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Ask HN: Good email host?

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Re: Ask HN: Good email host?

#31

Post by girzel »

sakopov wrote: post #28
wje wrote: post #2

Run your own!

I thought there is a high chance of getting blocked by spam filters if you're not using a reputable email host. Is this true at all?

I've been running two domains for about a year and a half, and have only once been spam-canned. This only happened recently, and I haven't been able to get hold of the guy to ask what email system he's using, and whether there was any report of why my mails were marked as spam. I'm very curious to have that information.

I went through the whole rigmarole of reverse-DNS and SPF. I also started very gingerly in the beginning -- for a few weeks it was no bulk emails and trying to mostly email personal contacts. But I've never had any trouble until now.

Re: Ask HN: Good email host?

#32

Post by masnick »

Here are the options I see:

1. Pay a reasonable amount for a reputable service like FastMail with a good user interface

2. Use a free, reputable service and make your peace with them selling ads off your email (they have to keep the lights on somehow)

3. Use a super cheap or free service that doesn't work as well as FastMail or Gmail (you get what you pay for)

4. Host your own and risk deliverability issues, and spend time maintaining a server.

There is no magic solution here that works great, is free or super cheap, doesn't require lots of time on my part, and doesn't have an ad-based business model.

I value my time too much to consider #3 or #4.

If I didn't want to pay for FastMail, I would just use Gmail. Realistically, I don't think Google's algorithms reading my email would have a noticeable negative impact on my life, but I would notice bad UI or failed deliveries.

Re: Ask HN: Good email host?

#34

Post by teddyh »

sashk wrote: post #22

I was researching this. And still am. I always come to conclusion that either I have to host mail for myself, or use Google Apps. I can't trust Microsoft to host my email, nor I want to trust Rackspace (for some odd reason, two feedbacks I received were from people who had negative experiences with them). Zoho is nice choise, but they had multi-week outage year or two ago, with somewhat unclear notification to users.…

> Self-hosting option came out to one Linode machine, plus one other VPS provider machine

So, that’s what “self-hosting” means nowadays? Because of course we can’t have these infernal machines in our homes; what are we, savages, to sully our hands with manual labor and physical hardware? /s

Note: Your home is the only place where you can host your server and be reasonably sure that the government is at least going to show you a warrant when they want all your data.

Re: Ask HN: Good email host?

#35

Post by TuringNYC »

AlligatorAxe wrote: post #9

Try Rackspace Email - rackspace.com/email -- They have 25GB IMAP boxes for $2/mo and 24/7 support

I realize this is a sample size of 1, but i've had poor experiences with Rackspace's cloud offerrings. Unlike AWS and SoftLayer, both of which I also use, it was very difficult canceling Rackspace's services. Some residual block storage would get left behind, it would not be referenced anywhere and you'd keep paying month after month. It took almost a half year of calls before i was able to cancel all the services. Discussions would be as follows: - Me: I want to cancel all services - Them: OK done - Me (month 3): I want to cancel this other service I still got charged for - Them: Oh, that one too? - Me (month 5): I want to cancel this other residual service I still got charged for - Them: Oh, you want it all gone?

Re: Ask HN: Good email host?

#36

Post by JoshTriplett »

eikenberry wrote: post #8

gandi.net offers free email accounts on your domain if they are your registrar.

Seconding this recommendation. Their email hosting also lets you set up multiple accounts per domain, and a huge number of email aliases for those accounts, so that you can easily create service-specific addresses or addresses that forward to multiple places.

If you want more storage than their default 1GB, I suggest running your own IMAP server and running getmail to download all your mail continuously, while still using their SMTP server for all incoming and outgoing mail to avoid having to worry about deliverability. getmail supports IMAP IDLE, so it can download new mail and add it to your IMAP server the moment it arrives.

(Or, if you don't want to do that, you can pay Gandi for more storage.)

Re: Ask HN: Good email host?

#38

Post by sashk »

teddyh wrote: post #34
sashk wrote: post #22

I was researching this. And still am. I always come to conclusion that either I have to host mail for myself, or use Google Apps. I can't trust Microsoft to host my email, nor I want to trust Rackspace (for some odd reason, two feedbacks I received were from people who had negative experiences with them). Zoho is nice choise, but they had multi-week outage year or two ago, with somewhat unclear notification to users.…

> Self-hosting option came out to one Linode machine, plus one other VPS provider machine So, that’s what “self-hosting” means nowadays? Because of course we can’t have these infernal machines in our homes ; what are we, savages , to sully our hands with manual labor and physical hardware ? /s Note: Your home is the only place where you can host your server and be reasonably sure that the government is at least going…

I understand that, but unfortunately my provider at home is blocking port 25 (both directions), so that's not an option.

Re: Ask HN: Good email host?

#39

Post by kybernetyk »

/edit: Typical case of "just read the headline and replied". Sorry for telling you about Fastmail while you ruled it out.

I'm currently using Fastmail [0]. No issues so far (5 months in).

Switched initially because they support push on the native iPhone mail app while Google forces you to use their Gmail app if you want push. (Even if you have paid for Gmail for business service).

I'm using FM with my own domain. Setup was trivial. There's also a lot of material on the web about setting up fastmail with different software packages. (My MBP's postfix uses my fm account to send out cronjob messages).

Can't say anything about their webmail because I never really used any webmail front end. But from the little contact I had with FM's webmail frontend it looked tidy and was responsive.

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

Re: Ask HN: Good email host?

#40

Post by ryanlol »

TuringNYC wrote: post #35
AlligatorAxe wrote: post #9

Try Rackspace Email - rackspace.com/email -- They have 25GB IMAP boxes for $2/mo and 24/7 support

I realize this is a sample size of 1, but i've had poor experiences with Rackspace's cloud offerrings. Unlike AWS and SoftLayer, both of which I also use, it was very difficult canceling Rackspace's services. Some residual block storage would get left behind, it would not be referenced anywhere and you'd keep paying month after month. It took almost a half year of calls before i was able to cancel all the services. D…

I think Amazon is still trying to bill me for an EC2 instance "seized" by the FBI in 2013. Perhaps it's still running somewhere without networking.

No amount of contacting them seemed to help, so billing departments unable to deal with edge cases isn't restricted to rackspace.

Oh, and Softlayer sent me a bill a few days ago for a server cancelled 6 months ago.

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