Hey guys,
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.
Thanks so much in advance for your help!
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.
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Someone shared this post about ProtonMail the other day and thought I should share here as well.
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:
- 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.
Please correct me if I missed something.
CC: @howlingecko@sh.itjust.works
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).
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.
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I have Protonmail rolled together with AnonAddy and that gives me all the aliases I could ever want.
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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.
The pricing is not that great though. You need the second tier for custom domains which will run you $50/year/user account. You can get something like Office 365 for $140/year for 5 accounts and that includes things like the Office software too.
Either way, both companies are located in countries where authorities will access your data if that bothers you.
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 (anything@mydomain.com or anything@anything.mydomain.com)
I thought about selfhosting as well, but the internet concensus was it can be a hassle with your email getting rejected.
I’ve been very happy with mxroute for quite a few years now. They have a summer deal going on for $40 a year for unlimited domains and accounts, you’re only limited by storage (100GB) and outgoing emails per hour.
t would be helpful to know what you consider basic features you want the host to support, but catchall works.I self-host my main email account, but use MXRoute as an outbound relay. Works great.
I do have some email accounts that use MXRoute. The Crossbox webmail system they use is very good.
Same here, very happy about mxroute, they even have a plan where you pay once for lifetime account.
How good is mxroute at blocking spam correctly?
+1 for mxroute. Happy customer since last black Friday. No fuss and just works (after reading the how-to). Also spam detection is good.
I have a couple domains that are very low volume for outgoing mail. I use Migadu. I’m happy with their cheapest tier ($19/year for both domains). They have catch-alls and many other nice features.
Edit: They have no hard limits on the number of addresses, users, or domains and such. They just want you to be reasonable. You choose a tier based on your average quantity of outgoing mails per day. Again, there are no hard limits; they won’t cut you off unless you abuse the system.
Seconding Migadu! I’ve had them for about 3 years now and never had a problem.
I’ve been happy as well with migadu for the time I’ve been using it ~3 years. Have different mailboxes, and I used aliases for pretty much every website I sign up with.
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.
Your exact use case will vary as to what is “best” - I went with Fastmail $50/yr USD) after my research a few years ago based on features I wanted. But also based on things other services didn’t do.
- Fastmail offers granular, per-app passwords – I have a single password which has read-only access to IMAP in order to back up all the data on a timer. This feature is missing from many (many) other email providers - using the 80/20 rule, if they even offer it it’s a single password with full access (Mailfence, for example)
- Fast, reliable incoming instant delivery is needed. I have financial services which send 2FA style codes in email (the US Treasury website for example) and need to get those via a service which is top notch. I don’t get to choose how to consume this content, it’s email or nothing
- Fastmail allows for many domains easily, with a very nice DNS checker wizard to help you set up your records as well a keep checking them to ensure they stay correct.
- Fastmail supports not only your catchall, but quick and easy masked emails as well for one-time use. For example, when shutting down an account on some random site I don’t want to keep spamming me, you generate a masked email, change the email on that remote account and usually get a verification email to click a link, then shut down that remote account, then delete the masked email. More than one service keeps spamming you after you shut down an account
- Fastmail has a good spam catcher for me - it’s polling my decades old GMail and even catches spam that the GMail side miss, so I’d say it’s even one notch better than GMail at this.
- Fastmail offers full CardDAV (contacts) and CalDAV (calendar) access, which makes plugging it into any other app that supports this very easy - their DNS wizard helps you set up the service records. I use “DavX5” on my Android to sync all Contacts and Calendar outside of using the Fastmail app (which is a self contained app on Android, it’s not too bad)
- Fastmail has a really, really cool and easy to use Notes feature built right in that actually works without hassle. In essence it’s just an email folder where they manage HTML emails, but from a UI perspective on both the web app and mobile it’s presented as a “Notes” tab. This has come in so handy when I need to take a quick note on my mobile of any sort for looking at on a laptop later, etc.
- Proton and Tutanota are all about marketing their encryption and security, but the reality is most of my email interacts with the outside world and this doesn’t have any bearing in real life use.
- Proton doesn’t have “real” IMAP, you have to run some custom bridge software on your own which is highly undesirable for me; Tuta doesn’t offer any external client access of any sort. Basically, you’re either using their apps or website or you’re kinda out of luck
I also use Mailfence as a backup on a second domain, with the emails from Fastmail being synced over via IMAP (on both sides) on a timer into a subfolder, such that if one service goes down I have a second email route ready to use. Always have a backup plan, things break when you least expect it.
I already posted that I recommend fastmail elsewhere in this thread, but you raised so many good points that it reminded me of some extra points :)
Fastmail offers granular, per-app passwords – I have a single password which has read-only access to IMAP in order to back up all the data on a timer. This feature is missing from many (many) other email providers - using the 80/20 rule, if they even offer it it’s a single password with full access (Mailfence, for example)
Since this community is about selfhosting I think it’s worth pointing out that this is AMAZING for selfhosting. I have all me selfhosted services sending e-mail via fastmail’s SMTP. With per-app passwords I don’t need to store my normal e-mail password and the apps can be limited to SMTP only (so no read access). And in case of compromise you can revoke permissions on a per-app granularity.
Fastmail offers full CardDAV (contacts) and CalDAV (calendar) access, which makes plugging it into any other app that supports this very easy - their DNS wizard helps you set up the service records. I use “DavX5” on my Android to sync all Contacts and Calendar outside of using the Fastmail app (which is a self contained app on Android, it’s not too bad)
Fastmail has become my contacts app now - it’s really great to have all your e-mail and contacts in the same place. The contacts don’t even need to have an e-mail address - I have a lot of contacts stored for whom I only have a phone number. I sync to android using the same DavX5 app and then immediately have these contacts in whatsapp and signal.
I use Fastmail and it’s pretty reasonable, has some nice tie-ins with 1Password, alias emails, etc.
Purelymail.com has been great for me for years. Insanely cheap and just works.
It’s great, I just wish the admin UI was better somehow. Especially the routing page quickly gets out of hand.
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
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 :(
Proton mail offers catchall, assuming you mean what I think you do. Basically I can receive mail sent to anything@mydomain.com, though my account only has 5 named accounts that I can send from.
For 24$/year porkbun has been really easy!
I use Proton mail and Anonaddy.
