I pay for email sessions with my therapist. Her regular session fee is $100 per hour, and that's low for her level of experience (20+ years) and qualifications, but she doesn't accept insurance, so it makes her more competitive with providers who do.

We collaborate on pricing and the range has been from $35 to $100.

Her baseline is $35. In a $35 email session I might typically send one lengthy initial email (maybe 500-1000 words), she'd reply with perhaps a couple paragraphs, I'd send a brief reply and request an invoice. She'd send the invoice with a brief 'thank you' or encouraging message.

It does vary a fair amount though, depending on the situation.

My actual email sessions got to stretch longer and be more complex than that. I would initially do two extensive email sessions per week at $50 each, she's offered me a discount at this point, so I do one long thread over three days for $50 a week during the gap between our Monday and Friday sessions.

It's a great value for her time.

Paying for email sessions definitely helps keep boundaries healthy, maintains balance in the relationship, gives me a sense of entitlement to high quality, consistent replies, and works well to keep her up to speed on my experiences and concerns, while letting me maintain that connection with her that I so value.

P.S. I believe there should be a fee for her to read an email, because that takes up her time. However, I personally wouldn't use email in that manner: when I write to her, I want a reply so that's what I pay for. If she were just reading an email with no reply, I would feel comfortable with maybe being billed for 15 minutes of her time, unless it was like a novella. But as others have said, it's really up to the therapist to set the fees.