Hi all,
I have had several shots at self hosting email over the years and my last attempt failed due to my home IP being in a dynamic pool. I thought I might try again, this time with a basic web hosting provider that I could set up email on. Any suggestions for a free/cheap provider with decent uptime?
Thanks
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All cheap/shared IP providers would be equally terrible trying to have a good reputation.
I’ve had good luck on a couple of cheap providers. I think a lot of them block port 25 by default, unless you ask, which maybe gives you a better chance. Plus DKIM and stuff are starting to help. There’s probably always some stupid mail server that will block huge swaths of IPv4 if somebody farts in the neighborhood, but I think the situation is improving.
Proton Mail is cheap. I think I paid $40 for a year and you get a bunch more stuff in addition to mail and a custom mail domain.
I’d say don’t self host mail. Just use protonmail or something. You probably don’t want to hear that but you’ll just end up with something less reliable, less features and you’ll have to spend sma lot of time on it
Not my experience at all. Once my OpenSMTPD mail server was set up 3 years ago, the only time I spend on it is updates (like 20 minutes per year). Setup did take some time, but it was totally worth it to me.
Most budget web hosts are going to score you a pretty spam score - the private antispam feed we use at work has “originates at a digital ocean ASN” as an automatic grey list unless it’s for a domain with an existing reputation
Just configure your outbound SMTP to use sendgrid or some other. SMTP provider. I realized this isn’t 100% self housing then, but you could still self host the inbound mail. Self housing outbound SMTP just isn’t worth it for most people IMHO due to spam lists.
Check out MXRoute.
You need to be a technical enough to manage domains and panel management (but not as involved as self-hosting).
They have decent support documents and responsive support.
They frequently have promotion for lifetime, multi domains, multi accounts (limited only by 10GB in storage size) email hosting.
I got mine in 2021 with 125 USD (one time payment). Hosted my work and family emails. During the period I only have 1 issue related to spam fighting and resolved with 1 day. With previous hosting price, MXRoute is already more cost effective after 1 year.
Email is too important to do on the cheap.
Chances are, all the cheap hosts have had their reputations trashed by spammers and are on blacklists.
I use a 1€/month domain from strato.de, a very reputable German hoster. They support DynDNS, provide a backup mx for when my home server is offline, and I use their SMTP server as relay for sending reputation. No issues so far.
Digital Ocean is the only one I know of that doesn’t block outgoing traffic on port 25, but you need to use IPv4 only.
Check out infomaniak. You get an unlimited (inbox storage) email account when you buy or transfer a domain with them.
Has imap, pop3, native apps for iphone and android plus a (imo) really nice webmail client.
The company is very pro privacy too if the important to you.
I’m on my second year as a customer. Can recommend.
is there a catch-all option?
Couldnt tell you, but probably. Check their docs, which are pretty comprehensive.
I use them as IMAP storage for a few mailing lists I am subscribed to (but not for my main emails), but they do reject legitimate emails from time to time (not often, but it does happen - and those emails don’t show up in “Spam” or any logs).
That is frustrating. Does that mean those emails don’t show up even when you loud in to the webmail?
I recommend https://migadu.com. not free, but the lowest price tier has lots of features, unlimited mailboxes etc.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol for email IP Internet Protocol SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
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