A school can create a free email address for members of staff if they wish by using any free email service but in order to have something that can be managed, a very small investment is probably needed. Interestingly, the investment is for a domain name rather than for email addresses per se. In my school, the teachers have an email address along the line s of [NAME]@[SCHOOLNAME].ie. I had to buy the domain, which generally sets one back anything between €10 and €50 a year. Once you have the domain, there are a couple of options.
The service provider may grant you a number of email addresses. Blacknight, for example, offer email addresses along with a domain. Digiweb also provide this service but at a cost. However, I would generally recommend using Google’s service – Gmail. Once you have your domain name, you can sign up for G Suite for Education, which is free, and then you can set up free email addresses for everyone in your school. You can add and subtract them as staff come and go. You can even set up email addresses for the pupils if you want. (We don’t yet.)
The short answer, therefore, is the cost of your domain. If you already have one, the cost is zero!
Last Update: September 2, 2018