Hey guys,
after looking into selfhosting email it seems to me that it’s probably better if I use an existing email hoster like Namecheap or Porkbun.
Now I saw that Porkbun doesn’t offer catchall emails so I can’t use it for my usecase.
Do you guys have any recommendations for a reasonably priced email hoster for a custom domain that offers all basic features like catchall? The purpose is for one domain I use for my personal stuff and one for a small side hustle/ small business.
Thanks so much in advance for your help!
ProtonMail has been my go to, really fantastic service, you get simplelogin as well and can add custom domains up to 10 iirc. And the VPN is top tier too.
I used to self host email and got sick of my emails never getting through. Email is federated in theory, but pretty centralized in practice. Paying for Proton was definitely worth it.
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Someone shared this post about ProtonMail the other day and thought I should share here as well.
An interesting read - thanks for sharing.
After reading that post and the linked github issues, with the latest updates and comments from the last 24 hours. Here’s the TL;DR:
- This is only relevant if you want to use an email client with Proton Bridge.
- If you’re just using Proton for encryption and signing (you can use the same PGP outside of proton too) then there is no issue at all.
- If you want an external tool (like a hardware yubikey) to decrypt your messages that someone else has sent to you using the public key that corresponds to the external tool there will be signature validation shenanigans. This is because Proton expects to be the only entity doing any encryption.This is an important issue for those that need to send encrypted emails (and signatures) with specific keys.
- It is not an issue for anyone using Proton email for a secure email service even if they want to use an external email client on desktop (like Thunderbird) with Proton Bridge.
Please correct me if I missed something.
CC: @howlingecko@sh.itjust.works
You got it right, lots of drama, not really anything to worry about unless you’re very fringe and have people you email via PGP with “super secure” PGP keys (and honestly I’d trust Proton more than I’d trust most people to roll their own PGP… it’s hard stuff to get PGP right).
How good is spam detection on ProtonMail? Especially compared to some of the big players like GMail?
Edit: I moved my primary email address to ProtonMail. Spam-Filtering is simply not good. About 50% get through just fine, even if it’s very easily identifiable as Spam / Phishing. I love everything else about ProtonMail but Spam-Filtering is simply not good despite relatively positive reviews I found about it.
Pretty damn good. I switched from Gmail, which afaik is amongst the best.
I hosted email professionally and for myself both, from the old days writing send mail rules in vi to turnkey shit. Absolute not worth the substantial hassle. Doesn’t scale small. The auth and security stuff is a PITA, then you find one thing was wrong and other domains were silently dropping all your mail, never delivered. Ugh. Protonmail it is.
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I recommend fastmail.com though they do have done shortcomings that you need to consider such as the fact that they’re based in Australia (five eyes country) and have servers in the USA. Their advantage is a slick interface, fantastic app based on JMAP, and just generally being super convenient. They allow catch all addresses, masked emails, custom domain etc. I find them super convenient.
Another upvote or seven for fastmail.com - I spent a little too much time spinning my personal domain hosting through Fastmail, Tutanota, Proton, mailbox.org… and then came back full circle to Fastmail.
Their shortcomings, if you’re concerned about privacy, are listed right above^^^ but I don’t think you can find a better email hosting provider for the pricing.
Email isn’t that secure anyway (don’t use email if your life or freedom depends on it), so I don’t see that as much as a downside.
Proton and fastmail you can use custom domains. I only have experience using fastmail. They provide great instructions for the settings in cloudflare (mx records, etc). My domain is purchased through namecheap.
I can receive mail on *@mydomain.com and I can send email from any thing I want ad-hoc (anything@mydomain.com or anything@anything.mydomain.com)
I thought about selfhosting as well, but the internet concensus was it can be a hassle with your email getting rejected.
I’ve been very happy with mxroute for quite a few years now. They have a summer deal going on for $40 a year for unlimited domains and accounts, you’re only limited by storage (100GB) and outgoing emails per hour.
t would be helpful to know what you consider basic features you want the host to support, but catchall works.Same here, very happy about mxroute, they even have a plan where you pay once for lifetime account.
I self-host my main email account, but use MXRoute as an outbound relay. Works great.
I do have some email accounts that use MXRoute. The Crossbox webmail system they use is very good.
How good is mxroute at blocking spam correctly?
Honestly any service that offers cPanel can allow mail hosting and a catchall.
If you just want a basic IMAP/SMTP service with nothing fancy I know these guys do allow catch all mailboxes https://hostinguk.net/email
I’ve just moved my email hosting from Fastmail to Migadu, very competitive pricing if you have a lot of users/mailboxes/domains but not that much email traffic
I’ve always had my eye on them, but the 20/out limit on the micro plan seems too small.
I use migadu and am happy with them. I do wish they had another tier between $19 and $90.
For 24$/year porkbun has been really easy!
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I already posted that I recommend fastmail elsewhere in this thread, but you raised so many good points that it reminded me of some extra points :)
Fastmail offers granular, per-app passwords – I have a single password which has read-only access to IMAP in order to back up all the data on a timer. This feature is missing from many (many) other email providers - using the 80/20 rule, if they even offer it it’s a single password with full access (Mailfence, for example)
Since this community is about selfhosting I think it’s worth pointing out that this is AMAZING for selfhosting. I have all me selfhosted services sending e-mail via fastmail’s SMTP. With per-app passwords I don’t need to store my normal e-mail password and the apps can be limited to SMTP only (so no read access). And in case of compromise you can revoke permissions on a per-app granularity.
Fastmail offers full CardDAV (contacts) and CalDAV (calendar) access, which makes plugging it into any other app that supports this very easy - their DNS wizard helps you set up the service records. I use “DavX5” on my Android to sync all Contacts and Calendar outside of using the Fastmail app (which is a self contained app on Android, it’s not too bad)
Fastmail has become my contacts app now - it’s really great to have all your e-mail and contacts in the same place. The contacts don’t even need to have an e-mail address - I have a lot of contacts stored for whom I only have a phone number. I sync to android using the same DavX5 app and then immediately have these contacts in whatsapp and signal.
If it is just for email forwarding maybe a service like https://anonaddy.com/ or https://simplelogin.io would work. Catch-all is even included in the anonaddy free plan as that is something you actually do not want to have enabled 😄 For your custom domain you have to have the lite plan at least though.
Sorry I should have clarified that I’m not just looking to receive but also send emails from botj of the domains that I use.
Edit: do you mind clarifying why using catchall is a bad idea :)?
They do allow to reply, simplelogin also has no limitation on reply count.
Oh okay, I wasn’t sure since you mentioned email forwarding and I saw a couple offerings (like Cloudflare) that only offer email forwarding if I understood correctly.
Thanks again! I’m gonna check them out.
Microsoft365. It’s like $6/user/month and you get access to the whole MS suite (Word, Excel, etc.). Email is managed by Exchange Online. Crème de la crop as far as email goes.
If you’re in the Apple ecosystem and just want something barebones then you can use a custom domain with your iCloud account. I think it’s called iCloud+.
I am already paying for iCloud+ so I use their service with my domain. It gets the job done.
Mailbox.org is decent as well
I found mxroute, it works very well for me. I can’t say much about specific features since I just wanted a simple email host.
Protonmail for actual hosting and Cloudflare for free catch-all forwarding.
Purelymail.com has been great for me for years. Insanely cheap and just works.
