The rule
When you upgrade to Starter, Growth, Scale, or Enterprise, the org owner account must be signed in with a workspace email (e.g. [email protected]) — not a personal provider like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @outlook.com, @icloud.com, @proton.me, or @rediffmail.com.
Other team members can join the org with personal emails — we only gate the owner. The Pilot plan has no such restriction; founders evaluating the product can sign up with anything.
Why we enforce it
- Trust signal for procurement. When a prospect's compliance team checks who's running outbound calls to their leads, an
@aditya.gmail.comcontact reads as a side-project. A company-domain contact reads as a vendor. - DPDP Act 2023 requires it. Section 8(3) calls out a named grievance officer reachable on the company's official channels. A personal Gmail isn't legally a company channel under Indian data-protection law.
- Account recovery. When an owner leaves a company, the successor needs access to the email that owns the Cualify account. With a personal-provider email, the old owner can ghost the company by refusing to hand over Gmail credentials. With a workspace email, IT rotates the password and the new owner gets in.
- Spam-prevention signal. 100% of the abusive signups we rejected in the first 18 months came from free-email domains. Gating on owner-domain trims operational load without affecting genuine SMBs.
What counts as a workspace email
Anything that isn't on our blocklist counts. So:
- ✓ Yes:
[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected], Microsoft 365 custom-domain addresses, Zoho Workplace custom-domain addresses - ✗ No: gmail.com, googlemail.com, yahoo.com, yahoo.in, yahoo.co.in, hotmail.com, outlook.com, live.com, icloud.com, me.com, aol.com, proton.me, protonmail.com, tutanota.com, gmx.*, fastmail.com, rediffmail.com, in.com, mail.com, yandex.*, qq.com, 163.com, naver.com, duck.com, zoho.in (the personal product)
- Edge case —
zoho.com: Zoho's workspace product (custom company domains hosted on Zoho Workplace) is workspace. The free@zoho.inpersonal accounts are not. Same for any Cloudflare Email Routing / Forward Email setup pointed at a custom domain — those count as workspace.
How to switch from a personal email
If you signed up with a Gmail and now want to upgrade to a paid plan:
- Open your profile picture (top-right) → Account settings.
- Under Email addresses, click Add an email.
- Enter your workspace address (e.g.
[email protected]) and click the verification link in your inbox. - Once verified, click the ... next to the workspace email and choose Set as primary.
- Optionally remove the personal address — your Gmail won't be used for anything Cualify-related after this point.
- Return to Billing and retry the upgrade.
What if I don't have a workspace email yet? Use Google Workspace (₹125/user/mo) or Zoho Workplace (free for up to 5 users, custom domain) — both take about 15 minutes to set up if you already own the domain. Or stay on the Pilot plan in the meantime; we won't block any Pilot-tier features.
What about team members?
Once the owner is on a workspace email, anyone you invite to the org can accept the invite with whatever email they prefer — personal or workspace. We only gate the owner because the owner is the legal/financial contact for the account.
FAQs
I tried to upgrade and got a "workspace email required" error. What now?
Add a workspace email to your Clerk account (steps above), set it as primary, sign out, and sign back in. Then retry the plan upgrade. The check runs against your primary email at the moment of checkout.
Can I transfer ownership to a workspace-email teammate instead?
Yes — that's often the cleanest path. Invite a teammate with their workspace email, give them the Owner role, and the new owner can complete the upgrade. The previous owner can stay as an Admin.
Why is my company domain rejected?
It shouldn't be — only the providers in the "No" list above are blocked. If you're seeing a false positive, email [email protected] with the domain and we'll either remove it from the blocklist or confirm it stays (occasionally a "looks like a workspace" domain is actually a known disposable-email host).
Where to next?
- Compare plans — pick which paid tier suits your team
- DPDP Act 2023 compliance — why the workspace email matters legally