What is the actual cost difference between Mailforge and Infraforge for the same fleet?

At 200 mailboxes, Mailforge runs ~$484/mo. The same 200 mailboxes on Infraforge runs ~$789/mo: 200 x $3.50 + $99 IP block + 30 x $2 SSL/masking. The dedicated-IP upgrade is roughly 63 percent more expensive. The upgrade is in-account (no migration friction), but the price step is significant.

How does shared-pool IP reputation actually affect deliverability?

Senders on the same IP pool share reputation. If another customer on your pool sends to bad lists or triggers spam complaints, the pool's sender reputation degrades and your inboxing rate drops with it. Salesforge actively manages pool composition (10,000+ customers suggests good diversification), but pool composition is not publicly auditable and individual customers cannot inspect their pool peers before provisioning.

Does Mailforge offer Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 mailboxes?

No. Mailforge is SMTP-only. Teams needing GWS or M365 mailboxes have to use a different provider (Zapmail for GWS-only, InboxKit for both). The SMTP-only architecture is part of why Mailforge is cheap; provisioning real provider-backed mailboxes costs more (which is why InboxKit's tiered pricing for GWS/M365/Azure runs $3.10-$2.50 per mailbox depending on tier while Mailforge's $2-$3 per mailbox is SMTP-only).

Should I start on Mailforge if I might need dedicated IPs in 6 months?

Yes if you are inside the Salesforge ecosystem. The in-account upgrade path from Mailforge to Infraforge is friction-free: same login, same masterbox, same DNS state. You can start cheap on Mailforge and migrate to Infraforge when shared-pool variability becomes a constraint, without re-onboarding. For buyers outside the Salesforge ecosystem, the upgrade-path advantage does not apply and a different provider might fit better.

Mailforge Pricing: Full Breakdown

Full breakdown of Mailforge pricing per mailbox, the shared IP trade-off, and how it compares to InboxKit and other infrastructure providers.

By Akshay Prasath

6 min readUpdated Mar 2026

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Bottom line

Mailforge is the entry tier of the Salesforge infrastructure stack, priced explicitly for the shared-IP commodity-mailbox segment. The published rate ($2-$3 per SMTP mailbox depending on volume) puts a 200-mailbox fleet around $484/mo, roughly 70 percent cheaper than provisioning the same 200 mailboxes directly through Google Workspace at retail. The pricing model assumes you accept three trade-offs: shared IPs across the customer base (no isolation), no bundled deliverability tooling (warmup, verification, placement testing all live elsewhere), and SMTP-only architecture (no native GWS or M365 option).

Teams already inside the Salesforge ecosystem treat Mailforge as the natural starting point with a clean in-account upgrade path to Infraforge when dedicated IPs become a requirement. Teams shopping cold and comparing across vendor families see less of this structural advantage.

Mailforge Plans

Plan	Price	What you get	Watch out for
SMTP Mailboxes per mailbox, shared IPs	$2-$3/mailbox/mo	SMTP mailboxes on shared IP infrastructure Automated DNS setup Bulk DNS updates Domain transferring SSL and domain masking Multiple workspaces	Shared IP infrastructure only No built-in warmup No inbox placement testing No email verifier or blacklist checker SMTP only, no Google Workspace or Microsoft 365

What's Not Included

Shared IP composition is the variable buyers cannot inspect

Mailforge's shared IP pools mean your sender reputation is influenced by the behavior of every other Mailforge customer on the same pool. Salesforge does not publish IP pool composition rules, neighbor screening criteria, or a mechanism to query which pool a new mailbox lands on. The 10,000+ customer base suggests strong pool diversification at the provider level, but individual buyers cannot audit their specific pool. For high-volume senders, this is the structural reason to upgrade to Infraforge for dedicated IP isolation.

Indirect (variable deliverability based on pool composition)

The per-mailbox rate spread is volume-bracket driven and not published transparently

The $2-$3 range reflects volume bracketing: smaller fleets land closer to $3, larger fleets approach $2. The exact bracket thresholds (does 50 mailboxes get $3 or $2.50?) are not on the public pricing page. A buyer modeling cost should assume the higher end of the range unless sales has confirmed a specific bracket. The 33 percent variability between the floor and ceiling of the range is material at scale: 200 mailboxes at $3 is $600/mo, at $2 is $400/mo.

Up to $200/mo variability at 200-mailbox scale

In-account upgrade to Infraforge changes the bill significantly

If shared IPs become a constraint, the Salesforge ecosystem upgrade path moves the fleet from Mailforge ($2-$3/mailbox) to Infraforge ($3-$4/mailbox plus a $99/mo dedicated IP fee). For a 100-mailbox fleet, this shifts the monthly bill from $200-$300 to $399-$499. The upgrade is technically in-account (same login, same masterbox, same DNS state), so there is no migration friction, but the price jump is roughly 70-100 percent and not always anticipated by buyers who started on Mailforge for cost reasons.

70-100 percent monthly bill increase on Infraforge upgrade

No bundled deliverability tooling at any tier

Mailforge ships SMTP mailboxes and DNS automation. There is no warmup, no inbox placement testing, no email verifier, no blacklist monitor at any tier. These tools have to come from your sending platform or standalone services. Teams running barebones sequencers without bundled deliverability tooling face $75-$200/mo in standalone tool costs that do not appear on the Mailforge bill.

$75-$200/mo in unbundled deliverability tooling

Mailforge bill at typical fleet configurations

Usage scenario	Monthly cost	Notes
30 mailboxes, 5 domains	$60-$90/mo	30 x $2-$3, with SSL and domain masking included. Small fleets land at the higher end of the rate band; the cheapest configuration in the category at this volume.
100 mailboxes, 15 domains	$200-$300/mo	100 x $2-$3. The volume bracket should drop the rate closer to $2.50 at this scale; confirm with sales. Cheaper than InboxKit ($250) at the low end of the bracket, comparable at the high end.
200 mailboxes, 30 domains	~$484/mo	200 x ~$2.42. The publicized 71-percent savings over direct GWS provisioning applies most cleanly at this fleet size. Salesforge's reference configuration.
500 mailboxes, 75 domains	$1,000-$1,250/mo	500 x $2-$2.50. Above this scale, Mailforge's shared IP architecture starts to feel like a constraint, and most teams begin evaluating the Infraforge upgrade for dedicated IP isolation.
Same 200-mailbox fleet upgraded to Infraforge	~$789/mo	200 x $3.50 + $99 IP block + 30 x $2 SSL = $789. Roughly 63 percent more than the same Mailforge fleet ($484). The cost gap is the price of dedicated IP isolation within the Salesforge ecosystem.

Mailforge as the Salesforge ecosystem entry tier

Mailforge is not a standalone product; it is the shared-IP entry tier of the Salesforge infrastructure stack. The pricing strategy assumes most cold email teams start with shared IPs at low cost, grow into needing dedicated isolation, and eventually upgrade to Infraforge ($3-$4 per mailbox plus $99 IP block fee) within the same vendor account. The platform claims 10,000+ businesses on Mailforge, which is the largest customer count in the Salesforge ecosystem and reflects the entry-tier positioning.

The in-account upgrade path is the structural advantage. Moving from Mailforge to Infraforge happens within the existing Salesforge account: same login, same masterbox interface, same DNS automation state, same domain inventory. Mailboxes can be migrated to the dedicated-IP fabric without re-provisioning.

For teams already inside the Salesforge ecosystem (running Salesforge sequences or other Salesforge products), Mailforge is the default starting point because the upgrade path is friction-free. For teams outside the Salesforge ecosystem, Mailforge's pricing is competitive on raw rate but does not benefit from the upgrade-path advantage. The buyer is paying for an entry tier without the future-path value baked in.

Key takeaways

Mailforge is the entry tier; Infraforge is the dedicated-IP upgrade
In-account upgrade path means no migration friction
10,000+ businesses on the platform reflect entry-tier positioning
Salesforge-ecosystem buyers extract more value than cold buyers

The shared-IP economics that make Mailforge structurally cheap

Mailforge's $2-$3 per mailbox is achievable because the IP infrastructure is shared across the entire customer base. One IP pool handles many senders, which amortizes the underlying IP cost (each clean IP is expensive to acquire and maintain) across many mailboxes. Dedicated-IP architectures invert this economics: one IP per customer means the IP cost is borne by a single buyer, which is why Infraforge charges $99/mo per IP block on top of the per-mailbox rate.

The shared-IP trade-off is not theoretical. Customers on the same IP pool share sender reputation: when one customer's sending hygiene degrades, the pool's reputation degrades and every customer on that pool feels it. The 10,000+ customer base suggests Salesforge actively manages pool composition and probably segments pools by sending patterns, but the management approach is not publicly documented and individual buyers cannot inspect their specific pool composition.

For low-to-mid-volume senders running well-warmed sequences with strong list hygiene, the shared-pool economics work well because pool-wide reputation issues are infrequent. For high-volume senders where each percentage point of inbox placement is meaningful revenue, the shared-pool variability becomes the case for upgrading to dedicated IPs.

Key takeaways

Shared IP pools amortize IP cost across many senders
Pool reputation is shared; one bad sender affects pool peers
Pool composition not publicly auditable
Shared-pool variability is the case for upgrading to Infraforge

What Mailforge bundles versus what it does not

Mailforge bundles 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. These are the operational features that matter at scale and most providers also include. What Mailforge does not bundle: email warmup, inbox placement testing, email verifier, blacklist monitor.

These deliverability-layer tools are explicitly outside the product scope and have to come from the sending platform or standalone services. The unbundled approach is a deliberate architectural choice: Salesforge treats deliverability tooling as the sending platform's job (their own Salesforge sequencer covers it, and they trust competitors' sequencers to handle it for non-Salesforge users). The pricing implication: teams using a sending platform with native deliverability tooling get the cheap raw mailboxes and pay for nothing they do not use.

Teams running barebones sequencers without bundled deliverability face $75-$200/mo in standalone tool costs that erode the Mailforge cost advantage. The total-cost comparison depends entirely on which side of that line the buyer's sending stack sits.

Key takeaways

Bundled: DNS, SSL, masking, multi-workspace, bulk updates
Not bundled: warmup, verifier, placement testing, blacklist monitor
Salesforge treats deliverability as sending-platform responsibility
Total cost depends on sending platform's bundled tooling

When Mailforge's pricing model structurally fits

Mailforge fits cleanly for three buyer profiles. First, Salesforge ecosystem buyers running Salesforge sequences who want the cheapest infrastructure tier with the optional upgrade path to Infraforge. The ecosystem alignment makes the in-account upgrade trivial when needed.

Second, mid-volume cold email teams running a sending platform that already covers warmup and placement testing (Smartlead, Instantly, SendKit); the raw mailbox rate is the cheapest path to provisioning 100-500 SMTP mailboxes. Third, cost-driven solo operators and small agencies who can tolerate shared IPs and want to minimize infrastructure spend. Mailforge does not fit cleanly for teams that need bundled deliverability monitoring (InboxKit handles this better at a slightly higher rate), teams that need Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 mailboxes (Zapmail or InboxKit handle these), or teams that already know they need dedicated IPs (Infraforge is the direct path).

The structural fit is "commodity SMTP at scale on shared IPs for teams with deliverability tooling elsewhere."

Key takeaways

Best fit: Salesforge ecosystem buyers with upgrade path optionality
Best fit: mid-volume teams with sending-platform deliverability tooling
Best fit: cost-driven solos and small agencies on shared IPs
Poor fit: bundled-deliverability buyers, GWS/M365 buyers, dedicated-IP buyers

Keep reading

Sources

mailforgeG2 Website

sendkitG2 Website

frequently asked questions

Got questions? We've got answers.

The shared-IP architecture amortizes IP cost across many senders. One IP pool serves many customers, so each customer's share of the underlying IP infrastructure cost is small. Dedicated-IP architectures (like Infraforge) charge $99/mo per IP block because the IP is allocated to a single customer; the same IP cost is borne by one buyer instead of many.

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