--- title: "What do your domain and business email really cost? The real prices" description: "A domain costs 10–20 € a year and a professional mailbox from 0 €. Where you are overcharged, what a normal price is and what to check before renewing." date: "2026-10-28" category: "Domains and email" keywords: "how much does a domain cost, domain price per year, professional email for business price, free domain with hosting, domain renewal price" portada: "/portadas/portada-cuanto-cuesta-dominio-y-correo-profesional.webp" --- A `yourbusiness.com` domain costs between 10 and 20 € a year. A professional mailbox with your name on it, between 0 and 6 € per month per person. Those are the real market figures in 2026, and they are almost never what shows up on a small business invoice. The difference between paying 15 € and paying 300 € a year for the same thing is not quality: it is who sold it to you, what the product is called on the invoice, and what happens on renewal day. Here are the reference prices and the four places where you end up paying too much. ## The three pieces mixed into a single invoice Before comparing prices, separate what you are buying: - **Domain.** The yearly rent for the address. It is a contract with a registrar (IONOS, Namecheap, DonDominio, Cloudflare…) and it has a holder, an expiry date and a renewal price. - **Email.** The `yourname@yourbusiness.com` accounts. You pay per mailbox and month, or it comes included in a plan. - **SSL certificate.** The padlock in the browser. Today it is free on every serious option: Let's Encrypt issues it at no cost and renews it automatically. When you see an invoice for "website maintenance 40 €/month" or an "annual digital pack", those three pieces are inside, with a margin you cannot see. It is not illegal. It is opaque, which is why it is so hard to tell whether you are overpaying. ## Reference prices (what it really costs) **.com domain:** 10–15 € a year for the first year; 15–20 € on renewals. Cheap registrars raise the price after year one, and that is the usual trap: 1 € the first year, 22 € the second. **.es domain:** 8–15 € a year. It is managed by Red.es through accredited registrars; it should not cost more than 20 €. **.com.es / .nom.es domain:** 5–12 € a year. Cheap, but they convey less trust to a customer who does not know you. **Professional email:** from 0 € (the mailbox included with hosting, with limits) up to 6–7 € per user per month on Google Workspace, or 1–2 € on Zoho Mail and similar providers. A barbershop with two mailboxes does not need the expensive plan; an accounting firm that archives client emails does. **SSL certificate:** 0 €. **Reasonable total for a small business:** between 25 and 120 € a year, depending on whether the email is basic or professional. If you pay considerably more, it is not a market price problem: it is that you are buying something else or someone is adding their margin. ## The four places where you pay too much **1. The hosting "free domain".** The 12 €/month pack includes domain, email and website. Sounds good until you want to change provider: the domain is free as long as you keep paying, and if you leave you lose it or it is sold back to you at ransom price. This is exactly the scenario in the article about [whose name the domain of your website is in](/blog/en/de-quien-es-el-dominio-de-tu-web). Simple rule: the domain, always in your name and in your own account, even if it costs 15 € a year separately. **2. The surprise renewal.** The first year there are 90% discounts. The second, the real price. If you have not written down the expiry date and the renewal amount, the charge goes onto your card without you looking. Check last year's invoice and compare it with this year's. **3. The "premium domain".** Some registrars label names as premium when they are not and ask 200 € for an ordinary `.com`. Before buying, search for the same name at two or three registrars. If the difference is tenfold, it is not the domain: it is the seller. **4. The SSL sold separately.** If your invoice has a line for a "security certificate" at 50 or 90 € a year, you are almost certainly paying for something your hosting already gives you for free. ## What to check in your own account today Five minutes, no technical knowledge needed: 1. **Who the holder is.** Look up the domain on `lookup.icann.org` or `who.is`. If the contact email belongs to an agency or the designer, control is not yours. 2. **When it expires.** If it expires in less than 30 days and you do not know how to renew it, that is your urgent problem of the week. 3. **How much you pay per year.** Add up the domain, email and SSL lines on your invoices. That number, divided by 12, is your real monthly infrastructure cost. 4. **Where the email lives.** If the mailbox hangs off the hosting and one day you change hosting, you take the email with you after exporting it first. Make a backup before moving anything. ## The example that keeps repeating A car workshop pays 34 € a month to the company that built its website: "maintenance, domain and email". That is 408 € a year. Inside there is a 15 € domain, a basic mailbox that already came with the hosting and updates that have not been done in two years. The business is not being scammed, but it pays 390 € a year for nothing it can verify. The alternative is not to set everything up yourself on a Sunday: it is to know what you are buying and what each piece costs, so that the price you accept is for real work. If a provider does not separate domain, email and website on the invoice, you cannot compare, and what cannot be compared gets paid for dearly. ## What is worth paying for Not everything that looks expensive is. A professional mailbox properly set up on your domain, with backups and with SPF and DKIM configured, is worth its 6 € a month: without that, your quotes end up in spam and you never find out. And a domain renewed for 10 years at 120 € is money well spent if it stops you forgetting the renewal. What is not worth paying for: certificates that are free, domains in someone else's name, "guaranteed ranking" inside the pack and renewals that go up every year with nobody explaining why. ## Summary for deciding - Domain in your name and in your account: 10–20 € a year. - Professional email: 0–7 € per month per person, depending on what you need. - SSL: free. - Anything else on the invoice: ask for it in writing, with a separate price. If your current website comes with everything mixed together and you do not know what you are paying for, or if you want a new website where the domain and the email are in your name from day one, [request a free design proposal](/solicita-web/en). And if you want to see the full cost of running a website, including what almost nobody tells you, it is here: [how much it costs to maintain a website per year](/blog/en/cuanto-cuesta-mantener-una-web).