after looking into selfhosting email it seems to me that it’s probably better if I use an existing email hoster like Namecheap or Porkbun.
Now I saw that Porkbun doesn’t offer catchall emails so I can’t use it for my usecase.
Do you guys have any recommendations for a reasonably priced email hoster for a custom domain that offers all basic features like catchall? The purpose is for one domain I use for my personal stuff and one for a small side hustle/ small business.
As a single user or small household setup - I’m using Cloudflare email routing, with catchall, forwarded into my Gmail account for receive. For SMTP, I’m using a combination of mailjet.com and brevo.com, which both have fairly robust free tiers for personal/small business use and allow sending from [email protected].
I’ve just moved my email hosting from Fastmail to Migadu, very competitive pricing if you have a lot of users/mailboxes/domains but not that much email traffic
I’ve enjoyed runbox.com for years but don’t think they offer catch-all, at least not when I last checked. You might look at mxroute.com, I heard about it later and might have gone with them first and they somehow seem more likely to support that
I’ve used runbox for I don’t know how many years now. They do support a catch-all, as I make up email addresses on the fly with my domain and it works just fine.
If it is just for email forwarding maybe a service like https://anonaddy.com/ or https://simplelogin.io would work. Catch-all is even included in the anonaddy free plan as that is something you actually do not want to have enabled 😄 For your custom domain you have to have the lite plan at least though.
Oh okay, I wasn’t sure since you mentioned email forwarding and I saw a couple offerings (like Cloudflare) that only offer email forwarding if I understood correctly.
I recommend fastmail.com though they do have done shortcomings that you need to consider such as the fact that they’re based in Australia (five eyes country) and have servers in the USA. Their advantage is a slick interface, fantastic app based on JMAP, and just generally being super convenient. They allow catch all addresses, masked emails, custom domain etc. I find them super convenient.
Another upvote or seven for fastmail.com - I spent a little too much time spinning my personal domain hosting through Fastmail, Tutanota, Proton, mailbox.org… and then came back full circle to Fastmail.
Their shortcomings, if you’re concerned about privacy, are listed right above^^^ but I don’t think you can find a better email hosting provider for the pricing.
ProtonMail has been my go to, really fantastic service, you get simplelogin as well and can add custom domains up to 10 iirc. And the VPN is top tier too.
I used to self host email and got sick of my emails never getting through. Email is federated in theory, but pretty centralized in practice. Paying for Proton was definitely worth it.
How good is spam detection on ProtonMail? Especially compared to some of the big players like GMail?
Edit: I moved my primary email address to ProtonMail. Spam-Filtering is simply not good. About 50% get through just fine, even if it’s very easily identifiable as Spam / Phishing. I love everything else about ProtonMail but Spam-Filtering is simply not good despite relatively positive reviews I found about it.
Pretty damn good. I switched from Gmail, which afaik is amongst the best.
I hosted email professionally and for myself both, from the old days writing send mail rules in vi to turnkey shit. Absolute not worth the substantial hassle. Doesn’t scale small. The auth and security stuff is a PITA, then you find one thing was wrong and other domains were silently dropping all your mail, never delivered. Ugh. Protonmail it is.
After reading that post and the linked github issues, with the latest updates and comments from the last 24 hours. Here’s the TL;DR:
This is only relevant if you want to use an email client with Proton Bridge.
If you’re just using Proton for encryption and signing (you can use the same PGP outside of proton too) then there is no issue at all.
If you want an external tool (like a hardware yubikey) to decrypt your messages that someone else has sent to you using the public key that corresponds to the external tool there will be signature validation shenanigans. This is because Proton expects to be the only entity doing any encryption.This is an important issue for those that need to send encrypted emails (and signatures) with specific keys.
It is not an issue for anyone using Proton email for a secure email service even if they want to use an external email client on desktop (like Thunderbird) with Proton Bridge.
You got it right, lots of drama, not really anything to worry about unless you’re very fringe and have people you email via PGP with “super secure” PGP keys (and honestly I’d trust Proton more than I’d trust most people to roll their own PGP… it’s hard stuff to get PGP right).
Microsoft365. It’s like $6/user/month and you get access to the whole MS suite (Word, Excel, etc.). Email is managed by Exchange Online. Crème de la crop as far as email goes.
If you’re in the Apple ecosystem and just want something barebones then you can use a custom domain with your iCloud account. I think it’s called iCloud+.
It’s not self hosted but I use Tutanota. I have my own domain anything that comes to that domain shows up in my box. It might be better than the alternatives because it’s an encrypted mail service.
Happy customer for years. However, they recently changed their price schemes. The cheapest plan (1 EUR monthly) no longer allowes custom domains, you need to pay more for that.
Proton and fastmail you can use custom domains. I only have experience using fastmail. They provide great instructions for the settings in cloudflare (mx records, etc). My domain is purchased through namecheap.
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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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As a single user or small household setup - I’m using Cloudflare email routing, with catchall, forwarded into my Gmail account for receive. For SMTP, I’m using a combination of mailjet.com and brevo.com, which both have fairly robust free tiers for personal/small business use and allow sending from [email protected].
Protonmail for actual hosting and Cloudflare for free catch-all forwarding.
I’ve just moved my email hosting from Fastmail to Migadu, very competitive pricing if you have a lot of users/mailboxes/domains but not that much email traffic
I’ve always had my eye on them, but the 20/out limit on the micro plan seems too small.
I use migadu and am happy with them. I do wish they had another tier between $19 and $90.
I’ve enjoyed runbox.com for years but don’t think they offer catch-all, at least not when I last checked. You might look at mxroute.com, I heard about it later and might have gone with them first and they somehow seem more likely to support that
I’ve used runbox for I don’t know how many years now. They do support a catch-all, as I make up email addresses on the fly with my domain and it works just fine.
Honestly any service that offers cPanel can allow mail hosting and a catchall.
If you just want a basic IMAP/SMTP service with nothing fancy I know these guys do allow catch all mailboxes https://hostinguk.net/email
If it is just for email forwarding maybe a service like https://anonaddy.com/ or https://simplelogin.io would work. Catch-all is even included in the anonaddy free plan as that is something you actually do not want to have enabled 😄 For your custom domain you have to have the lite plan at least though.
Sorry I should have clarified that I’m not just looking to receive but also send emails from botj of the domains that I use.
Edit: do you mind clarifying why using catchall is a bad idea :)?
They do allow to reply, simplelogin also has no limitation on reply count.
Oh okay, I wasn’t sure since you mentioned email forwarding and I saw a couple offerings (like Cloudflare) that only offer email forwarding if I understood correctly.
Thanks again! I’m gonna check them out.
I recommend fastmail.com though they do have done shortcomings that you need to consider such as the fact that they’re based in Australia (five eyes country) and have servers in the USA. Their advantage is a slick interface, fantastic app based on JMAP, and just generally being super convenient. They allow catch all addresses, masked emails, custom domain etc. I find them super convenient.
Another upvote or seven for fastmail.com - I spent a little too much time spinning my personal domain hosting through Fastmail, Tutanota, Proton, mailbox.org… and then came back full circle to Fastmail.
Their shortcomings, if you’re concerned about privacy, are listed right above^^^ but I don’t think you can find a better email hosting provider for the pricing.
Email isn’t that secure anyway (don’t use email if your life or freedom depends on it), so I don’t see that as much as a downside.
For 24$/year porkbun has been really easy!
ProtonMail has been my go to, really fantastic service, you get simplelogin as well and can add custom domains up to 10 iirc. And the VPN is top tier too.
I used to self host email and got sick of my emails never getting through. Email is federated in theory, but pretty centralized in practice. Paying for Proton was definitely worth it.
It really is depressingly hard to send email from most IPs these days. Somewhere along the lines we switched from black lists to white lists.
I have Protonmail rolled together with AnonAddy and that gives me all the aliases I could ever want.
How good is spam detection on ProtonMail? Especially compared to some of the big players like GMail?
Edit: I moved my primary email address to ProtonMail. Spam-Filtering is simply not good. About 50% get through just fine, even if it’s very easily identifiable as Spam / Phishing. I love everything else about ProtonMail but Spam-Filtering is simply not good despite relatively positive reviews I found about it.
Pretty damn good. I switched from Gmail, which afaik is amongst the best.
I hosted email professionally and for myself both, from the old days writing send mail rules in vi to turnkey shit. Absolute not worth the substantial hassle. Doesn’t scale small. The auth and security stuff is a PITA, then you find one thing was wrong and other domains were silently dropping all your mail, never delivered. Ugh. Protonmail it is.
Someone shared this post about ProtonMail the other day and thought I should share here as well.
http://jfloren.net/b/2023/7/7/0
An interesting read - thanks for sharing.
After reading that post and the linked github issues, with the latest updates and comments from the last 24 hours. Here’s the TL;DR:
Please correct me if I missed something.
CC: @[email protected]
You got it right, lots of drama, not really anything to worry about unless you’re very fringe and have people you email via PGP with “super secure” PGP keys (and honestly I’d trust Proton more than I’d trust most people to roll their own PGP… it’s hard stuff to get PGP right).
Microsoft365. It’s like $6/user/month and you get access to the whole MS suite (Word, Excel, etc.). Email is managed by Exchange Online. Crème de la crop as far as email goes.
If you’re in the Apple ecosystem and just want something barebones then you can use a custom domain with your iCloud account. I think it’s called iCloud+.
Microsoft is a privacy nightmare though.
I am already paying for iCloud+ so I use their service with my domain. It gets the job done.
Seconded, I have an iCloud+ family plan so it was a no-brainer to use their mail. Setup was easy and it supports catch-alls.
It’s not self hosted but I use Tutanota. I have my own domain anything that comes to that domain shows up in my box. It might be better than the alternatives because it’s an encrypted mail service.
Mailbox.org is decent as well
Happy customer for years. However, they recently changed their price schemes. The cheapest plan (1 EUR monthly) no longer allowes custom domains, you need to pay more for that.
Yeah, that sucked :(
Not self-hosted, however Proton supports custom domains and catch-all. Their monthly plans are very reasonable IMO.
Proton and fastmail you can use custom domains. I only have experience using fastmail. They provide great instructions for the settings in cloudflare (mx records, etc). My domain is purchased through namecheap.
I can receive mail on *@mydomain.com and I can send email from any thing I want ad-hoc ([email protected] or [email protected])
I thought about selfhosting as well, but the internet concensus was it can be a hassle with your email getting rejected.
ProtonMail for regular email + smtp2go for services to send outbound email.
You can use protonmail’s smtp gateway(tokenized) also if you have one of the larger plans
Well shit, didn’t know that was a thing.
So far my usage is enough to keep me on the free smtp2go plan. But that’s worth keeping in mind if my needs grow.
Business and Visionary plans only currently. You can find out more at https://proton.me/support/smtp-submission