I’ve recently been trying to degoogle myself, and in doing so I’m going to need another email.
I tried ProtonMail, but apparently only business accounts can use SMTP, even though their features claim SMTP access.
I’m plenty fine paying for the service, but going from the $6/month to $12/month just to get notification emails from my server doesn’t seem worth it to me.
I’ve not looked into what all else comes with Proton’s Business features, but i’m not really running a business or trying to start one up.
What do you use? do you like it? How’s the cost/features?
If you buy any domain from OVH, you can enable a single 5gb email account and 10mb webspace for free on it. The latter is maybe useful for some fail-over, but the email is definitely very cool for sending out notifications and such.
$10/year gets you what you need from Purelymail. https://purelymail.com I have used them for the last year or so and the service is fast and near real time with messages hitting my inbox (I use Thunderbird to download my mail).
I go a couple different routes: I have a Mailcow instance on a VPS for my personal email. For my business I use Zoho, which has been wonderful. Their basic plan is $1 a month per user and it should have all the features you’re looking for.
I have mine running through Polaris Mail. The domain cost me around $5 for the year (renewal is $10 IIRC), and I’m running the Y25 plan for $25/yr which has been big enough for me. SMTP is included, and there is a web interface, but I haven’t really used that, T-bird and K9 take care of my needs.
I have static IP and needed to get a business plan to obtain it. I am actually wondering if there’s place where I can set up a tunnel (that would work with freebsd) and then I could use cheaper, customer based plan.
My problem is to get something that wasn’t abused by spammers. I don’t plan to send any advertising, it would be low volume, since it is just for my and my family.
Is a Dynamic DNS not an option for you? Most residential plans keep their IP for months if not years, only really changing if the model drops for long periods of time.
Well there’s small chance someone else could get your mail, also there’s a reputation of given IP + there are blacklists that list dynamic IP ranges and some servers outright block them. And last one, you can’t set your own reverse DNS, which could increase like hood ending up in spam folder.
I was under the impression Proton Bridge was available for any paid subscription. I’ve had a Visionary plan for years, so I can’t say for certain since I get a lot of perks as a result.
The bridge is a bit tetchy, sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t, and can never really say why. You also need to have the bridge app installed on the machine you’re using it on (eg won’t work on mobile or any unsupported platform). The tl;dr for this is if you need to rely on SMTP / IMAP ProtonMail isn’t ideal.
I do actually have Proton Bridge running on my Yunohost machine, the CLI version was annoying to set up but that is the only install I haven’t had too much issue with (yet). The thing to be aware with that Proton is super anal about the email address you’re sending from, if it isn’t an alias (or a hosted domain) on the account it isn’t going to have any of that.
In terms of self-hosting though, I have a Wildduck install running. The software isn’t really production ready, but for a personal home server does the job super well. You can also get it to auto-encrypt incoming emails with PGP (similar to Proton) and it saves emails you send via SMTP to your Sent item folder automatically.
My advice for self-hosting though, is use a SMTP Smarthost from a professional provider (I’ve always used Duocircle and Spamhero), Google and Microsoft make self-hosting a nightmare even if you are fully compliant, but these operators give you a better chance of getting through.
Because I’m lazy, I also use MXGuardDog to filter incoming email, I rack up free credits by placing a link on my website so I’ve never once paid for the service in cold hard cash. But realistically you could skip this part.
Proton has stopped the “visionary” that allows SMTP, now it’s only available in business accounts. :(
I tried setting up the bridge CLI, but so far haven’t been able to get it to send anything after logging in and syncing the account, Maybe I’ll try again once I’ve got some things off my plate.
I just got their email, I get it now. SMTP is different to Bridge, but in my case I use Bridge to send SMTP from my apps (and also collect via IMAP) on the servers. It took a bit of creativity to get it to work like that
That’s really weird “Proton Mail Bridge is currently available for paid subscribers. Upgrade your account” and on the pricing page it has “Email client support (via IMAP/SMTP)” starting on the Mail Plus plan.
Although I’ve got the same problem with Bridge on MacOS it just stopped doing anything for no particular reason, it’ll be worth contacting support to find out why (they’re still working on mine)
I just got their email, I get it now. SMTP is different to Bridge, but in my case I use Bridge to send SMTP from my apps (and also collect via IMAP) on the servers. It took a bit of creativity to get it to work like that
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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.
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Mailcow dockerised is a solid option. It also has a really nice built in DNS checker which was very useful for getting that set up right.
Email is the one thing I don’t bother self hosting.
You need to use an existing host with reputation or most of your emails will end up in junk or be outright blocked.
I ended up using an old hotmail account I had laying around after protonmail and gmail failed me for SMTP access to notify myself of server issues.
If you buy any domain from OVH, you can enable a single 5gb email account and 10mb webspace for free on it. The latter is maybe useful for some fail-over, but the email is definitely very cool for sending out notifications and such.
$10/year gets you what you need from Purelymail. https://purelymail.com I have used them for the last year or so and the service is fast and near real time with messages hitting my inbox (I use Thunderbird to download my mail).
I’ve been using them for a few years now. Always good and reliable. My wife and I both have accounts on a custom domain from them.
Fastmail.
But, it’s not the cheapest. $5 a month gets what you need though.
Really quick WebUI, great features, including hosting your own domains and smtp rewriting.
Very smart helpful support team.
Great for degoogling.
I like sendgrid. They have a free smtp service that works great.
I use Mail in a Box running on a digital Ocean instance for like 12 USD a month.
Second mail in a box. Works well and has done for over 6 years.
Self host postfix with quite a bit of spam fighting measures. Get way way less spam than I did on Gmail
I go a couple different routes: I have a Mailcow instance on a VPS for my personal email. For my business I use Zoho, which has been wonderful. Their basic plan is $1 a month per user and it should have all the features you’re looking for.
I have mine running through Polaris Mail. The domain cost me around $5 for the year (renewal is $10 IIRC), and I’m running the Y25 plan for $25/yr which has been big enough for me. SMTP is included, and there is a web interface, but I haven’t really used that, T-bird and K9 take care of my needs.
I self host through my ISP connection.
I have static IP and needed to get a business plan to obtain it. I am actually wondering if there’s place where I can set up a tunnel (that would work with freebsd) and then I could use cheaper, customer based plan.
My problem is to get something that wasn’t abused by spammers. I don’t plan to send any advertising, it would be low volume, since it is just for my and my family.
Is a Dynamic DNS not an option for you? Most residential plans keep their IP for months if not years, only really changing if the model drops for long periods of time.
Well there’s small chance someone else could get your mail, also there’s a reputation of given IP + there are blacklists that list dynamic IP ranges and some servers outright block them. And last one, you can’t set your own reverse DNS, which could increase like hood ending up in spam folder.
I was under the impression Proton Bridge was available for any paid subscription. I’ve had a Visionary plan for years, so I can’t say for certain since I get a lot of perks as a result.
The bridge is a bit tetchy, sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t, and can never really say why. You also need to have the bridge app installed on the machine you’re using it on (eg won’t work on mobile or any unsupported platform). The tl;dr for this is if you need to rely on SMTP / IMAP ProtonMail isn’t ideal.
I do actually have Proton Bridge running on my Yunohost machine, the CLI version was annoying to set up but that is the only install I haven’t had too much issue with (yet). The thing to be aware with that Proton is super anal about the email address you’re sending from, if it isn’t an alias (or a hosted domain) on the account it isn’t going to have any of that.
In terms of self-hosting though, I have a Wildduck install running. The software isn’t really production ready, but for a personal home server does the job super well. You can also get it to auto-encrypt incoming emails with PGP (similar to Proton) and it saves emails you send via SMTP to your Sent item folder automatically.
My advice for self-hosting though, is use a SMTP Smarthost from a professional provider (I’ve always used Duocircle and Spamhero), Google and Microsoft make self-hosting a nightmare even if you are fully compliant, but these operators give you a better chance of getting through.
Because I’m lazy, I also use MXGuardDog to filter incoming email, I rack up free credits by placing a link on my website so I’ve never once paid for the service in cold hard cash. But realistically you could skip this part.
Proton has stopped the “visionary” that allows SMTP, now it’s only available in business accounts. :( I tried setting up the bridge CLI, but so far haven’t been able to get it to send anything after logging in and syncing the account, Maybe I’ll try again once I’ve got some things off my plate.
I just got their email, I get it now. SMTP is different to Bridge, but in my case I use Bridge to send SMTP from my apps (and also collect via IMAP) on the servers. It took a bit of creativity to get it to work like that
That’s really weird “Proton Mail Bridge is currently available for paid subscribers. Upgrade your account” and on the pricing page it has “Email client support (via IMAP/SMTP)” starting on the Mail Plus plan.
Although I’ve got the same problem with Bridge on MacOS it just stopped doing anything for no particular reason, it’ll be worth contacting support to find out why (they’re still working on mine)
I just got their email, I get it now. SMTP is different to Bridge, but in my case I use Bridge to send SMTP from my apps (and also collect via IMAP) on the servers. It took a bit of creativity to get it to work like that
We use Maddy, which is pretty easy to set up.
I currently use Protonmail but for some time I used hMailServer on Windows (https://www.hmailserver.com).