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:
- Buy a domain on Namecheap
- Move nameservers to Cloudflare
- Buy email hosting (PrivateEmail)
- Copy DNS records to Cloudflare
- Add the mailbox to Apple Mail
- 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.
This is a very real pain point. The part I’d look for before trusting any “mail for every side project” tool is portability: can I keep the domain, export mail cleanly, see DNS/auth status, and leave without breaking every login tied to that project address. Setup speed matters, but the exit path matters too.
3 to 5 projects a month is insane output. Automating the "boring" setup stuff is definitely the move to keep that pace up. Congrats on the launch, this looks super clean.
Appreciate the kind words. I tried to reduce the shipping cadence though because you never really focus otherwise :)
This is genuinely useful. I just went through the business email setup for a new project this week — ended up parking it on a plain Gmail address because the DNS config kept eating time I didn't have.
The joke email address in the post description is painfully accurate. The frustrating part isn't that setup is technically hard, it's that it's exactly the kind of 20-minute friction that never feels worth solving properly until you're looking at an otherwise professional product page connected to a janky personal Gmail.
Will check this out — right problem to solve.
lol at your reply about the LLM comments. the irony of building a tool to save time and then getting spammed by bots is... something.
the setup tax thing is real though. we run about 21 different digital products on gumroad (dev tools, templates, cheat sheets — search vemtrac) and even though we're not at your "100+ domains" level, the operational overhead of keeping everything organized and professional-looking is genuinely what slows us down the most. we just dump everything on gumroad because we couldn't stomach setting up individual sites for each one.
$4/mo for 3 mailboxes is honestly tempting. right now we just use one gmail for everything and its a disaster.
Curious what part you targeted - deployment, changelog writing, social posts, or something else entirely? The "most annoying" part differs a lot depending on the builder. The real pitfall with automating shipping tasks is that the automation itself can become a maintenance burden that outlasts the project it was meant to help.
haha, you forgot to remove the LLM message :)
:)
Might work indeed for founders shipping projects at an inhuman pace — if there are any out there. I'll keep a note of it if I ever get close to that pace myself.
Anyway, good luck finding your users! If it solved your problem, chances are others are feeling the same pain.
Thank you
This is one of those problems that only shows up once you’re actually shipping a lot - and then it becomes painfully obvious.
The “setup tax” between idea -> usable project is way bigger than people admit.
Domain, DNS, email, auth, payments… none of it is hard individually, but together it kills momentum.
What you built basically compresses that entire layer into something that matches the speed of building itself - that’s where the real value is.
Cool :)
Appreciate it
3-5 projects per month is wild output. The "scratch your own itch" pipeline you've built is basically the ideal indie hacker feedback loop — you hit the problem, you feel the pain at scale, you know exactly what the MVP needs to be.
The pricing comparison with Google Workspace is smart positioning. $4/mo vs $21/mo is an easy sell, especially since most side projects don't need Docs/Sheets — just a professional email that works. The API with TypeScript and Python SDKs is what separates this from a simple email forwarding service though. That's where the developer audience really locks in.
I think about this same "setup tax" problem a lot. We built AnveVoice (voice AI for websites) and the single biggest adoption unlock was reducing integration to one script tag — literally copy-paste and done. Before that, people would evaluate the product, love the demo, then bounce during setup. Every step you remove from the getting-started flow is a multiplier on conversion.
Curious about your acquisition strategy at 3-5 projects/month. Are you shipping these as completely separate brands, or is there a portfolio play where ShipMail becomes the connective tissue across all of them? The unified inbox feature feels like it could evolve into a full "indie hacker command center" if you lean into it.
Not even one legit comment?
3 to 5 projects per month is impressive output. The DNS and email setup tax is real — I've done the same Cloudflare dance enough times to know exactly how much momentum it kills right when you want to be moving fast. The bit about 50+ Apple Mail inboxes getting messy made me laugh because that's exactly where it ends up. What's been the most common use case from customers so far — developers like yourself, or the small businesses?
Damn, all these LLM replies are all the same
Yeah, fair. There are a lot of them. Mine wasn't — the Cloudflare DNS setup loop is something I've done way too many times building side projects and it kills momentum every single time. But I get why it all looks the same when half the comments section is GPT.