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!
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
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.
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).
I have Protonmail rolled together with AnonAddy and that gives me all the aliases I could ever want.
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.
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.
Not self-hosted, however Proton supports custom domains and catch-all. Their monthly plans are very reasonable IMO.
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+.
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.
Microsoft is a privacy nightmare though.
uberspace might be what you are looking for. you get a fully maintained mail setup, 10GB of storage, a dozen preconfigured services, a nice wiki and a very cool team of nerds. starts at 5€/month and you can buy your own domain elsewhere (i use inwx).
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.
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.
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.
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.
I use Porkbun with Gmail and ForwardEmail.net. They do a great job.
I can highly recommend purelymail.com. They allow multiple domains, users and catch all accounts. They are great value, with a flat rate $10 per year ‘simple’ price, or you can pay per resource which for most people works out cheaper.
Been with them for over a year and been really good. Had a slight issue setting up one domain and their support were friendly, emailed back and sorted it out straight away for me.
What about Microsoft 365? The tenant itself is free and per account and month you pay about 5-10$ (depending on sibscription level).
With this you have the full MS Exchange experience, you get 1TB of OneDrive space and all the shebang.
I couldn’t get it set up to allow each of my family members to have their own email address on the domain. It was basically the opposite of the “no catch all” feature other hosts seem to have - Outlook custom domain was 100% catch all to 1 account. I very quickly undid my partial setup and am back in Google for now.
If you care at all about privacy I wouldn’t reccomned M365. Because: Schrems II and MS use your information for their own purpose, and in effect is not compliant with fx GDPR.
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 anything@domain.com.
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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.
Funny 😄 pretty much asked myself the same thing, the day before yesterday.
Specifically, I have been looking for encrypted mail hosters supporting your own domain. Also, hosting in Europe on dedicated Hardware (or at least guaranteed European VPS), GDPR compliance and some sort of certification/ verification of the said requirements and their claims!
What I came up with:
- mailbox.org (never heard of it before, but pretty much has your requirements covered) <- Tor nodes, anonymous accounts(no personal data at all!)
- proton mail
- Tutanota (pretty young - but interesting concept)
I won’t cite their individual plans - that’s for you to figure out in detail.
The thing that bugs me with the Proton Mail and Tutanota, to effectively make use of their threat model/ encryption you have to use their Apps/ Software. EDIT: I’m currently using Microsoft365 - with it you are pretty much locked in - I fear with Proton or Tutanota it’s the same. Migrating is a pain.
I’m trying mailbox.org at the moment - they got a 30-free trail.
Check out PurelyMail. It’s $10 a year, unlimited custom domains, unlimited emails, privacy focused.
