Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#1

Post by wr1472 » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:11 PM UTC

I have a domain setup on slicehost for a project I am open sourcing soon (http://wsl.xqoob.com), I want to setup email for this domain but do not want to go through the hassle of setting up and administering email servers myself.

Question: What's the easiest/lowest overhead way of creating an email with a @xqoob.com extension for this slicehost account?

TIA

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#2

Post by timf » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:14 PM UTC

Google Apps is free and fast to set up for mail@yourdomain.com

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#3

Post by mahmud » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:16 PM UTC

Google apps had email for free when I signed up, but not it's $50/year.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

Ideally, you wanna look for hosted mail services; all you would have to do is update your DNS records and set the MX records to their servers. You would then point your mail reader to their servers for IMAP/POP and SMTP.

Postfix is not too hard either, but spam will give real pain.

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#4

Post by timf » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:18 PM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #3

Google apps had email for free when I signed up, but not it's $50/year. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html Ideally, you wanna look for hosted mail services; all you would have to do is update your DNS records and set the MX records to their servers. You would then point your mail reader to their servers for IMAP/POP and SMTP. Postfix is not too hard either, but spam will give real pain.

Google Apps is still free, you are linking to the business edition which is $50/year

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#5

Post by mahmud » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:24 PM UTC

timf wrote: post #4

mahmud wrote: post #3

Google apps had email for free when I signed up, but not it's $50/year. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html Ideally, you wanna look for hosted mail services; all you would have to do is update your DNS records and set the MX records to their servers. You would then point your mail reader to their servers for IMAP/POP and SMTP. Postfix is not too hard either, but spam will give real pain.

Google Apps is still free, you are linking to the business edition which is $50/year

glad to be wrong! cheers.

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#6

Post by grandalf » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:25 PM UTC

timf wrote: post #2

Google Apps is free and fast to set up for mail@yourdomain.com http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

this is what I do too...

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#7

Post by oomkiller » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:29 PM UTC

Google Apps is a good way to go, but personally I prefer Dovecot and Postfix for my email servers.

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#8

Post by nkohari » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:37 PM UTC

If you're only interested in receiving email, Google Apps for Domains is great. If you need to send it (for example, as part of your service), you should check out AuthSMTP (http://authsmtp.com/).

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#9

Post by jrockway » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:42 PM UTC

oomkiller wrote: post #7

Google Apps is a good way to go, but personally I prefer Dovecot and Postfix for my email servers.

I agree -- maintaining your own email server is no harder than maintaining a web server (or anything else). The default configuration of exim that comes with Debian works well enough for me. (Although I did need to tweak it to add spam filtering and support for my "legacy" qmail addresses.)

I also buy DynDNS' backup MX service. That way, if I fuck up my server, I will get my mail as soon as the server is back up (instead of whenever the sending server decides to resend it, which could be never).

Re: Ask HN: Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain?

#10

Post by intranation » Sat, Jun 06, 2009, 6:55 PM UTC

timf wrote: post #2

Google Apps is free and fast to set up for mail@yourdomain.com http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

Works for me, too. I'm more than comfortable maintaining all kinds of server side stuff, but mail is just too much for me. Spam in particular is a pain--Google's spam filters work really well, and you get a good web interface to boot.

One caveat: Yahoo! and Hotmail often block email originating from Google Apps accounts: this has happened to me (with personal emails) from two separate domains (one of them is a work one).