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Ask HN: Best email solution for personal domain

3 points by lemonlime227 ↗ HN
I've had a personal domain for a couple of years now and I'd like to start using it for email. I've had iCloud+ so I linked it up to that, but I don't really use it that much. The #1 feature I use is the "catch-all" email address: any email sent to whatever@my.domain (replace "whatever" with any text) is routed into my inbox. This has the nice intention of easily creating filter rules based on what email I used for a website.

My gripe with using iCloud for my email is that I just am not a fan of the mail client. Because of this, I've been very reluctant to send emails with it and prefer using my personal Outlook.

I use my personal email with the Outlook client, but I link this to a Google account mostly for convenience. I feel like switching entirely over to Google Workspace would be nice, but (1): Lock in (2): I don't think Workspace supports the catch-all/many email addresses for 1 user (3): I don't like Gmail's client. Switching over to Microsoft 365 has problems 1 and 2, just not 3.

What is the best solution for running email, preferably FOSS?

10 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] thread
ale_jacques
I use Fastmail for my personal domain. The service is great. They don't have a desktop app. I use macOS Mail (which sucks) and, sometimes, I give Spark Mail a try but they are not there yet.

Fastmail do have web and mobile clients. On web and iOS, both are a "webapp" disguised as an app (my guess Android version is the same).

josephcsible
Unfortunately, since you're not a megacorp, if you want to send email rather than just receiving it, the choices are (1) Google, (2) Microsoft, or (3) have emails you send inexplicably not get delivered even though you did everything with DKIM, SPF, DMARC, etc. exactly right.
LeonM
I use Google Workspace for my personal domain. It does support a catch-all, and as a nice perk you get more storage for your drive compared to a free Gmail/Google account. You can even add more domains for free, because you pay per user/inbox. So as long as you let all your domains forward/catch-all into one inbox, you only pay the €6,50/mo, or whatever it is in your part of the world.

Lock-in is not so much of a problem I'd say, you can export your entire inbox, that's possible with both Google and Outlook that I am aware of.

Just about any email service will offer IMAP, Google included. So you don't have to use the Gmail client if you don't like it, you can install any email agent of choice.

Don't try to self-host e-mail. It's not worth the headache.

lemonlime227
Google Workspace looks like the best option. Decent plus is that I'm already using a Google account for a lot of things except email. Main concern I had (forgot to include in original post) was calendar. I use iCloud+Calendar.app for calendar (and basically nothing else), and my existing Google account doesn't play too well with it. Figure I could mostly mitigate this by looking into other calendar clients (Notion Calendar works with Google which is a plus).
raincom
I use both https://purelymail.com and https://fastmail.com Try Purelymail, as you can set it up for $10 per year.
lemonlime227
I've seen purelymail, but my biggest doubt about it is getting blocked by email servers. I don't send too many emails, and almost all are sent to Gmail/Outlook accounts. Love the pricing though; I don't use up a massive amount of storage with my emails (way way way under outlook's free storage with 10 years of use) and pay as you go seems really nice.
beAbU
I host my personal mail with Migadu, they have some pretty compelling so-cheap-it's-free options available. These days I feel more comfortable paying for my email service than using some free service.

I used to be on google workspace, but I moved away from them after the cancellation of the free tier fiasco a couple of years ago.

Migadu comes with a web client, and it's OK I guess, but I use Thunderbird and an IMAP connection on PC, and the google mail client on Android. Happy with it so far. I do miss Google's powerful search and organisational capabilities though.

isaachinman
I'm in the same boat as you – happy with iCloud as a host for personal domain, but absolutely hate the client.

That's part of why we're building Marco:

https://marcoapp.io

I'm building it for myself, but sounds like it could be a good fit for you too.

lemonlime227
Marco seems really interesting! I'm curious as to how the UX is with solely IMAP. Whenever I use iCloud/Outlook/Gmail accounts on a different email client (e.g., using my Outlook email on Mail.app or my Gmail on the Outlook client), the IMAP experience just feels subpar compared to using the regular client (I have three email clients on my dock right now because of this...). Usually this shows in not great push notifications or actions I perform not getting synced properly. Has Marco been dealing with these issues, or have I just not been using the right email clients?

Example of the kind of behavior that I've come to expect with using megacorp mail over IMAP: https://youtu.be/02NtiPes5IM?t=319

isaachinman
Yes, we've dealt with those issues, and that was actually one of the hardest problems to solve. Most email providers use mailboxes, while Gmail uses labels to "emulate" mailboxes (sort of).

We have spent quite a lot of time and thought creating a label abstraction that makes _all_ email accounts play together nicely. There is currently no other product like this on the market.