Ask HN: How do you manage email on a custom domain? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you manage email on a custom domain?

16 pointsjcuenod33 comments

I want to send email using domains I own. It would be nice to have a decent gmail-like interface for them, but I don't want to pay for gsuite.

I could set up access within my gmail account, but I don't want to accidentally email people with the wrong address. What do people generally do?

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Some here use Fastmail [1] with their domains. Others run their own self hosted mail servers. Fastmail is probably less expensive and less hassle unless one has a bit of knowledge of setting up mail servers. I don't know gsuite pricing or if this is a better option for your use-case.

[1] - https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/

My impression of self hosting is that your mail just ends up undelivered because you're not a big shot.

Thanks for the fastmail pointer. I'll take a look, but I am hoping to find a free option (at least at this point).

With self-hosting, you can do it but it takes time to get good reputation.

I have set https://github.com/postalserver/postal and there are many details you usually don't worry about, the cost involved is whatever server you pay for, still, this is more adequate when you want to send emails through an API, for normal usage patterns, AWS is cheaper and simpler to set up.

+1 on this. I self hosted for years but it became a time sink, so I moved everything to Fastmail.

If you are an Apple user already, you can point custom domains to iCloud Mail. I've had some trouble with their spam filter overblocking in some cases, but since I was already paying for iCloud storage it made sense for me.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212514

Same here. So far so good, and their Hide my Email feature is very useful.

I am currently using this setup:

- Sending through *Protonmail*, using Protonmail DKIM

- Receiving via *Cloudflare Email*, using workers to forward to multiple addresses:

    export default {
     async email(message, env, ctx) {
         await Promise.all([
           message.forward("me@email.com"),
           message.forward("me2@email.com"),
         ]);
     }
    }

Cloudflare is needed because of how ProtonMail works, it doesn't allow forwarding the emails (because it would break their encryption protocol).

Also wrote this short article on using/securing your own domain name for emails: https://www.uxwizz.com/blog/stop-others-use-your-domain-emai...

I highly recommend Fastmail [0] for this purpose. I have been with them for 5 years, and they're rock solid. I have ~10 domains on it, they support wildcards (send/recv at anything@you.com), the composer has sane defaults for multiple domains (e.g. replies are sent from the address it was mailed to) that can be overridden when you need, and you can easily create masked emails using your own domain.

$50/yr for all that is a steal. They don't charge you per-domain or have any funky tiered pricing for the stuff that matters.

Disclaimer: I am not related to them, just a happy customer :-)

[0] https://www.fastmail.com/

Fastmail is great, untill your wife and kids also need an e-mail account. Then it get's expensive real quick.

Postfix, Dovecot and DNS with cheap Debian/Ubuntu LTS is all I needed to maintain all my email for about 10 years.

I also made a habit of creating an email alias per web service to keep credential leaks under control.

Edit: you messages should pass through any big email service if you implement DKIM, DMARC, etc. and make sure you are not an open relay.

Are you saying you didn't have delivery issues? Any spam issues/other gotchas I should know about before deciding to self-host?

I have no delivery issues - see my updated message above - and I'm providing the service to my small company, my family and running automated services for other companies.

To elaborate further, I did have delivery issues with some big providers first, until I implemented all recommended DNS and signing standards. After this was done, there were no issues for all those years.

That's helpful. Thanks!

Which DNS service do you host your domains at, for reverse dns capabilities?

Also, do you maybe wanna share your dovecot+postfix configs?

I'm asking because I "should" not allow spam being sent over my servers, but I always get marked as spam in O365 domains, it's very weird.

The only thing that I currently cannot provide without having to move my domains somewhere else is the reverse dns entries.

My starter pages: https://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-120... https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostfixCompleteVirtualMail...

I use AWS Simple Email Service for sending and receiving, but my use of email is largely automated (not reading it with my own eyes) so a bit of a niche. I wrote about the harder bit (receiving)[1].

[1] https://github.com/mlhpdx/email-delivery

Thanks, I haven't given SES a good look.

To manage email on a custom domain, follow these steps:

Choose an email hosting provider like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Configure DNS records with your domain registrar to point to the email hosting servers. Set up email accounts with your custom domain and access them through webmail or email clients. Customize settings, prioritize security, and stay updated for smooth email management.

I also use FastmIl, have been for over ten years now and zero issues. Recently I’ve been creating a unique email names e.g. apple@mydomain.com to see where spam comes from or if one of the services I sign up with gets breached my main personal email stays clear and I can just kill the unique name. That’s free on Fastmail.

Incoming emails to my domains are routed using Cloudflare.

I use Mailjet’s free tier for sending emails via Gmail.

Watch out with this approach, emails sent via mailjet will have a mailing list id and unsubscribe header, and may be deprioritised. In gmail, with the default settings, they will land in the 'promotional' tab, not the main inbox.

I was worried about emails not ending up in the inbox, but so far it hasn't been an issue.

It even has this Gmail label > Important according to Google magic

ProtonMail. It's not as polished as Gmail at this point but it works fairly well.

I use fastmail.

Similar to Fastmail, Zoho mail also allows you to link many domains and it is cheap (I think it's $1/user/month). The interface works and you can easily switch the sender domain.

Try https://gmailify.com so you can add domains to your Gmail account.

I was facing the same issue. Did you figure sth out?

My domain registrar (gandi) provides email hosting with roundcube for free. I always used it via imap however.

That's not true anymore (from September on).

Oops, I missed that. Now I will probably have to self-host. Or start using my disroot address again.

purelymail.com is the answer.

I found Zoho mail to work well for me.

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