Ask HN: Which E-mail hosting and CRM do you use for your startup?

6 points by larryfole ↗ HN
I'm looking for stable E-mail hosting provider for small business/startup. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

14 comments

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Gsuite, or the like. Don't spend too much time on this decision
Webfaction. Most of the cases it does all: Create multiple mailbox with multiple addresses, email redirections, multiple users, and with no users/alias limit. Other mail hosting only services, are to much for what you normally need. If it's just about receive and setting up accounts, Webfaction is more than enough.

If you are going to send transactional or marketing email, use Amazon SES, or Mandrill if you don't want to deal with setting up AWS SES. I had lost lot of my time trying to use the same email hosting for marketing purpose, don't recommend that to anyone.

For CRM, I really like https://insightly.com when I used it really helps me to get back on contacting users quickly, however if I have a bigger team in the future, I will try http://pipedrive.com.

But being real, 60% of the cases and spreadsheet and a share contact folder in Google using the Delegation option had been my day to day tool.

For general purpose email: GMail

For transactional email: Amazon SES

CRM: self-hosted SugarCRM

I just forward emails to my gmail account.
Google Apps (now called "G Suite"). $5/month, stable, "just works," and via Google Docs/Drive you have a CRM solution.

Alternatively Office 365 Business Premium. $12.50/month (12 month minimum commitment). Only reason you'd consider this is that it includes Email, Office Desktop Suite (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc), and CRM. Essentially you'd merge a couple of bills into one bill.

Both are alright support, good uptime, great vendor support, good scaling, and migration strategies (in and out).

PS - Yes, this is the "boring" and "obvious" answer but sometimes things are "boring" and "obvious" for a good reason.

gmail + hubspot. Hubspot has a free crm but I use the sales add on ($50 per month) that adds email integration/opening rates, things like that
Use HubSpot, I find they've worked incredibly well at scale. Plus it's free to get going.
I use G Suite, I know it and lately it's been always up - Google wrote the book on System Reliability Engineering.

I use Streak CRM as it integrates with gmail.

Founder of Streak here, happy to answer any questions but in my highly biased opinion Gmail/Inbox/Gsuite is the way to go. Pace of innovation is fast, good APIs, ecosystem of products (like Streak) is getting stronger by the day.
Yandex is free and close to google suite.
CRM: Close.io

Email: Gmail / Amazon SES

Automation: DripEmails.com (I'm the founder)

G Suite (ex Google Apps) for emails/calendar/documents. NetHunt CRM as a CRM for G Suite.
I use Zoho for email. It is free for up to 5 users and has never given me any issues. I haven't used a CRM yet as I need customers before I can use a CRM
I've no doubts https://www.servermx.com/en/index.html

It isn't the cheaper but only the customer service worth it

They provvide also a good email sending limits (check it here http://docs.mailpoet.com/article/49-lists-of-hosts-and-their... )

"Multiple domain Backup MX mail server IMAP allows Real-time synchronization RoundCube, SquirrelMail and SOGo Web mail with support for languages right-to-left layout Anti-spam Spamassassin and Anti-virus ClamAV Contacts, Calendars and Tasks with CalDAV and CardDAV support Catch All, Alias, Forward, autoresponder, Sieve Filters Reliable and secure email hosting for companies, organizations, and individuals featuring WebMail, POP, IMAP and SMTP @ Contacts, Calendars and Tasks with CalDAV and CardDAV support @ Multiple domain hosting under the same account with no limitations @ Web-Administration area dedicated to individual user mailbox @ Anti-spam protections settings with per-user configuration"

At the moment there are some special servermx offers here : http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1621853

1 month of free trial cheers Max