Cloudflare Email Routing vs Google Workspace vs Zoho comes down to three questions. Do you only need to receive at your domain? Do you need to reply as that address from a real mailbox? Do two people need to handle the same address? Each question knocks out a column.
Prices are deliberately not in the table. They change, and the pricing pages are one click away; the shape of each option does not change.
Which option fits which need?
Receive only: Email Routing, $0, 10 minutes. Reply as support@ from a mailbox: Zoho's free tier or one Workspace seat is the shortest path. Two or more people on one address: either run one of the self-hosted inboxes built on Email Routing yourself, or pay someone to run that shape for you. Everything below is detail on those three lines.
The comparison table
Checked 2026-09-16 against Email Routing, Google Workspace pricing and Zoho Mail pricing.
| Cloudflare Email Routing | Google Workspace (1 seat) | Zoho Mail | Self-hosted on Cloudflare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software cost | $0 | Per seat, monthly | Free tier; paid per user | $0 code; all three say they run on Workers Free for small teams, R2 activated separately |
| Receives at your domain | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, via Email Routing |
| Stores mail | No, forwards only | Yes | Yes | Yes, your D1 / R2 |
| Reply as support@ later | No | Yes | Yes | Yes, via Email Sending or Resend |
| Multiple addresses | Up to 200 rules per domain, plus catch-all | Aliases on one seat | Aliases; limits per plan | Unlimited patterns, one Worker |
| Two people, one address | One rule, one destination; fan-out needs a Worker | Delegation / Groups | Shared mailbox on paid tiers | Yes, no seat pricing |
| Max message size | 25 MiB | Per their docs | Per their docs | 25 MiB (Email Routing limit) |
| Programmable | Yes, Email Workers | Gmail API | Zoho API | It is your code |
| Setup | 10 min | DNS verify + DKIM | DNS verify + DKIM | 1 to 3 h, then you run it |
| DNS you hand over | MX + SPF | MX + SPF + DKIM + TXT | Same | MX + SPF, plus DKIM if you reply |
The fourth column is three projects, checked 2026-09-16: cloudflare/agentic-inbox (Cloudflare's own, Apache-2.0, Workers + D1), HQBase (AGPL-3.0, Workers + D1 + R2 + Queues) and ResolveHQ (source-available, not open source; Email Routing + Resend + D1 + R2 + Queues). They differ in scope and license and agree on the stack; details and the 30-line handler are in Cloudflare Email Worker inbox.
What the table does not say
Email Routing is a forwarder that can run code. A rule can target a Worker, and the Worker gets the raw MIME. Nobody else in this table lets you drop a function between the MX record and the mailbox for free.
Workspace is the safe default. One seat, one mailbox, everything works. Its cost is a recurring seat for an address that might see ten messages a week, and its MX records replace Cloudflare's.
Zoho's free tier is real; the ceiling is the plan. Fine for one person. Shared-mailbox features sit on paid plans, which puts it in the same bucket as Workspace for two people.
The self-hosted column works, and it is yours to run. Two people, one support@, no seat pricing, exists three times over on GitHub, one of them maintained by Cloudflare and one under a source-available license rather than an open-source one. It also means you keep the D1 schema migrated and you are the one paged when the reply path breaks.
The gap that is left
Workspace and Zoho solve "two people" with a second seat. The self-hosted projects solve it for the cost of running them. What is left is the half of us who do not want to run one more thing: a hosted version of the same Worker-plus-D1 shape.
If you only need the first column, the setup and its three limits are in Cloudflare Email Routing support address.