Ask HN: How do you handle email servers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you handle email servers?

7 pointstomw18088 comments

Hi all,

so, like many of you probably, I have like a bazillion of ideas and emails for every kind of startup-idea I am trying to push out.

I found it (very early on) necessary to have a "corporate" domains for each idea with the domain. At least not a generic gmail.com domain. But its also not feasible to register always with google business (or anything else) for $5/user just for having my own domains. It quickly adds up.

So, I was looking into different alternatives and found the sweet spot for me with a part of sovereign [1] and a cheap scaleway [2] instance.

I was looking into mail-in-a-box, but decided it really isn't for me, because I want to do some customizations on my own - including a few websites I want to let run there.

Still, having the own server means maintenance etc. I wouldn't call myself a great sysadmin either. Mailserver setup was (and still is) one of the biggest questionmarks for me and, while analyzing the sovereign ansible scripts, it really shed some light on it, I still think I just scratched the surface. Especially with spamfilters, virusscanning, greylisting, etc. I think I was able to setup everything correctly, but hey, one little update and I am f*'d, right?!

The question is now: I can't possibly be the only one with that struggle of price/time/difficulty/...

How do you handle that?

[1] https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign [2] https://www.scaleway.com/

Unless you enjoy pain, trauma and heartache just don't do it yourself for anything serious.

I gave up running my own server about 15 years ago. Best decision ever!

I use Fastmail and I add domains whenever I need and it doesn't cost anymore. I assume many other services are similar.

FastMail is the most efficient one I've found. GSuite was offering multiple domains the last time I used, but interface was cluncky, and you couldn't add different addresses for different domains IIRC.

I'm using FastMail with 17 domains, each with different addresses, different catch all addresses etc., and no problems so far.

Incoming:

Either the registrar provides a free forwarding service (e.g. Google Domains), or I have a $5 DO droplet which has a postfix server running that forwards email to a free gmail account. I create a new gmail account for each domain I want an email address with. e.g. for awesome-domain.com, I have a corresponding myname.awesome-domain@gmail.com

Outgoing

Depending on how much I care about the domain, I'll either setup gmail's SMTP (which shows it's using Gmail to send on the receiving end). Or I use some like Mailgun or Sendgridwith correct SPF, DKIM, DMARC settings. Usually their monthly free tier is enough to cover my needs for sending emails.

I can dig up my postfix forwarding setting if you really want.

I am using migadu [1] and am very satisfied, unlimited domains/users for free or $4 if you want to mail without advertisement below the mails you send.

[1] https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html

Is it for multiple users or just you?

If its just for you it can be done quite cheaply with a account at fastmail or mailbox.org

Hey, thanks for the hint with Fastmail.

I was actually looking into it, but have the same problem as before with Gsuite. Running 10 different domains with two or three people usually then means a fixed expense of $5 x10 x2 = $100/month only for mail. Or do I miss anything? Is that not bothering anyone that it _is_ quite expensive?

FastMail doesn't charge extra for multiple domains, so for two users it's just $5 x2 = $10/month.

Have you tried Zoho mail

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