The short answer: in 2026 a UK small business should expect to pay one of two ways for email on its own domain — a per-user price of roughly £5.40 to £7 per person per month (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace), or a flat per-business price of £4.99 to £14.99 a month that covers the whole team. For a typical five-to-ten-person firm that is the difference between £27–£70 a month and a single fiver or tenner. The pricing model matters far more than the logo on the box.
1. Per user, per month. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace price this way. It is simple to understand, but every new starter raises the bill, and the per-seat rate itself has a habit of rising at renewal. You are effectively renting seats, forever.
2. Bundled with web hosting. Most UK web hosting plans include mailboxes at no extra charge. Good value if you need a website anyway — the catch is that your email is tied to your hosting, so if you ever switch hosts badly, your inbox goes with it.
3. Flat, per business. One price for the whole team, however many people you employ. This model is rare in the UK — which is odd, because for businesses that simply need professional email that works, it is nearly always the cheapest option by a wide margin.
| Provider | Model | List price | Cost for a 10-person team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | Per user | £5.40 /user/mo ex VAT (annual commitment) | £54.00 /mo |
| Google Workspace Business Starter | Per user | £5.90 /user/mo ex VAT (annual commitment) | £59.00 /mo |
| UKBox Starter Email | Flat per business | £4.99 /mo +VAT — 10 mailboxes | £4.99 /mo |
| UKBox Secure Email | Flat per business | £8.99 /mo +VAT — 20 mailboxes | £8.99 /mo |
Per-user list prices taken from microsoft.com and workspace.google.com UK pages, August 2026, annual-commitment rates, ex VAT. Flexible monthly rates are higher.
Hiring creep. On per-user pricing, growth is a billing event. Take on four seasonal staff and your email bill rises by £250+ a year before they have sent a message.
Renewal creep. Per-seat rates are reviewed by the provider, not by you. What you signed at is not what you will be paying in three years — unless your provider holds prices in writing. We have written before about how this works in hosting: the advertised price and the renewal price are often different products.
Migration fees. Moving years of email is the job everyone fears, and some providers charge for it or leave you to do it yourself. It is worth checking a provider includes migration — done for you, with message counts verified — before you commit.
The "free email" trap. Email included with a website builder or hosting plan is only free while you stay. Check you can export mail and keep your domain without penalty.
A sole trader needs one or two mailboxes on their own domain: £4.99 a month flat, or about £5.40–£7 on a per-user plan — close to level, so choose on features.
A five-person firm is where the models separate: roughly £27–£35 a month per-user, versus £4.99–£8.99 flat. Over a three-year price hold that is a gap of over £900.
A ten-person team pays £54–£59 a month per-user versus £4.99–£8.99 flat — a difference of about £600 a year, every year, for the same addresses on the same domain.
One honest caveat, and it matters: if your team genuinely needs Teams, SharePoint and the Office desktop apps, buy Microsoft 365 — that is what you are paying the per-seat premium for, and for many businesses it is worth it. But if what you need is professional email on your own domain that simply works on Outlook, Apple Mail and your phone, there is no technical reason to pay per person.
Yes — with any credible provider you keep your domain and every address on it. The domain is yours; the provider just handles the mail.
Reliability comes from how the platform is run — server reputation, SPF, DKIM and DMARC — not from the price per seat. A properly configured £5 mailbox lands in inboxes; a poorly configured £50 one does not.
A proper migration copies every message, folder and read/unread flag to the new platform, verifies the counts match, and only then switches your mail flow. Your old inbox is never deleted during the move.
No. Customers see your address — you@yourcompany.co.uk — not your provider. Professionalism comes from the domain, which works identically on any decent email platform.
See flat-rate plans: UKBox business email hosting starts at £4.99 a month +VAT for 10 mailboxes, with free zero-loss migration, no contracts and every price held for 3 years in writing. Questions? Call 0330 088 2279 — a UK human answers.
— The UKBox team
