What This Stuff
Actually Costs
Entry prices and free-tier terms for 43tools, each one read off the vendor’s own pricing page rather than a review site. Every row carries the date it was checked.
Last verified 2026-07-28
Prices are quoted in whatever currency the vendor publishes. We do not convert between currencies here, because a made-up conversion is how a reference page starts lying. Where a vendor prices in GBP for UK buyers, it says so.
Free to reuse with attribution. If a number is wrong, tell us and we will re-check it against the source.
Email hosting
Custom-domain business email. The cheap end is genuinely cheap, and the gap between $1 and $12 per user buys far less than the pricing pages imply.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Self-host | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho MailCheapest credible paid tier with a free option behind it. | 5 users, free | $1.00 / user / mo (Mail Lite) | No | |
| iCloud+ Custom Email DomainOnly sensible if the whole business is already on Apple devices. | None (paid only) | $1.19 / mo (200 GB tier) | No | |
| MigaduPriced per domain, not per mailbox — unusual and good for tiny teams. | None | $1.85 / mo (Micro, annual) | No | |
| Proton MailSwiss jurisdiction, relevant if your buyers ask about EU data handling. | Yes (limited, no custom domain) | $3.99 / user / mo (Proton Unlimited) | No | |
| Fastmail | None | $5.00 / user / mo | No | |
| Google Workspace | 14-day trial | $7.20 / user / mo | No | |
| Microsoft 365 Business BasicBusiness Standard is $12.50 / user / mo. | 30-day trial | $9.99 / user / mo (Basic) | No | |
| mailcow (self-hosted)Deliverability is the real cost here, not the hosting. | Free software, you pay for the VPS | $0 software + roughly $5 / mo VPS | Yes |
Working from our email hosting guide.
Scheduling and booking
Calendly alternatives. This is the one category where a one-time payment and a genuinely self-hostable option both still exist.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Self-host | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doodle | Group polls free | $7.50 / mo (Pro) | No | |
| Calendly | 1 user, 1 event type | $10 / seat / mo (Standard) | No | |
| SavvyCal | 1 user, limited features | $12 / mo (Premium) | No | |
| Setmore | Up to 4 users | $12 / mo (Pro) | No | |
| YouCanBookMe | 1 calendar, payments | $13 / mo (Pro) | No | |
| Cal.comAGPL-3.0. Self-host and the seat price goes away entirely. | 1 user, unlimited events, 1 calendar | $15 / seat / mo (Teams) | Yes | |
| Acuity Scheduling | 1 calendar | $20 / mo (Emerging) | No | |
| TidyCalOne-time payment, not a subscription. | 1 user, 1 calendar | $29 one-time (lifetime) | No |
Working from our scheduling and booking guide.
Project management
Jira alternatives for teams under ten people. Note how many of these price in GBP for UK buyers and USD for US ones — the sticker price is not the same number everywhere.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Self-host | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trello | Free for up to 10 users | $5 / user / mo (Standard, annual) | No | |
| ClickUp | Free forever | $7 / user / mo (Unlimited, annual) | No | |
| JiraThe baseline everything else on this row is measured against. | Free up to 10 users | $7.91 / user / mo | No | |
| Monday.comPublished in GBP for UK buyers. | Free for up to 2 users | £8 / seat / mo (Basic, annual) | No | |
| AsanaPublished in GBP for UK buyers. | Free for up to 2 users | £8.49 / user / mo (Starter, annual) | No | |
| BasecampThe only mainstream option with a flat, non-per-seat plan. | Free for 1 project | $15 / user / mo (Plus), or $299 flat (Pro Unlimited) | No |
Working from our project management guide.
Password managers
The category where self-hosting is genuinely free and genuinely easy. Vaultwarden speaks the Bitwarden protocol, so every official client just works against it.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Self-host | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VaultwardenBitwarden-compatible, so the official apps work unmodified. | Free, self-hosted | Free (you pay for the server) | Yes | |
| NordPassHeadline price is an introductory rate, it renews higher. | Yes (1 user) | about $1.43 / mo Personal, about $1.99 / user / mo Business | No | |
| Bitwarden | Yes (1 user, unlimited devices) | $1.65 / mo Personal, $4 / user / mo Teams | Yes | |
| 1Password | No (14-day trial only) | $2.99 / mo Individual, $19.95 / mo Teams Starter (10 seats) | No | |
| Dashlane | Yes (25 passwords) | $4 / user / mo (Credential Protection) | No | |
| Passbolt | Yes (Community, self-hosted) | $5 / user / mo (Business, cloud) | Yes |
Working from our password managers guide.
Cloud storage and file sharing
The only category here with real lifetime deals. pCloud and Icedrive price in GBP for UK buyers, which is shown as published rather than converted.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Self-host | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft OneDrive | 5 GB | $1.99 / mo (Basic, 100 GB) | No | |
| Google Drive | 15 GB | $1.99 / mo (400 GB tier) | No | |
| Nextcloud (self-hosted) | Free, open source | about $5 / mo VPS | Yes | |
| Seafile (self-hosted)Fastest sync of the self-hosted options on large libraries. | Free, open source | about $5 / mo VPS | Yes | |
| IcedrivePublished in GBP. | 10 GB | £59 / yr (2 TB Pro) | No | |
| DropboxPublished in GBP. | 2 GB | £7.99 / mo (Plus, 2 TB) | No | |
| Sync.comEnd-to-end encrypted, zero-knowledge. | 5 GB | $11.86 / mo (Solo Unlimited) | No | |
| pCloudOne of the few genuine lifetime deals left. | 10 GB | $49.99 / yr, or £199 lifetime (500 GB) | No |
Working from our cloud storage and file sharing guide.
Form builders
The free tiers here are unusually generous, so the paid price matters less than where each tool puts its response cap.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Self-host | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Forms | Unlimited forms and responses | Free (no paid tier) | No | |
| Formbricks | Self-hosted, unlimited | Free (open source) | Yes | |
| OpnFormClosest self-hosted equivalent to Typeform. | Self-hosted, unlimited | Free (open source) | Yes | |
| Fillout | Unlimited forms and seats, 1,000 responses / mo | $19 / mo (Standard) | No | |
| TallyThe free tier is the product, Pro is mostly branding removal. | Unlimited forms and responses | $24 / mo (Pro) | No | |
| Typeform | 100 responses / mo | $39 / mo (Basic) | No | |
| JotformHIPAA-capable plans, which most of this category lacks. | 5 forms, 100 submissions / mo | $39 / mo (Bronze) | No |
Working from our form builders guide.
How this is maintained
A job re-fetches every source URL on the first of each month and flags anything that looks like it moved. It never rewrites a price on its own, because a number changed by a script nobody read is worse than a number with an honest date next to it. Corrections are made by hand against the vendor page.
Two honest limits. Roughly half these vendors render pricing with JavaScript, so the checker reports those as unreadable rather than guessing at them. And several geo-detect: Google Workspace serves GBP to a UK address and USD to a US one, so the checker compares each currency separately instead of reading a currency switch as a price change. Where a row is quoted in GBP, that is the currency the vendor actually published to a UK buyer.