Hey Indie Hackers!
I have lots of email accounts at lots of different domain names.
I currently have a VPS running cPanel with a ton of email accounts as addon domains. It feels like a clunky way to handle email, but the advantage is that I don't have to pay per-user.
What do you use to host your email?
$5 per month for reliable email with gsuite is 100% worth it.
We use Zoho. It's free and good enough :)
My goto one as well 👍
Might wanna think twice, I was using zoho for months and too often my emails would end up in spam. With gmail/gsuite that never happens...
Can you register more than one though? I have one hosted there, admin@example.com, but when I went to register another admin@adifferentexample.com I had to authorize with a mobile number. When I entered my mobile, it said it "was used previously" or something. I didn't dig too hard to see if I could bypass that, but just wondering what you have found.
+1
I don't send/receive a huge amount of traffic via custom domains, so I use a free Gmail account with a free Mailgun account. Mailgun forwards incoming messages into the Gmail account and I set up Gmail to use Mailgun SMTP for sending emails from these domain names.
That's exactly what I did for my last project, Mailgun's free tier (you need to add the CC though), DigitalOcean for the TXT/MX records (just because I'm hosting my app there) and a regular Gmail account. Works perfect! Explained here: https://medium.com/@katopz/digitalocean-mailgun-8f40f04c2ef7
Receiving emails using mailgun? Interesting idea. I just know about the sending options...
Yes, Mailgun can receive and forward emails:
https://documentation.mailgun.com/en/latest/quickstart-receiving.html#how-to-start-receiving-inbound-email
Interesting, so do you forward to your gmail address or push it directly to gmail? Do you need to select "sending from" address manually when replying?
match_recipient("me@domain.tld") forward("me@gmail.com")Thats awesome! Thanks for the steps. I'll try it out :)
You are welcome :)
I've set it up for five domains. Works like a charm! Thanks again!
in case you want to see what other companies are using, you can look at people's MX records with a simple
digcommand.For example if i use the dig command on the command line for my own website you can see that I use google (GSuite):
You can do the same for a company like stripe and see that they also use google.
dig stripe.com MX +shortI've done this for a handful of companies (startups and large ones) and Gsuite is very popular.
I've been using gmail account, I create one per project and use sendgrid SMTP to send email as
@domainand I use https://improvmx.com to forward*@domainto this gmail account works good and freeCheck out Migadu. Unlimited addresses for a low flat monthly fee. Great customer service too.
GSuite
For bigger projects I use gsuite but for small ones or those which require a lot of mailboxes I just put them on a $5 box I'm running on DigitalOcean with Mail-in-a-Box https://mailinabox.email/
It's really reliable so far and easy to set up.
Hands down Migadu. Unless you are looking to use things like Google Docs, Drive, etc.
I use google to setup a domain, then you get 100 free email aliases and you can forward them wherever you like. I just forward them to a personal gmail account that has an auto-filter setup to move them to their own folder. My inbox stays clean and I don't have to keep track of a bunch of separate accounts. Works for me.
Does Google domains do a decent job of handling root domains now? IIRC it only supported the www subdomain for a while... "We are not a DNS host" or something.
I had a Google Apps account which lets you setup a domain aliases https://support.google.com/domains/answer/6304395?hl=en - most people don't seem to know this. So if you have jamie@mydomain.com as your account, then email to jamie@mysideproject.com and jamie@myothersideproject.com all appear in my main jamie@mydomain.com inbox.
I recently switched my email to Fastmail, and I'm liking it so far, but maybe too early to tell. I can have the same setup with them up to 50 domains I think
It's 100 domains and 600 aliases.
Why did you decide to switch from Google to Fastmail?
I just decided it was time to stop feeding the ad machines all my data and I never used the Gmail interface so there was really nothing keeping me
What do you pay Fatsmail for email for 50 domains? I have a large number of domains I am still handling email for on a shared hosting but I would love to move to something else.
I do what you’re doing, but forward the emails to a domain-specific Gmail (eg. hello@bloombook.io => bloombook.io@gmail.com) and set up matching reply addresses. Super easy to switch between all my mailboxes.
Familiar interface, reliable, free. 💯
I used to just do that too, but now Google won't let me email FROM one of those addresses unless I can give it a bunch of SMTP information for my server. But I usually have no server.
We use Yandex Mail. It is free and has a good UI/UX.
Gsuite mostly because I want a good UI/UX on my phone. Amazon workmail is HORRIBLE.
I have a few hosted through Dreamhost, and I use Thunderbird to read them locally. I don't forward those to my phone. I use those because they come free with the hosting I have.
But I use GSuite for the more important stuff. I just like the interface that much better.
I use a mix of GSuite(first time I haven't typed GApps since the rename!) and Fastmail.
Are you happy with Fastmail? $3/user is a little more reasonable.
Fastmail is $5 but you can have unlimited addresses with up to 100 domains, not $5 per domain like Gsuite
As far as I know, GSuite provides free aliases, so you can use multiple domains under one 5$ account.
I'm very happy with fastmail.
I actually use it through pobox.com, so essentially I have a bunch of accounts on different domains, but one mailbox. I pay $50/year.
The only downside to Fastmail is if you're doing a lot of outreach I don't think you can do that on their system
Been using it for a few years now. I paid for five years up front. I love my @sent.com domain :-)
I don't use it much to be honest. I use fastmail when I have an account I'll be using for adwords or adsense and don't want all my eggs in one basket in the event I accidentally break some TOS. Never had any issues but I use Polymail on all my devices so they all look the same 99% of the time except when I need to add a new alias or domain.
Mail servers will retry the sends so you're usually ok.
Yes, typically the mail still goes through, but still, if the VPS goes down, it's a single point of failure so ALL my mail goes down until I get it back up.
protonmail
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