Microsoft 365 Business is the default: Exchange-hosted email plus, depending on tier, the desktop Office suite, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and increasingly Copilot. You pay per user, per month, and the bill scales linearly with headcount.
TrekMail is hosted email for your own domains at a flat monthly price per tier — no per-mailbox fee. You get webmail plus standard IMAP/SMTP/CalDAV, so it works with the Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, or Thunderbird apps you already use. It also routes each domain through its own SMTP provider (their managed SMTP, Postmark, Resend, SES, Mailgun) and generates MX/SPF/DKIM/DMARC/MTA-STS records for you.
In plain English: Microsoft 365 charges by the mailbox. TrekMail charges by the plan. For a 3-person shop that's a small difference. For a 15-person shop or an agency running mailboxes across many client domains, it's the difference between a $40 bill and a $400 bill.
| Plan | Per-seat / flat price | 5 mailboxes / month | Desktop Office apps? | What it includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TrekMail Starter | Flat ~$5/mo (ClickBank offer); ~$3.50/mo at the vendor's annual rate ($42/yr) | ~$5 total | No (bring your own app) | Multi-domain mailboxes, DNS + deliverability tooling, IMAP/SMTP/CalDAV, their managed SMTP or bring-your-own provider |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $7.00/user/mo (paid yearly) | $35.00 total | No (web/mobile only) | Custom domain email, web + mobile Office apps, Teams (chat and meetings), 1 TB OneDrive, no desktop apps |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot | $23.50/user/mo (paid yearly) | $117.50 total | Yes | Everything in Basic plus full desktop Office, Teams with phone/meetings, SharePoint, 1 TB OneDrive, Copilot in apps |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot | $32.00/user/mo (paid yearly) | $160.00 total | Yes | Everything in Standard plus identity, device and email threat protection, policy-based management |
Verify TrekMail limits at checkout. The ClickBank order form and trekmail.net have shown different prices and tier limits across October–November 2026 (ClickBank listing Starter at $5/mo; vendor annual billing lower). Tier configs also changed on the vendor page — check both pages before you pay, and note the −15% annual promo (code ONEYEAR15) visible on trekmail.net in early November 2026.
Scale that table: at 15 mailboxes — a small crew with a few shared inboxes — TrekMail's Pro tier is ~$8–10 flat. Microsoft 365 Basic is $105, Standard is $352.50. The per-seat model punishes headcount; the flat model doesn't.
| Your situation | Pick |
|---|---|
| You need professional @yourdomain.com email; your team works in Gmail/Outlook apps already; headcount or shared inboxes are growing | TrekMail flat plan |
| Your team lives in the desktop Office apps and Teams daily | Microsoft 365 Business Standard (+Copilot) |
| One-person shop; 1–2 mailboxes; you want Microsoft's ecosystem and don't mind $7–23/mo | Either — cost gap is small; pick by app preference |
| Agency or multi-brand operator running mailboxes across client domains | TrekMail (flat multi-domain) — this is its natural shape |
| You carry client data, need managed devices, identity protection, or compliance posture | Microsoft 365 Business Premium — the security is the purchase |
| You need calendar sharing + a real collaboration hub, not just email | Microsoft 365 (Teams/SharePoint are the reason) |
If email is the job, don't buy the suite to get it. The most common small-business Microsoft 365 buy is a $7–23 per-seat plan used 90% for Outlook. A flat-price host handles that for ~$5 total, works with the email app you already use, and scales without the per-head tax. Buy Microsoft 365 when you genuinely use the suite, the collaboration tools, or the security layer — those are real products worth real money.
Whichever way you lean, verify the current price on the vendor's own page the day you buy — both vendors change pricing and promos frequently.
Different email hosts fit different businesses — and so do different automation stacks. We build websites, lead-capture, and follow-up systems for small businesses, and we'll tell you straight whether a change is worth it.
See what we buildPrefer to talk? Text us your name at 838-202-5054 and we'll call you back — pricing is discussed one-on-one.