Email on your own domain, set up today, with one person at XgenPlus who knows your startup by name
Most Indian startups begin on Zoho's free plan or on Gmail addresses, then hit the fifth user, the missing IMAP, or the first investor who asks why the deck came from a gmail.com address. XgenPlus gives a startup what a large company gets: email on your domain from ₹21 a user, hosted in India, working in Outlook and on every phone, department addresses like founders@ and support@ at no extra cost, sending from your app over SMTP or the API, and a Startup Desk that replies within a business day.
XgenPlus for startups is business email on your own domain from an Indian company: plans from ₹21 per user per month billed yearly, a 30-day trial at ₹2 per user, mailboxes hosted in Indian data centres, IMAP, SMTP and ActiveSync on every plan so Outlook, Apple Mail and phones just work, department addresses at no extra cost, migration from Zoho Mail free or Gmail done by our team, SMTP and API sending for your application, and a named Startup Desk contact for every startup account. Nothing to negotiate and no seat minimum. A two-founder company pays ₹504 a year before GST.
The three moments a startup outgrows free email
The sixth hire
Zoho Mail free stops at five users on one domain, 5 GB each, webmail only. When the sixth person joins, everyone moves to a paid plan together. On XgenPlus the sixth user is ₹21 a month and nobody else changes anything.
The first Outlook or iPhone
The free plans do not include IMAP, POP or ActiveSync, so the mail app on a phone or Outlook on a laptop cannot connect. Every XgenPlus plan includes all three, plus the XgenPlus apps for web, Windows, iOS and Android.
The first customer who asks where the data is
A fintech, healthtech or govtech startup gets asked by its first enterprise customer where its email lives. XgenPlus mailboxes are in Indian data centres, and the same product runs on-premise later if a contract ever demands it.
Everything a ten-person company needs from email, on day one
For the team
- Mailboxes on your domain: 2 GB at ₹21, 5 GB at ₹31, 10 GB at ₹50, 30 GB at ₹85 per user per month, billed yearly, mixed on one domain
- founders@, support@, billing@, careers@ and any other address delivered to whoever should get it, without extra mailboxes
- Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and phone mail apps over IMAP, SMTP and ActiveSync; shared calendars and contacts
- Spam and virus filtering, SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up for you, two-step login
- Xgen IM chat, VideoMeet, Xgen Office for Word and Excel files in the browser, and AI Compose on Starter Pro and above
For the founders
- A rupee invoice with GST every year, from a company registered in Jaipur, so your accountant does not chase a foreign receipt
- Migration from Zoho Mail free, Gmail or any IMAP mailbox done by our team, including mail, contacts and calendars, addresses unchanged
- Add or remove users any month; upgrades are pro-rated
- An email address in Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil or 80 other scripts beside the English one, if your customers write in their own language
- A Startup Desk contact who set up your domain and is still there a year later
Send email from your application: SMTP today, the API when you need it
Sign-up confirmations, password resets, order receipts and internal alerts can go out from your XgenPlus domain without a second vendor. Two ways, both included in every plan.
SMTP from your app
Create a mailbox such as noreply@ or alerts@ and use its credentials with authenticated SMTP over TLS from Django, Laravel, Node, Rails, Spring or any framework that speaks SMTP. SPF and DKIM are already published for your domain, so mail from your app is signed the same way as mail from your founders. Bounces come back to the mailbox where you can read them.
Host, port and authentication settings are in your dashboard after sign-up and on the apps and settings page.
The XgenPlus API
The XgenPlus SOAP API has a messaging service with sendMAIL for text or HTML mail with CC and BCC, SendMailWithAttachment for mail with a file, and sendSMS where SMS is enabled, plus a contacts service and a calendar service. Each call authenticates with a per-user key from getSoapAuthKey. Documentation and sample Java client are in the document hub.
Where to draw the line. Notifications and receipts from a startup app fit these limits. Marketing campaigns, OTP bursts in the tens of thousands an hour, or mail on behalf of your own customers belong on a dedicated sending platform. Tell the Startup Desk your expected volume and you get an honest answer about which side of the line you are on, and the SMTP settings either way.
What a startup pays for a year of email, before GST
Published list prices, billed yearly. Google prices are the reseller-supported Starter plan at ₹270; Google's ₹99 Base plan is self-service and limited. Zoho figures are its free plan, which has no IMAP, and the reseller-listed Mail Lite price after that.
| Team | XgenPlus Starter, 2 GB | XgenPlus Premium, 10 GB | Zoho Mail | Google Workspace Starter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 founders | ₹504 | ₹1,200 | ₹0, webmail only | ₹6,480 |
| 6 people | ₹1,512 | ₹3,600 | about ₹4,250 on Mail Lite, all six paid | ₹19,440 |
| 25 people | ₹6,300 | ₹15,000 | about ₹17,700 on Mail Lite | ₹81,000 |
Zoho Mail Lite is listed by Indian resellers at ₹59 per user per month on yearly billing for the 5 GB plan; the figure above uses that. Check the vendors' pages for today's price.
Try it first: the 30-day trial is ₹2 per user, full mailboxes on your real domain.
What founders ask before they move
We are on Zoho Mail free. Can you move us without losing mail?
Yes. Our team migrates mail, contacts and calendars from Zoho Mail, Gmail or any IMAP mailbox, then switches the domain's MX records on a day you choose. Addresses stay the same. Zoho's free plan has no IMAP, so the migration uses your admin export; the Startup Desk walks you through it.
What does the Startup Desk actually do?
One named person at XgenPlus looks after every startup account from the first email onwards: domain and DNS setup, the migration, department addresses, the SMTP settings for your app, and any question later. Replies within one business day, usually much sooner, by email or phone. It is not a ticket queue.
Can our app send transactional email through XgenPlus?
Yes, for the volumes a startup app sends: confirmations, resets, receipts, alerts. Use authenticated SMTP from a mailbox such as noreply@, or the SOAP API's sendMAIL method. For marketing campaigns or very large OTP volumes, use a dedicated sending platform and keep XgenPlus for the team's mail; the Startup Desk will tell you which you need.
Is there a startup discount?
The list price is the startup price: ₹21 per user per month on the 2 GB plan, ₹50 on the 10 GB plan, billed yearly, with a 30-day trial at ₹2 per user. There is no minimum number of users and no contract beyond the year you pay for.
Do we get a GST invoice?
Yes. Every order is invoiced in rupees with GST by Data Xgen Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Jaipur, and the invoice is in your dashboard the moment the payment clears.
What happens if we grow to 200 people or need on-premise?
Nothing changes for the users. Plans go up to 30 GB and beyond, and the same XgenPlus runs on your own servers or a private cloud when a customer contract or a regulator asks for it. BSNL and several public sector companies run it that way today.
Tell us about your startup
Your domain, roughly how many people, what you use today, and whether your app needs to send mail. The Startup Desk replies within one business day with the setup plan and your named contact. Or skip the form and start the ₹2 trial now.
Read first: the first-week email checklist for a startup · Zoho Mail free plan limits
