCrew's plans.
The cheapest stack on paper leaks replies
Questions
- How much do mailboxes for cold email cost?
- Google Workspace Business Starter is $7 a user a month on monthly billing, per workspace.google.com/pricing checked in September 2026. Each sending mailbox is a user. Six mailboxes cost $42 a month before any tool on top.
- How much does a cold email domain cost?
- Cloudflare Registrar sells domains at registry cost with no markup, and a .com was $9.77 a year there when checked in September 2026. Most programs buy several domains so no single one carries all the volume. Three .com domains at that price come to $29.31 a year.
- What does a cold email sending tool cost?
- Instantly's Outreach Growth plan is $47 a month for 5,000 emails and 1,000 uploaded contacts, with unlimited email accounts and warmup, per instantly.ai/pricing in September 2026. Lead credits are a second subscription, from $47 a month.
- Can one tool replace the sender and the CRM?
- Yes. SalesCrew Core is $299 a month with unlimited seats and runs multi-step cadences on your own mailbox pool, with per-mailbox and per-domain daily caps. The same instance holds the data bank, the unified inbox and the pipeline, so replies land beside the deal.