Shipmail (shipmail.to) is a genuinely nice product aimed at a slightly different problem: business email hosting, on your own domain, that an agent can also drive. Webmail, IMAP, SMTP, JMAP, shared inboxes, newsletters, 15–25 GB per mailbox, a REST API, an MCP server, webhooks, TypeScript and Python SDKs and a CLI. If a person and an agent share responsibility for the same mailbox, that is the design.
Bottom line: Shipmail prices like a mailbox host, because it is one. Storage and features are sized for humans, and $2.50 per mailbox per month is reasonable for a human mailbox and expensive for an agent that owns three of them. At 100 inboxes Shipmail is $250/mo against Dead Simple Email's $29, and Shipmail stops at 300 mailboxes where Dead Simple Email's $99 plan carries 500.
Pricing Comparison
Figures as read on 2026-09-16.
| Tier | Dead Simple Email | Shipmail |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 5 inboxes · 5,000 emails/mo · no card | None — 14-day trial, card required |
| Entry paid | $5/mo — 15 inboxes, 15,000 emails | $4/mo — 2 mailboxes, 20,000 sends |
| Small team | $5/mo covers 15 | $9/mo — 4 mailboxes · $29/mo — 12 mailboxes |
| Mid | $29/mo — 100 inboxes, 100,000 emails | $250/mo — 100 mailboxes at $2.50 each |
| Top published | $99/mo — 500 inboxes, 500,000 emails | $750/mo — 300 mailboxes (the published ceiling) |
| Cost per inbox at the top | $0.20 | $2.50 |
| Storage | Pooled, 500 MB to 10 GB by plan | 15–25 GB per mailbox |
The per-mailbox number is the whole story: $2.50 against $0.20 is 12.5x. That premium buys 25 GB of storage and a webmail client per mailbox, which is excellent value for an employee and dead weight for an agent that keeps a few thousand short messages.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Dead Simple Email | Shipmail |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes — 5 inboxes, no card, no expiry | No — 14-day trial with a card |
| Mailbox creation via API | Yes — single and bulk | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes — in the official MCP registry | Yes |
| IMAP / SMTP | Yes | Yes — plus JMAP and webmail |
| Webhooks | All plans, with delivery log and replay | All paid plans |
| SSE / WebSocket streaming | Yes — both | Not advertised |
| Verification-code / OTP extraction | Yes — dedicated endpoint | Not advertised |
| Prompt-injection scanning | Yes — scored on every inbound | Spam protection |
| Bulk inbox create / delete | Yes | Not advertised |
| Storage per inbox | Pooled across the plan | 15–25 GB each |
| Human webmail client | Dashboard, plus IMAP to any client | Yes — full webmail |
| Agent identity / OIDC sign-in | Yes — Sign in with Dead Simple | No |
| Pay per request without an API key | Yes — x402 USDC and Stripe MPP | No |
| Published ceiling | 500 inboxes at $99, higher on request | 300 mailboxes |
Where Shipmail Wins
- When a human owns the mailbox too. Full webmail, JMAP, shared inboxes and 25 GB of storage are things Dead Simple Email deliberately does not build. If the agent is assisting a person in their mailbox, Shipmail is the better-shaped product.
- Small, stable fleets. Two mailboxes for $4 is a fine price, and below about 10 mailboxes the per-mailbox premium barely registers.
- Storage-heavy workloads. If your agents receive large attachments and keep them, per-mailbox gigabytes beat a pooled allowance.
Who Should Use Dead Simple Email
- Fleets above ~12 mailboxes, where the $2.50-per-mailbox line starts compounding.
- Anyone who wants to evaluate without a card. Five inboxes free, forever, no countdown.
- Agents that provision their own addresses, through the API or through x402 and Stripe MPP with no key at all.
- Anything above 300 mailboxes, which is where Shipmail's published ladder ends.
Frequently Asked Questions
As of September 2026 Shipmail is $4/mo for 2 mailboxes, $9 for 4, $29 for 12, and $2.50 per mailbox from 13 to 300. Dead Simple Email is free for 5 inboxes, $5/mo for 15, $29/mo for 100 and $99/mo for 500. At 100 mailboxes that is $250 against $29; at 300 it is $750 against $99.
No. As of September 2026 Shipmail offers a 14-day free trial that requires a payment card, and newsletter features are unavailable during the trial. Dead Simple Email has a permanent free plan with 5 inboxes and 5,000 emails per month and no card.
Partly. Shipmail is business email hosting — webmail, IMAP, SMTP, JMAP, shared inboxes and large per-mailbox storage — with a REST API, an MCP server and webhooks layered on so agents can drive it. That is a good fit when a human and an agent share one mailbox, and an expensive fit when an agent needs dozens of its own.
Dead Simple Email. It is priced per fleet rather than per mailbox — $29/mo for 100 inboxes against Shipmail's $250 — adds verification-code extraction, prompt-injection scanning, bulk inbox operations, SSE and WebSocket streaming and pay-per-request inbox creation, and starts free with no card.
Yes, Shipmail's REST API supports programmatic mailbox creation. The difference is the cost of doing it often: each new mailbox adds $2.50/mo at scale on Shipmail, against $0.40/mo for an inbox beyond plan on Dead Simple Email, or $1.00 once through pay-per-request with no account at all.
Shipmail, if your agents keep large attachments. It gives 15–25 GB per mailbox where Dead Simple Email pools 500 MB to 10 GB across the plan and stores attachments in S3. For the short, high-volume message traffic most agent fleets generate, the pooled model is cheaper.
All Shipmail figures on this page were read from its public pricing page on 2026-09-16 and are reproduced for comparison. Vendors change prices; check the source before making a decision, and tell us if anything here is out of date. Full cross-vendor tables: AI agent email API pricing comparison.