Ask HN: What email provider do you recommend for personal email? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What email provider do you recommend for personal email?

1 pointshlomo_z16 comments

Hi HN!

I am trying to reduce my dependency on many cloud providers, and Google is my next focus. To start, I'd like to move my personal email address to my own domain.

What is a good provider I can use that will not be too expensive and that I won't need to worry about deliverability? I don't mind being dependent on a cloud platform for this as long as I can easily export my data regularly.

It would also be nice if my AI agent is able to help me manage my inbox (EG delete spam emails and similar).. so if the provider has a good api for it, that's a bonus. However, this is not a hard requirement.

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Fastmail. They offer an MCP server, but keep the AI features out of the product. Data export is available and trivial.

An MCP Server for Fastmail – National Email Day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870988 - April 2026 (14 comments)

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060590573-Dow...

Thank you for the suggestion. You are the second person to suggest it and I will look into it! On first glance, this may be exactly what I am looking for.

I see others who have suggested self hosting, I cannot speak for others, I simply do not have the time for that. I pay for a family plan, I hand out accounts, everything Just Works. I'll pay for the service forever. Hope this helps. No affiliation with them other than a satisfied customer.

As others have also mentioned, Fastmail is reputable with the added bonus that they have an MCP server, which would combine well with what you mentioned about wanting to be able to use with your AI agent.

thanks!

Fastmail natively supports JMAP, is pretty cheap ($3-5). I always like selfhosting either at home, or using a cheap VPS - iRedMail, MailCow etc.

Thank you, I will look into FastMail. I have always understood it to be a deliverability nightmare when self hosting email servers, would you agree or disagree with that?

It depends, it can be... But tbh just set up a cronjob (auto repeating task) that refreshes your ssl certificate via certbot and you should be good to go. The initial setup might that a few hours of tinkering, but once you've made it you can easily have a mail server for $1-3. If you really don't wanna fully self host you can buy a Plesk workspace for like 99ct-5$ which allows emails, websites and databases

Useful information, thank you!

I have sent emails back and forth between Fastmail and my self hosted servers to increase their trust. Sometimes I talk to myself...

If you’re already invested in the Apple ecosystem you can get iCloud+ for $1/month and get the email provider (bring your own domain) among other things (50GB storage mainly). This is incredible value for the price.

As long as you use your own domain you can migrate away at any point so there’s that.

interesting.. I don't use apple devices at all, otherwise that would be kind of compelling.

Infomaniak or Proton. They're both Swiss security-focused competitors to the Google office ecosystem. I prefer Infomakiak, because their free tier includes IMAP, which is crucial for accessibility tools, but it is also useful for general API access such as automated tools.

I look at both of these, thank you!

However, I've seen reports of Proton engaging in shady business practices recently, EG Price sensitivity testing.

ProtonMail. Then you can run ProtonMail Bridge to get a local IMAP and SMTP connection to your ProtonMail account.

Thank you for the suggestion and I will certainly consider it.

That said, recently I've seen reports of Proton engaging in shady business practices recently, EG Price sensitivity testing[1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1vjfiav/why_is_pr...

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