I automated the most annoying part of shipping side projects

I build a lot of side projects. 3 to 5 per month.

Each one gets its own domain and email ([email protected]) so I can receive messages, sign up to tools, and keep things separated. After 100+ domains, the setup became ridiculous:

1. Buy a domain on Namecheap
2. Move nameservers to Cloudflare
3. Buy email hosting (PrivateEmail)
4. Copy DNS records to Cloudflare
5. Add the mailbox to Apple Mail
6. Repeat

None of this is hard. But doing it dozens of times is. And Apple Mail with 50+ project inboxes mixed with personal email is a mess.

I posted about this on Reddit a few weeks ago. Turns out a lot of people have the same problem. Most just reuse one inbox for everything (or aliases), or pay Google Workspace per user per project (and hate the price).

So I built ShipMail.

Add a domain (or register one directly from the dashboard), DNS records get configured automatically, create your mailboxes, done. The setup that used to take 20 minutes per project takes about 2 minutes.

What you get:

• Custom domain email with automatic DNS setup
• Works with the email app you already use (Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird), or the built-in webmail
• Unified inbox across all your domains. One dashboard where you can see all your side projects emails at the same time
• Shared inboxes when you bring on a cofounder or hire your first support person
• Calendars and contacts included
• Full API with TypeScript and Python SDKs. Create mailboxes, send transactional email, receive webhooks...
• $4/mo for 3 mailboxes. $9/mo for 10. $29/mo for 50. No per-user pricing

For comparison, 3 users on Google Workspace is $21/mo, and you're paying for Docs, Sheets, etc, that you never open.

I originally built this for myself, but the problem turned out to be bigger than side projects. The same thing that works for a developer with 20 projects works for a freelancer who just wants a professional email without touching DNS, or a small bakery that's still using [email protected].

I'm using it for all my projects now. Happy to answer questions about the product, or the business.