Ask HN: I'm having trouble finding the right mail hoster | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I'm having trouble finding the right mail hoster

9 pointsElongatedTowel14 comments

I'm about to own my very first domain and of course I really like the idea of having a mailbox on my own domain, especially because I now feel confident to put stuff on github without having to worry that the mail address in every commit is about to change in the near future.

But I know that I don't use mail that often. I'll probably use it to sign up and send out applications, but that's about it. Shelling out $10 a month for something I rarely use seems a bit steep to me.

Some domain resellers offer free mailboxes with every purchase.

1. Is it a bad idea to have the domain and the mailbox associated with it in the same place? Is the cheapest namecheap box alright?

I've been looking trough a few mail hosters and I'm still not sure which one is the best fit. Only real requirement is payment via other options than a credit card (don't/can't have one). Pay-pal, wire transfer, Bitcoin, all is fine. Also IMAP.

I only heard good things about Rackspace, but has a minimum of 5 mailboxes ($10). Google Apps isn't free anymore and I'd rather want to get away from them. Zoho Mail offers free mailboxes and so far is my first choice (there must be a catch I haven't found yet). Fastmail.fm is only somewhat cheap if I pay in advance and their sign-up form seems ancient. Atmail Cloud doesn't say anything about payment options before signing up. Anything from Microsoft rather not. Hushmail, too expensive.

2. With most of them so expensive, wouldn't it make more sense to just buy a cheap dedicated server (like the 5$ OVH one) and host mail myself? Far more space and it allows me to do other stuff with it.

3. Living in Europe, is it a good idea to choose a mail hoster in the US or is there some downside/privacy concern? (or the domain as well, for that matter)

Try Gandi (https://www.gandi.net/). Their domains aren't the cheapest in the world, but several services are included with the domains, including a 1 GB IMAP/POP account that seems to work very well. That option is cheaper than FastMail, especially if you pay several years in advance.

The downside is that Gandi's webmail (Roundcube) isn't as good as e.g. FastMail's or Gmail's. So you should only use Gandi if you mostly read email through IMAP.

Don't host email yourself - it's simply not worth the time.

I don't agree, I'm hosting my email myself on a Debian VPS with installed http://iredmail.org/. I have unlimited domains, customizations, full control and there is virtually no maintenance needed, just regular updates.

Sure, but then you're paying for both a domain and a VPS, and you're spending a little time on setting it up - whereas with Gandi (or other registrars that include IMAP with domain purchases) you're only paying for the domain.

It's worth the comfort and features :)

I would recommend against hosting your own email unless you want to learn from the experience. Otherwise, pick a good company and focus on other things.

Personally, I would recommend Rackspace; perhaps from a reseller that can sell you a single address ($24/year). (contact me if you want) Free services scare me unless I can find how and why they are doing it.

FOR RECEIVING EMAIL: Most domain registrars will have free email forwarding as part of their DNS/MAIL settings, so you should be able to get your registrar to forward all email to your personal account free of charge.

FOR SENDING EMAIL: postfix is free but a hassle to learn. Sendgrid is good for transactional emails and has two options: (1) a free level that lets you send up to 200 emails per day, and (2) a "lite" plan that charges $0.10 per thousand emails. It can take a bit of digging to find the free signup, but the link is on the front page if you scroll down.

I use Runbox (http://www.runbox.com/).

They're based in Norway, run off open source with strong privacy, and use mainly renewable energy,

Thanks. That's an acceptable price for a mailbox.

> But I know that I don't use mail that often. I'll probably use it to sign up and send out applications, but that's about it. Shelling out $10 a month for something I rarely use seems a bit steep to me.

If this is your true use case, then self hosting is your lowest cost option. Self hosting on your own server in your own home costs you only the amount of electricity that server consumes. And for email hosting, you can utilize a very low powered server. An email server is very low load (unless you are getting DDOS'ed, but then your real problem is not a low power email server).

Take a look at Postfix ( http://www.postfix.org/ ). It is quite easy to setup for simple email serving (and your description is of simple serving). You will have to learn a little bit, but will be better for having done so.

My home IP isn't static which would make that a bit more complicated and add the cost of a dyndns account or something similar.

FWIW, I'm using Zoho and it's working quite well. If there's a catch, I haven't found it yet :)

Why don't just use gmail personal apps

I'd like to get away from Google. And since they don't offer any more free accounts they offer nothing special, except the large amount of apps like calendars and stuff, which I don't need at all.

I've been happy using tuffmail.com .

Fine for my needs, no problems that I know of, and they're helpful

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