Email host for a few accounts

masloki

masloki

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So, I have one of those free Google Suite accounts for my domain, and they are fixing the “free” glitch. Who do you recommend for email hosting for a handful of accounts with a custom domain? Don’t really need more than the basics: send, receive, attachments, calendar. No bulk mailing or anything business like. Just hoping for cheap, reliable, and not flagged as spam.
 
aws workmail is ok. Not as many features, but it's pretty close to free. I think $4 a month per email address.
 
We've been using rackspace.com for awhile with no complaints. I think the basic plan is 5 accounts, using our domain name, for maybe $9 a month?
 
I use Protonmail.com. Encrypted, secure email based in Switzerland with custom domain. Business Plan is $6.25/month per user. I have been very happy with them as a Google replacement.
 
Sifossifoco said:
I use Protonmail.com. Encrypted, secure email based in Switzerland with custom domain. Business Plan is $6.25/month per user. I have been very happy with them as a Google replacement.
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that
 
I switched everything over to Fastmail when Tuffmail folded up. I've got my MX records pointing there.
 
Rackspace works well for me, for hosting several family accounts using my domain.

It doesn’t cost that much. For me, five mailboxes at $2.40 per month each.

As a matter of principle, paying for hosting is good. Because you’re the customer. If you’re getting free email, you’re not the customer —you’re the product that’s being sold.
 
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Jim Rosenow said:
We've been using rackspace.com for awhile with no complaints. I think the basic plan is 5 accounts, using our domain name, for maybe $9 a month?
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We also use rackspace and find it to be fine. We were on lunarpages, but they were bought by hostpapa and discontinued the unlimited e-mail option and service has generally gone downhill.

The migration wizard to rackspace was very very smooth as they outsource to "Bit Titan" which is excellent. The migration was free and very easy.

All my data moved over from my old accounts very easily.
 
G suite is good for not being marked as spam and about $6/month. You can also get your own server and host your own email, price depends upon your server size and speed. Then you’d own that and not have to pay extra for additional accounts provided the storage you have works.
 
mandm said:
G suite is good for not being marked as spam and about $6/month. You can also get your own server and host your own email, price depends upon your server size and speed. Then you’d own that and not have to pay extra for additional accounts provided the storage you have works.
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But google is creepy and no doubt snooping and selling your data
 
NoHeat said:
Rackspace works well for me, for hosting several family accounts using my domain.

It doesn’t cost that much. For me, five mailboxes at $2.40 per month each.

As a matter of principle, paying for hosting is good. Because you’re the customer. If you’re getting free email, you’re not the customer —you’re the product that’s being sold.
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I'm looking at some of the suggestions. I don't understand this. Is Rackspace $2.99 for an account with a single mailbox or $10.00?
 
mandm said:
...You can also get your own server and host your own email...
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As I read through this thread, I'm surprised this option wasn't suggested sooner. I have a couple servers I run 24X7 and power and internet are pretty reliable so it would probably be the route I'd go.
 
MICHAEL MAHN said:
As I read through this thread, I'm surprised this option wasn't suggested sooner. I have a couple servers I run 24X7 and power and internet are pretty reliable so it would probably be the route I'd go.
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I am self hosting guy in general but seem to get an internet outage once a month, and have read of deliverability issues with new email servers.
 
midlifeflyer said:
I'm looking at some of the suggestions. I don't understand this. Is Rackspace $2.99 for an account with a single mailbox or $10.00?
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Rackspace email:

$10 minimum, per month.

$2.99 per mailbox, (I’m not sure why I’m paying only $2.40 per month, maybe an older contract.)

https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/pricing

One good thing about Rackspace is they will probably last longer than other hosting services. It’s big, and publicly traded (caters mostly to businesses but does well also for individuals.)
 
NoHeat said:
Rackspace email:

$10 minimum, per month.

$2.99 per mailbox, (I’m not sure why I’m paying only $2.40 per month, maybe an older contract.)

https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/pricing

One good thing about Rackspace is they will probably last longer than other hosting services. It’s big, and publicly traded (caters mostly to businesses but does well also for individuals.)
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Gotcha. Thanks.
 
MICHAEL MAHN said:
As I read through this thread, I'm surprised this option wasn't suggested sooner. I have a couple servers I run 24X7 and power and internet are pretty reliable so it would probably be the route I'd go.
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Great tip! While I could google around for a site describing this, any particular place you'd recommend to describe how to set this up?
 
MICHAEL MAHN said:
As I read through this thread, I'm surprised this option wasn't suggested sooner. I have a couple servers I run 24X7 and power and internet are pretty reliable so it would probably be the route I'd go.
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I used to do that back in the day, but google made it not worth it. Dealing with the hosting software was a pain back then, but it was a couple decades ago. My thought is that anything cheap is going to be a time suck to set up.
 
mcdewey said:
...I could google around...
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Google's your friend here. Your hardware configuration will drive your solution. I run Linux and have a tomcat server supporting various apps I've written but I've never setup a mail server. Knowing nothing about it, the space doesn't seem terribly complicated which is why I'd give it a run.
 
MICHAEL MAHN said:
Google's your friend here. Your hardware configuration will drive your solution. I run Linux and have a tomcat server supporting various apps I've written but I've never setup a mail server. Knowing nothing about it, the space doesn't seem terribly complicated which is why I'd give it a run.
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Ah I see now. Having done it in the past, I'll stick with hosted solutions. ;) My time is worth far more than $6 a month. And setting up email is not an interesting challenge for me to do it for fun.
 
Salty said:
My time is worth far more than $6 a month...
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It's all about the journey for me :) I've written so much code for stuff where there was a readily available alternative purely to learn about the underlying technology. Here's one of the more egregious examples: The long bike rides I used to do bothered my wife as she didn't know where I was for many hours. I wrote an android app for my phone that collects my GPS location and calls a Rest API running on my home computer which registers the coordinates in a MySQL database. I then have a web page I host which uses the Google Maps API to generate a map w/ a bicycle icon noting my position so she can watch me move down the road. So clearly I have a problem with time management decisions!
 
MICHAEL MAHN said:
It's all about the journey for me :) I've written so much code for stuff where there was a readily available alternative purely to learn about the underlying technology. Here's one of the more egregious examples: The long bike rides I used to do bothered my wife as she didn't know where I was for many hours. I wrote an android app for my phone that collects my GPS location and calls a Rest API running on my home computer which registers the coordinates in a MySQL database. I then have a web page I host which uses the Google Maps API to generate a map w/ a bicycle icon noting my position so she can watch me move down the road. So clearly I have a problem with time management decisions!
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That's why I added the last sentence to my previous post.
 
MICHAEL MAHN said:
It's all about the journey for me :) I've written so much code for stuff where there was a readily available alternative purely to learn about the underlying technology. Here's one of the more egregious examples: The long bike rides I used to do bothered my wife as she didn't know where I was for many hours. I wrote an android app for my phone that collects my GPS location and calls a Rest API running on my home computer which registers the coordinates in a MySQL database. I then have a web page I host which uses the Google Maps API to generate a map w/ a bicycle icon noting my position so she can watch me move down the road. So clearly I have a problem with time management decisions!
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a simple "I'm sorry honey, but there doesn't seem to be any GPS tracking software out there" probably would have sufficed*

*so does your software generate random bike looking tracks for her to "follow" wink wink?
 
eman1200 said:
...*so does your software generate random bike looking tracks for her to "follow" wink wink?...
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Rides are saved in the database and can be "replayed" on demand. So far, she hasn't questioned why the pace and finish time on some rides is remarkably similar. The really funny thing is, you are actually not the 1st to question my voluntary privacy abandonment :)
 
MICHAEL MAHN said:
It's all about the journey for me :) I've written so much code for stuff where there was a readily available alternative purely to learn about the underlying technology. Here's one of the more egregious examples: The long bike rides I used to do bothered my wife as she didn't know where I was for many hours. I wrote an android app for my phone that collects my GPS location and calls a Rest API running on my home computer which registers the coordinates in a MySQL database. I then have a web page I host which uses the Google Maps API to generate a map w/ a bicycle icon noting my position so she can watch me move down the road. So clearly I have a problem with time management decisions!
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By the way, I did something similar for my wife with flying. I use the FlightAware APIs to send her regular texts along my route, and tell her when I arrive and depart and airport.
 
You can’t beat the reliability of Google and multiple integrations such as Google sheets, calendar etc.

Google is not good for mass emails or those with a lot of emails (a scalable business). I think Google has a limit of 2000 emails per day and because of that the emails do not end up in the spam folder.

Now if you have 20-25+ email accounts that cost adds up and the $6/user per month is limiting, then you have storage issues for each account. That can quickly add up to thousands of dollars per year.

If you have your own email service, do NOT do any email marketing or even newsletters. You need your main email domain to be fully legit. You can create additional domains for email marketing / newsletters so that domain gets put in the spam folder and not your daily domain. Once you know how to do this, you can create servers for everything, ticketing system, phone lines, etc. Then you own it with no fees (besides the server fees) and you can also host this in your home or office too (you need to see if your ISP will open the ports for email servers too).
 
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