2y ago

Email Hosting w/SMTP, what do you use?

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?

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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.

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.

Can you selfhost? Does you ISP allow you to host a mail server? (and there is a difference between what they say, and what they actually do.)
I use iRedMail as a complete solution which is a mailserver, complete with server management and webclients sogo and icube.
The problem you may run into is if your ISP actively submits its customer email subnets to sites like Spamhaus. But if you dont get IP changes very often this might not be a problem. However you do also need to have a domain in your control and know how to do DKIM and SPF

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.
  
  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

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.

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 self host using mailcow. Easy setup. Prevents most of the beginner pitfalls via exemplary documentation.
- Upvote for mailcow. It's a classic postfix+dovecot email stack with lots of stuff figured out for you already. I host on a cheap vps that supports SRV records so rDNS passes, and then I still route my outgoing mail through Mailgun for better IP reputation. At my low (normal) mailing levels Mailgun is free.

I was using smtp2go, I'm now testing purelymail for my personal email needs. I don't think the latter is suited for sending a large number of emails.
- Yeah the one thing I found with them (purelymail) is you really have to keep an eye on the billing usage, there will be a point where advanced pricing is better for you but if you dip below that you need to swap back to the basic pricing
  
  I'm on advanced billing and based on my usage patterns, it shouldn't cost me more than $6-7/year. My main concern is it's a one man operation. The FAQ talks about it but I don't think anything has been put in place if the worst comes to pass.

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 used to have a zoho email, they let you do custom domains for one email for free. And smtp.
At least they used to.
I stopped using it, cause the app just didn’t vibe with me. I now have Microsoft cause my business has grown to the point I get value from it.
But a free custom domain email was nice when starting out :)

I have a VM at OVH that's a couple years old by now. I pay only a couple € for it each month. On that I run Mailcow and it works just fine.

$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.
- I also just recently switched to https://purelymail.com after hosting my own for several years via Mailcow and a cheap VPS. The cheap VPS was more expensive than the $10/year for Purelymail and I was only using it for mail anyway. Nothing to maintain now and so far very happy with how easy it was to move everything over.
  Also, they don't charge extra for additional domains so if you have multiple it's still $10. Only been with them a few weeks so can't say much yet for long term, but great so far!

I'm hosting mine on two VPS running OpenBSD :
opensmtpd
opendkim
dovecot
spamd
spamassassin
roundcube (webmail)
mlmmj (for newsletters)
Setup is rock solid and hasn't failed me in the last couple years, since I added the secondary server to temporarily queue mails in case the primary goes down. spamd can be a bit inconvenient sometimes (but that's on purpose) and I have a script to disable it temporarily when I need a quick email.
I have SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup on my DNS too, as well as requires records like A and PTR for my hosts.
As for the cost, I pay 30$/year for the domain, and 10$/month for the 2 servers. Backup is on backblaze and ridiculously cheap for the amount of mails I backup.

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.

I self host through my ISP connection.
sendmail
bogofilter
bogofilter-milter
opendkim
Cyrus for POP3/IMAP
roundcube
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 use my domain name with iCloud+ mail. I self hosted the domain for almost a decade and it’s just easier paying for hosting. I have done it on both O365 and Gmail but they have both nerfed the ability to use custom domains so iCloud it is.

I used to run my own email for years. Started on qmail, postfix+dovecot. Anti-spam (spamassassin for a while, rspamd), spf+dkim+dmarc, srs, arc-signing for forwards. All kinds of other tools, even wrote some of my own. I've learned a lot and pretty much ran the gamut to be honest.
So all that said, nowadays I just host with mxroute. Bought a lifetime plan. There's features it doesn't have but it's good enough to get emails and a lot easier than self hosting.
I generally recommend finding a host that has the features you want at a price that seems fair. Email is the kind of thing that needs to just always work.
Once you set it up sure, it's rock solid. Until one day you realize your emails are getting dropped and there's some new thing you've gotta look into. Let somebody else handle it.
- +1 on MXRoute and lifetime plan. It has been solid for me. The unlimited domains is also icing on the cake. I haven't even gotten close to 10 gigs but once I do I'll just transfer all the emails with attachments locally and keep chugging along.

I host an SMTP relay on a cheap IONOS VM. Had to ask support to open port 25 but that seems standard now. At home I have Mailcow running and configured to use my SMTP relay. Firewall on the IONOS VM prevents all connections except those from my home IP range.

I use dreamhost.com to purchase and manage my domains. Email service comes at no extra charge. I use it for my 4 Fediverse servers

I have modoboa Running on a 8gb droplet for 20 a month. Hosting over 10 domains. No issues, smooth transition on upgrades.

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.

We use Maddy, which is pretty easy to set up.

I run a VPS through InterServer, pay about 20 USD per month but that's for 4 cores and 8 GB RAM which of course is overkill for mail, but I use it for a lot more. Like Lemmy.
You can absolutely do it with 1 Core 2 GB and that's more like 5 USD per month.
I use iRedMail which is open source and they have good documentation. But fair warning that it's quite a bit of work self hosting mail and getting your mail to not end up in peoples spam folder. Still very much worth it though.

My domain registrar (Netim) comes with free email so I use that. They're kind of expensive though.

I like sendgrid. They have a free smtp service that works great.

Self host postfix with quite a bit of spam fighting measures. Get way way less spam than I did on Gmail

I currently use Protonmail but for some time I used hMailServer on Windows (https://www.hmailserver.com).

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.

Recently signed up with https://www.migadu.com, been great so far

Back when I had more time I set up mailinabox, before that I'd set up postfix and Cyrus.
Somewhere along the line the sasl and spam management became obnoxious, but I have to make a new solution soon and retire those cloud vms.
It works well for me, but managed usually makes more sense, consider Google apps for your purposes.

50 comments