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Ask HN: What mail host do you use?

9 points by ante_annum ↗ HN
I'm trying to get away from Gmail dependency, and I'd love input on other hosting solutions.

Things to consider: price, custom domain names, storage size.

10 comments

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dangrossman
Rackspace Mail.

$2/month/mailbox (minimum $10/month).

100% uptime SLA. I have experienced no downtime in some years.

24/7/365 support, by phone/email/webchat. If you need to talk to someone at 2AM on Christmas day, you can.

25GB mailboxes, IMAP push and POP3, configurable backups, good spam filters.

http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/

ante_annum
This does look like the best option! Thanks! I might do this for my family, since I'd basically have to get 5 mailboxes.
bouncing
I've had good experience with Fastmail.fm, moving for the same reason you did -- from gmail. It's an amazingly powerful system -- just check out the "advanced" configuration. As an added bonus, it has Dropbox integration, its own dropbox-like system, and a jabber server you can use for talk. The web interface is at least as good as gmail's; I would argue better.

Only downside: Even with a custom domain, you need a family/business plan to have jabber at your own domain instead of theirs.

chuhnk
I'm using gmail with my own domain at the moment but given the state of CISPA and the fear of being locked out my account for good, I think I'll be kicking off my own hosting solution soon. The idea will be to build something fairly simple but with scalable storage, encryption and redundancy x3.
ante_annum
This is exactly what I have and what I'm concerned about. I don't think I'll actually go to my own hosting, but I'd like to have a solution that isn't gmail.
pwg
I run my own email.

Price: Already paying for internet connection anyway.

Custom domain name: Necessary - but not that expensive anymore.

Storage size: limited only by how much storage I'm willing to buy.

josho
I don't recommend hosting your own.

I briefly had OSX server running a mail server for my small team. I quickly realized how spoiled I was by Gmail. Basic mail server setup was easy enough. But, managing things like out of office auto responders, server based mail filters, password resets, etc all required my attention. IMAP doesn't handle those tasks, and I'm not aware of a way for users to do those tasks themselves.

I went back to Google for mail hosting, but will be investigating the other services below. (I'm still a free Google Apps user, so it's hard to move off of free).

cdvonstinkpot
Fastmail, for years, never an issue- always good things to say about them.
maresca
Currently using Rackspace for my contact email. I plan on setting up an Amazon SES for sending.