Bottom line
Mailforge sits as the entry tier of the Salesforge infrastructure stack, priced explicitly for the shared-IP, commodity-mailbox segment of the market. Its published rate ($2-$3 per SMTP mailbox depending on volume) puts a 200-mailbox fleet at around $484/mo, roughly 70 percent cheaper than provisioning those same 200 mailboxes directly through Google Workspace at retail. That pricing depends on accepting three trade-offs: shared IPs across the entire customer base (no isolation), no bundled deliverability tooling (warmup, verification, and placement testing all live elsewhere), and an SMTP-only architecture with no native GWS or M365 option.
Teams already inside the Salesforge ecosystem treat Mailforge as the natural entry point, with a clean in-account upgrade path to Infraforge once dedicated IPs become necessary. Teams shopping cold across vendor families see less of that structural advantage.
How Sendbox compares
Sendbox plans start at $99/mo with dedicated IPs and the full deliverability suite included on every tier — no add-ons required.
Mailforge Plans
| Plan | Price | What you get | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMTP Mailboxes billed per mailbox, on shared IPs | $2-$3/mailbox/mo |
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What Mailforge actually costs at typical fleet sizes
| Usage scenario | Monthly cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 30 mailboxes, 5 domains | $60-$90/mo | 30 mailboxes at $2-$3 each, SSL and domain masking included. Small fleets land at the higher end of the rate band, but this is still the cheapest configuration in the category at this volume. |
| 100 mailboxes, 15 domains | $200-$300/mo | 100 mailboxes at $2-$3 each. The volume bracket should bring the rate closer to $2.50 at this size, but confirm with sales. Cheaper than InboxKit ($250) at the low end of the bracket, roughly comparable at the high end. |
| 200 mailboxes, 30 domains | ~$484/mo | 200 mailboxes averaging ~$2.42 each. Salesforge's headline 71-percent savings over direct GWS provisioning applies most cleanly at this fleet size — it's essentially their reference configuration. |
| 500 mailboxes, 75 domains | $1,000-$1,250/mo | 500 mailboxes at $2-$2.50 each. Past this scale, Mailforge's shared-IP architecture starts feeling like a genuine constraint, and most teams begin weighing the Infraforge upgrade for dedicated IP isolation. |
| Same 200-mailbox fleet upgraded to Infraforge | ~$789/mo | 200 mailboxes at $3.50 each, plus the $99 IP block, plus 30 domains at $2 for SSL — $789 total. That's roughly 63 percent more than the same fleet on Mailforge ($484), essentially the price of dedicated IP isolation inside the Salesforge ecosystem. |
Mailforge as the Salesforge ecosystem entry tier
Mailforge isn't a standalone product — it's the shared-IP entry tier of the Salesforge infrastructure stack. The pricing strategy assumes most cold email teams start cheap on shared IPs, grow into needing dedicated isolation, and eventually upgrade to Infraforge ($3-$4 per mailbox plus the $99 IP block fee) within the same vendor account. Mailforge claims 10,000-plus businesses, the largest customer count anywhere in the Salesforge ecosystem, which reflects its entry-tier positioning.
The structural advantage is that in-account upgrade path. Moving from Mailforge to Infraforge happens inside the existing Salesforge account — same login, same masterbox interface, same DNS automation state, same domain inventory. Mailboxes migrate to the dedicated-IP fabric without needing to re-provision anything.
For teams already inside the Salesforge ecosystem, running Salesforge sequences or other Salesforge products, Mailforge is the default starting point precisely because that upgrade path is friction-free. For teams outside the ecosystem, Mailforge's pricing is competitive on raw rate but doesn't get the benefit of that upgrade-path advantage. They're paying for an entry tier without the future-path value baked in.
Key takeaways
- Mailforge is the entry tier; Infraforge is the dedicated-IP step up
- The in-account upgrade path means zero migration friction
- 10,000+ businesses on the platform reflects its entry-tier role
- Salesforge-ecosystem buyers get more value out of it than cold buyers do
What Mailforge bundles versus what it does not
Mailforge bundles the infrastructure-layer features: automated DNS configuration (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX), bulk DNS updates across many domains at once, domain transferring, SSL certificate management, domain masking for tracking-link rewriting, and multi-workspace support for separating client books or campaign cohorts. Those are the operational features that matter at scale, and most providers offer them too. What it doesn't bundle: email warmup, placement testing, an email verifier, or a blacklist monitor.
Those deliverability-layer tools sit explicitly outside the product and have to come from the sending platform or a standalone service. That's a deliberate architectural choice — Salesforge treats deliverability tooling as the sending platform's job, since their own Salesforge sequencer covers it and they trust competitors' sequencers to handle it for everyone else. The pricing consequence: teams already using a sending platform with native deliverability tooling get cheap raw mailboxes and pay for nothing they don't use.
Teams running barebones sequencers without that coverage face $75-$200/mo in standalone tool costs that eat into the Mailforge cost advantage. Which side of that line your sending stack sits on determines the real total-cost comparison.
Key takeaways
- Bundled: DNS, SSL, masking, multi-workspace support, bulk updates
- Not bundled: warmup, verifier, placement testing, blacklist monitor
- Salesforge treats deliverability as the sending platform's job, not theirs
- Total cost hinges on what your sending platform already bundles
When Mailforge's pricing model structurally fits
Mailforge fits cleanly for three kinds of buyers. First, Salesforge-ecosystem buyers running Salesforge sequences who want the cheapest infrastructure tier and the option to upgrade to Infraforge later — the ecosystem alignment makes that in-account upgrade trivial whenever it's needed. Second, mid-volume cold email teams running a sending platform that already covers warmup and placement testing (Smartlead, Instantly, Sendbox), for whom the raw mailbox rate is the cheapest path to 100-500 SMTP mailboxes.
Third, cost-driven solo operators and small agencies who can live with shared IPs and want to keep infrastructure spend minimal. It fits less cleanly for teams that need bundled deliverability monitoring (InboxKit handles that better at a slightly higher rate), teams that want Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 mailboxes (Zapmail or InboxKit cover those), or teams that already know dedicated IPs are non-negotiable (Infraforge is the direct route). The structural fit here is "commodity SMTP at scale on shared IPs, for teams whose deliverability tooling lives somewhere else."
Key takeaways
- Best fit: Salesforge-ecosystem buyers who want the upgrade path optionality
- Best fit: mid-volume teams whose sending platform already covers deliverability
- Best fit: cost-driven solo operators and small agencies comfortable on shared IPs
- Poor fit: buyers wanting bundled deliverability, GWS/M365, or dedicated IPs
Keep reading
Got questions? We've got answers.
Still stuck? Talk to us →Because the shared-IP architecture spreads IP cost across many senders at once. One pool serves many customers, so each customer's share of the underlying infrastructure cost stays small. Dedicated-IP setups like Infraforge charge $99/mo per IP block because that IP is allocated to exactly one customer — the same underlying cost, just borne by one buyer instead of many.
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