41–50 of 287 posts
Running a mail server is not difficult, and I firmly believe that deliverability is quite solvable. This was basic sysadmin 101 about a decade ago, one skill of many that's getting lost in the S/I/PaaS ecosystem.
It really saddens me when I see topics like this and just doing it yourself doesn't come up as an option. Running a mail server is not difficult, and I firmly believe that deliverability is quite solvable. This was basic sysadmin 101 about a decade ago, one skill of many that's getting lost in the S/I/PaaS ecosystem.
I am very surprised a "one man show" was the author's final choice here: What if the one man gets hit by a bus? FastMail is probably worth the increased cost to avoid that concern alone. But in general, I am excited to see anyone moving to their own email domain, decentralized is how email was always supposed to be. EDIT: A huge terms issue with PurelyMail is "The Company may, at its sole discretion, terminate servic…
Also if cost is a concern for Fastmail, there's Mailbox.org which is a very reliable alternative.
> it's a single point of failure If Google blocked your Recaptchas, deleted your Gmail account, and disabled you Android phone...wow.
Relying on any company for more than one divisible service in 2020 is insane. Use Google for search? Don't use them for anything else.
There are lots of little guys out there doing great stuff. Put a few bucks in their direction. Shutouts are fascist.
It really saddens me when I see topics like this and just doing it yourself doesn't come up as an option. Running a mail server is not difficult, and I firmly believe that deliverability is quite solvable. This was basic sysadmin 101 about a decade ago, one skill of many that's getting lost in the S/I/PaaS ecosystem.
And then of course spam filtering, DKIM and whatnot, maybe a nice web interface, ...
Running an SMTP server is easy. The rest? Not so much.
Rolling your own is great. However, it's not for most people and requires constant monitoring and maintenance.
The service I used is ImprovMX. YOu just setup your DNS records, and they handle your domain emails. Any number of aliases and redirects you need. Their free tier is very generous with 10 domains, and I think 15-20 aliases per domain. Super easy to get my family on there for our family domain and my other custom domains.
I then made a new standard gmail account, migrated everything I could, repurchased apps, and then just forwarded my email to the gmail account after detaching it from GSuite. It was fairly painless on this front.
You can do email alias sending of emails with any provider, but ImprovMX has SMTP services now that get rid of that pesky "on behalf of" label of your emails. It is part of their Pro feature set, but that's just $9 a month for a ton of features and peace of mind. Full DKIM support and the such.
You can even setup a custom domain as a login email for your GMail and most other services, so you can login with it just like you would with GSuite.
Now I know this is a post about moving away from Google, but this could be a stepping stone, because once you do all this. If i decided I want to use Fastmail, PurelyMail, Outlook, Yahoo, or whatever the hell else I want. I can just change the target email in ImprovMX and it goes to the right place. The rest is all just import/export from gmail.
You can just GYOB to make detailed Maildir format backups of Gmail, and either restore them into another gmail account, or find a way to import them into your new service using similar tools.
Or just keep a local backup, use NotMuch or a NotMuch UI like Neit Viel to search/lookup your old emails, and start fresh in your new place.
One little gotchya if you do this. Gmail saw the initial set of ImprovMX emails as spam or fraud for a few emails as they would come from 1 email, but had ImprovMX redirect info. SO be sure to double check spam folders for a a few days for miscategorized emails. Once the spam blocker learns ImprovMX is ok, it will start working as normal. (Thought I think ImprovMX improved something on their end as I have even seen this particular thing happen in a while.
I am very surprised a "one man show" was the author's final choice here: What if the one man gets hit by a bus? FastMail is probably worth the increased cost to avoid that concern alone. But in general, I am excited to see anyone moving to their own email domain, decentralized is how email was always supposed to be. EDIT: A huge terms issue with PurelyMail is "The Company may, at its sole discretion, terminate servic…
Purely mail does look like a very attractive mail host, filling an interesting niche between the SMTP sever you get from your ISP (or someone like zoneout from zoneedit, which is $1/month for up to 50 outgoing email per day) and a full on webmail like fastmail. Honestly for me the $50/year to fastmail to worry about worrying about my mail is worth it, and their webmail/mobile clients are great if that is your thing.…
This is some good info, I personally still use GMail and used to use GSuite. Migrating from GSuite -> Gmail was a nightmare in of itself, but I found a service that helped me keep my custom domain emails and no longer feel like a second class citizen. So even if someday Google decides to kill my Account, I can just reroute my domain to a new service with not issue. The service I used is ImprovMX. YOu just setup your…
Controlling the address is key to switching services and not being shut off for ToS violations.
I wrote about it more here https://meagher.co/own-your-email/