# E-mail Costs We agree that emails are very ubiquitous and easy for individuals to use. Anyone can sign-up for a free email address and starting sending and receiving emails with a provider of their choice! However, for sending 10s of thousands of emails per month for a platform like Lightpost, there are a number of factors to consider. ### Factors to Consider There are a number of things that a large email provider has to consider to make sure that emails arrive in your inbox as expected. Large end-user email service providers like Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and others will quickly start sending your mass emails to spam, or worse, reject your emails that you're trying to send to your Lightpost groups. These factors include things such as: * Spam complaints (almost always accidental!) * Invalid email addresses (bounces) * Unsubscribe and resubscribe requests * Email domain reputation - to keep messages out of the junk folder of your users ### Email Provider Industry These factors have become an **exponentially increasing** concern for email providers over the last few years. Both for emails and SMS proviers. This has resulted in a **large increase in costs**, as well as many additional **verification** and **validation** hoops to jump through with email providers. As a point of proof: recently **other church apps** have **stopped offering email** as a method of communication altogether due to the complexities of dealing with email correctly. ### Email Provider Costs Just to give an example: [Postmark](https://postmarkapp.com/) is an exceptional email provider, who is very strict about how many spam complaints you're allowed to have before you're kicked off the platform. Their email service starts at [$1.80 per 1,000](https://postmarkapp.com/support/article/1282-changes-to-postmark-s-pricing-in-2023) additional emails sent. This is currently **50% higher** than what Lightpost charges (as of June 2024). ### Future Costs Lightpost is continually evaluating service providers and seeking options to lower costs for the Lord's church. We're working hard to avoid having to increase costs in the future, even though [service providers are increasing their costs](https://postmarkapp.com/support/article/1282-changes-to-postmark-s-pricing-in-2023). --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.lightpost.app/core-concepts/groups/messaging-policies/e-mail-costs.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.