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Ask HN: What's a good POP3/IMAP provider

6 points by cissou ↗ HN
I have a very precise need: I need a server to receive e-mails sent @mydomain.com and forward them to another inbox.

I was relying on Namecheap, my registrar, to do it as they offer it for free. However, they failed today and it jeopardized my entire web services, so I'm trying to move to a more specialized service.

I already set up a Google Apps account, but as a temporary/emergency solution: it will only be up for the 30 days free trial. I really _only_ need the e-mail forwarding feature and not the entire GApps suite, so I don't see myself becoming a GApps customer just for that.

So I was wondering: what do folks on HN use to receive and process their e-mails? Is there any POP3/IMAP as-a-service thingy that would be known/reliable?

11 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 41.7 ms ] thread
RexRollman
Fastmail would probably be a good suggestion.
cissou
So I assume it would be their $40/year plan as I need to use a custom domain. I've never heard of them before; did you use them? Happy/any feedback?

Edit: apparently they also have "family" and business plans, which seem more suited, but without trials.

jfb
I've been with them for years and I can't remember a single outage longer than minutes. I'm sure they've had them, but in my experience, Fastmail is 100% reliable, and will continue to get my money until they prove otherwise.
cissou
sounds like what I'm after. Have you had the chance to benchmark it with anything over the years? I'm just curious about the competition at this point
jfb
It's always worked for my purely IMAP workflow, so I've never bothered trying anything else. It's my personal mail, so I never really end up sending or receiving LARGENUM mails through them.

Personally, I don't notice a difference between them and my work IMAP servers, which have been Google Apps and some Oracle thing.

feld
Another vote for Fastmail. The best provider in the industry.
cissou
I've dug a bit in my Mandrill account and they seem to have such a feature (although it's advertised exactly nowhere). I'll give it a try too.

Update: Mandrill receives e-mail, but then only lets you POST a payload to a webhook. No e-mail forwarding.

cissou
Postkmarkapp (postmarkapp.com) is also providing such a thing. Just like Mandrill, they don't let you forward it to any inbox; however, I was already using them to process the e-mails and send a JSON payload to a webhook of mine, so it solves my problem apparently. I just hope their uptime is decent.
dangrossman
Rackspace Mail. It's Rackspace. The big high-end service guys with the 24/7/365 live support (phone/chat/email, even 4AM on Christmas Eve). Except their e-mail service is cheap at $10/month for 5 mailboxes ($2/mailbox after that). They give you a 100% uptime SLA. I have used them for my domains for many years, and there has never been an outage.
hackerboos
I use Zoho:

- nice interface

- native mobile apps for iOS and Android

- support for multiple domains and aliases

- Free for a single domain or $24/year per user for 10GB

https://www.zoho.com/mail/