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Ask HN: Does anyone offer email servers as a service?

5 points by passive ↗ HN
I run a tiny side business hosting sites, mostly for friends. I'm taking on a new one that has a couple of domains associated with it, and the owner wants to receive any email sent to any of them. I've set up mail servers in the past, but if possible, I would rather avoid it. So I figured someone must offer mail servers, where I can tell it a domain, create an account, and change the MX records. Google Apps for domains is the closest thing I've found so far, but it seems like a lot of fluff around what I want. Has anyone encountered a simpler solution to my problem?

14 comments

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

Rackspace Email is $2 per mailbox per month ($10/month total minimum), 100% uptime SLA, 24x7x365 support, webmail/POP/IMAP. You bring your own domains, just point MX records to Rackspace.

passive
I've had lots of good experience with Rackspace in the past, but in this case I only need one mailbox, but I need all mail for the domains sent to it. Maybe my case is too specific.
dangrossman
Rackspace Email has all the features you'd expect of an email host, like aliases, forwarding and catch-all addresses. You should be able to forward the mail from all the domains to one mailbox. You'll still need to pay the minimum of $10/month.
Someone1234
Google Apps will do that for $5/month. I do that but I do it for free since Google Apps used to be free for the first ten users and I was fortunate enough to get grandfathered in.

I believe they have a 30 day trial.

garethsprice
Namecheap, the domain registrar, has pretty good value-added e-mail services. Free forwarding with domains, actual IMAP mailboxes from $10-$30 for the entire year. I'd recommend them.
jeremiahstover
http://MXroute.com offers email servers with a reasonable pay by the GB plan but forwarding is limited

http://ClouDNS.net offers dns service that has email forwarding (no accounts, just forwarding)

passive
mxroute appears awesome for my needs. Thanks!
passive
Seriously awesome. Since making this post I have set up the domains and account I needed, and tested it. All that's left now is the mx records. :)
mxroute
Thanks for the mention! We're rather obsessed with quality email with a positive delivery reputation at a budget price.
logn
You might consider iRedMail. It's not a service, but it's super easy to set up. It bundles all the top mail services in one easy installer and provides their own custom admin webapp (the simple admin is free... the advanced admin is how they make money). You can add multiple domains after the installation process. They'll make you create an initial super user on some domain during installation but you can delete it later.

http://iredmail.org/

BorisMelnik
Google Apps is the route I've taken in the past. I've also tried Outlook (server, not client) and regretted it, but it was what the client wanted.

I run the same kind of business, if you want to collaborate hit me up we can share ideas.