Ask HN: How do you get 'your-domain.com' email address, now Google isn't free? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you get 'your-domain.com' email address, now Google isn't free?

14 pointssideproject9 comments

Google has made their Google Apps for business NOT free some time last year.

So I wanted to know what HN'ers are doing to get their own @your-domain.com email addresses for free?

Apart from

* Doing your own mail server * Paying for it (I know I know...)

I heard Microsoft is offering something similar, but is it actually useful?

As a side note, maybe this is a good idea for startups. :)

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Microsoft does have a free mail product (http://domains.live.com), but it's been plagued by problems recently. For example, it was impossible to add new domains or users between January 30th and February 5th. The only recourse when something breaks is to post in a public support forum and hope for the best.

I pay for fastmail, but there was a workaround where if you signed up for GAE with your domain you could get 1 free account. (Don't know if that still works)

I believe microsofts offer costs similar to the google apps.

+1 for Fastmail.

I have been using Microsoft's live.com and haven't had any trouble with it so far. From what I have seen, setting up custom domain email addresses is actually more simple using live.com than gmail.com. You can also have something like up to 500 emails account per domain. Gmail used to only give 10 so there is that. I would really suggest you try out live.com just see what you think. Worse case scenario you don't like it and you move on.

As a side note, if you use live.com you get access to skydrive which, in my opinion, is pretty awesome.

Yeah, I missed the boat on using Google Apps as a mail server.

I used zoho.com instead. I set up the lowest grade free account they had and then just walked through the tutorials on their site. I use my gmail account to log in and check the mail server every 15 minutes and I've also set it up to allow me to send messages as if they came from my @your-domain.com address rather than my @gmail.com address.

Gandi.net (https://www.gandi.net/) (domain registrar) gives 5 email accounts with 1GB shared space for all domains registered with them. I've only used them for a short time, but they seem great for simple email needs. They also offer email forwarding so you could forward to a gmail account, for example.

> As a side note, maybe this is a good idea for startups. :)

But you said you don't want to pay for it. Rackspace Mail hosts the mailboxes on my domains at $1/mailbox/month with a 100% uptime SLA and 24/7/365 phone/chat/email support. There are plenty of other options when you're willing to pay.

Lifehacker had a similar question and some of their suggestions might be useful for you.

http://lifehacker.com/5967154/what-should-i-do-now-that-goog...

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