According to a partner who has been using Rackspace as his email provider since 1999, Rackspace’s new pricing for its email hosting services is “disastrous.”
In recent weeks, Rackspace updated its email hosting pricing. Its Standard plan is now $10 per mailbox per month. Businesses can pay an additional $2/mailbox/month for the Rackspace Email Plus add-on (“file storage, mobile sync, Office-compatible apps, and messaging”), and an additional $6/mailbox/month for the Archiving add-on (for unlimited storage).
As recently as November 2025, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, Rackspace charged $3/mailbox/month for its standard plan, and an additional $1/mailbox/month for the Email Plus add-on, and an additional $3/mailbox/month for the Archive add-on.
Rackspace’s reseller partners have been particularly vocal about the effects of the new pricing.
In a blog post Thursday, Web hosting service provider and Rackspace reseller Laughing Squid said that Rackspace is “increasing our email pricing by a whopping 706 percent, with only a month and a half’s notice.”
Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale told Ars Technica that he received the “devastating” news via email on Wednesday. The last time Rackspace raised Laughing Squid email prices was 55 percent in 2019, he said.
“The price increase has had a big impact on our ability to make money because email is now our biggest expense, and we were only given a month and a half’s notice,” Beale told Ars.
Online, there are reports of rackspace partners increasing email pricing by anywhere from 110 percent to nearly 500 percent. The new, higher-per-mailbox quote does not include volume pricing discounts, the report said. Beale said Laughing Squid’s quote did not include discounts the company previously received.
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