30 ms·

Purelymail – cheap, no-nonsense email

606 points by pwrplus1 5y ago

glasss 5y ago
This seems great, would be pretty popular through a tor service I imagine.
pwrplus1 5y ago
I've been using Purelymail as my sole mail provider for over a year now (previously with Fastmail) and it has been my best email experience. It's a one-man enterprise, which may frighten some people, but I prefer boutique internet companies to the faceless monoliths. (I'd like more of the internet to be made of these small corner bodegas.)
- eganist 5y ago
  > It's a one-man enterprise For this reason alone, I can't trust that they meet all the security considerations email providers now have as a consequence of all the services effectively delegating either secondary or primary authentication factors (or reset mechanisms) to email.
- jakecopp 5y ago
  > It's a one-man enterprise, which may frighten some people Email is super critical for most people these days (eg. 2FA). That sounds like a really scary bus-factor [1] risk, especially considering data is encrypted at rest. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
  - Felz 5y ago
    I actually get asked about this semi-frequently. Probably nobody could replace me as a _developer_ on Purelymail, but I've been training my brother to handle extended maintenance and to have handover credentials if anything happens to me personally. (This might be in the FAQ?)
    - mfashby 5y ago
      Thanks! Have you looked into source code escrow for this situation?
      - Felz 5y ago
        No, but I will. Thanks for giving me a term to research!
    - jakecopp 5y ago
      That eliminates some of my worry! Thanks for replying.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    I think my odds of getting banned by Google’s shitty AI is just as much of a risk for me as the bus-factor for a one person show.
  - lawl 5y ago
    > Email is super critical for most people these days (eg. 2FA). That sounds like a really scary bus-factor [1] risk Not such a big deal if you have your own domain (you should). Update the MX record and point it elsewhere. I've switched from Gmail to a similar setup a year ago. Honestly, it's been way easier than I expected, in terms of updating everywhere. And I can just point my MX somewhere else should I ever be unhappy with the current provider. No delivery issues either so far. Seriously, the hardest part about this whole ordeal was getting imapsync to run, to transfer my mails over. Not using gmail or another big silo is really not that hard, as HN often makes it out to be.
  - mfashby 5y ago
    I _always_ use that particular phrase for highlighting the importance of information sharing, but I never knew this page existed, thanks!
- zerof1l 5y ago
  From the FAQ > Occasionally, obscure email servers will block emails sent through us. Maybe it's good for personal use or as a throwaway email, but it is not good for main business email. Certainly not a replacement for Gmail or Fastmail kinds. Because you expect the email service to have 24/7 availability and near-perfect email delivery and receiving. > It's a one-man enterprise A person can get sick or just wish to take a holiday for a couple of weeks. What happens when service goes down or I need customer support urgently?
  - pwrplus1 5y ago
    > A person can get sick or just wish to take a holiday for a couple of weeks. What happens when service goes down or I need customer support urgently? I think the expectation of urgency should be put into perspective alongside the $10/year price tag, i.e. if you need someone to get out of bed in the middle of the night $10 is probably not enough incentive. That said, any issues or questions I've had have been resolved way faster than I experienced with Fastmail.
  - EveYoung 5y ago
    For me, this would be a major issue for personal emails as well. Even if an undelivered email wouldn't cause a monetary loss it still could have significant consequences, such as upsetting friends or family or missing the signup deadline for your kid's sports team. Personally, I don't mind paying the higher Fastmail prices to not have to worry about this.
- brongondwana 5y ago
  Fastmail isn't entirely faceless either :p But we're definitely not still the 3-man show that we were before the Opera years (up until 2010). Obviously, I think Fastmail is worth the extra for the multi-copy redundancy & backups, new features, contributions we're making to the standards world, and not being dependent on a single person - the past few years in particular we've been focusing on not only being able to survive any server dying, but also being able to survive the unavailability of any single person! Anyway - glad you're happy. Fastmail will still be here if you ever find that you want to move back.
  - pwrplus1 5y ago
    Oh sorry I did not mean to suggest Fastmail was a faceless megacorp, I was thinking of Google, MS, Apple, etc. I fondly recall many years ago I had some WebDAV issue and got a reply directly from you saying you'd fixed the issue but you were just heading out to dinner and so you'd push to production when you got back. That convinced a few friends to join too. After about 10 years, Fastmail felt it was shifting to a more "enterprise" focus, which I can understand, and I just wanted to try something a little more "indie web".
    - brongondwana 5y ago
      Hah, yeah - fair enough. Glad I could fix your issue. Ahh, Webdav. I know the XML libraries a lot better these days and could make that code a lot tighter, but it's still chugging along just fine, pretty much untouched since :) As for enterprise focus - not so much enterprise, but we are focusing more on the non-technical user. All the power is still there under the hood and available, but it's not so much in your face if you don't want it to be!
      - crossroadsguy 5y ago
        Hi, is there going to be a plan like the lowest tier of mailbox.org (esp. the price)? People who just need email with 1-2GB and probably a catch all?
Brajeshwar 5y ago
These tiny services are cool. I have the cheapest account on Migadu[1] for all my random custom domain emails. 1. https://www.migadu.com https://www.migadu.com
- marban 5y ago
  Plus one. Great, small Swiss shop with decent support and response time. Never had any issues with them.
  - estaseuropano 5y ago
    Can only second migadu, only think I really miss is a Calendar support.
- nikodunk 5y ago
  Thanks so much for sharing this! Just spent half an hour reading about this hidden gem and will switch all my projects to them!!
- nmlt 5y ago
  How does Migadu compare to purelymail? I’m not using either and it looks like migadu has their own software stack instead of using something like roundcube, etc. And not just a single person behind it.
eclectric 5y ago
Where is this hosted?
- Gaelan 5y ago
  AWS us-east-1, it looks like: $ dig mx purelymail.com ;; ANSWER SECTION: purelymail.com. 86400 IN MX 50 mailserver.purelymail.com. $ dig mailserver.purelymail.com ;; ANSWER SECTION: mailserver.purelymail.com. 60 IN A 18.204.123.63 $ whois 18.204.123.63 OrgName: Amazon Technologies Inc. https://awsips.co https://awsips.co for the region information
  - bigshell 5y ago
    For some stupid reason I can't bare to see that done in 3 lines. whois $(dig +short A $(dig +short MX purelymail.com | head -n 1) | head -n 1)
    - indigodaddy 5y ago
      I stopped using -n X for head/tail in favor of just -X (eg -1 or -10 or whatever). Save a few keystrokes, plus certain unixes (eg Solaris) only work with -X and don’t the support -n switch.
    - neogodless 5y ago
      > bear
- sebmellen 5y ago
  From the website: > our infrastructure runs on the highly reliable AWS cloud,
boba7 5y ago
Switching emails every N years would really piss off my cutomers. I need one email for as long as the company exists, you see.
- gostsamo 5y ago
  Use your own domain and your customers will notice nothing.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Then you really should be using your own domain, at which point you can replace the service at will.
mikelward 5y ago
Spam filtering is by SpamAssassin. How is it these days?
- mikelward 5y ago
  Still memory hungry, at least. https://news.purelymail.com/posts/status/2021-03-31-instance-death.html https://news.purelymail.com/posts/status/2021-03-31-instance...
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
The price is right, but the polish isn't.
- fumar 5y ago
  Grammarly will eliminate verbose and passive-voice copy, and that will increase its polish. I can take or leave the existing design aesthetic.
- Felz 5y ago
  That's partly intentional! Hopefully it scares away the users who expect perfection, and they can be better handled by a glossier service. (Also I'm just genuinely mediocre at design, and kind of personally prefer less frills anyway.)
  - andrewmcwatters 5y ago
    I'm glad someone posted it here. You're filling a very much needed service in the industry, even if it doesn't meet my particular desires.
1-6 5y ago
$10/year is not bad but I already have more email addresses than necessary.
listenallyall 5y ago
Thank you for making this service available. For entrepreneurs who like to launch new ideas with custom domains, pricing models like the one here is a HUGE savings over pay-per-account (or domain) pricing found at most major email providers. Further, it's not easy making much money charging just $10/year, even if the business gets quite popular... so again, thanks for making it available.
- faraaz98 5y ago
  I'm curious, what are your thoughts on Zoho mail. You can use your custom domains even in their free tier
  - commoner 5y ago
    Zoho Mail's free tier doesn't include IMAP (for new accounts since about 3 years ago), so you wouldn't be able to use Thunderbird, FairEmail, K-9 Mail, or other third-party apps. Offline access on the free tier is restricted to Zoho Mail's desktop and mobile apps. Zoho's Mail Lite plan ($1/user/month) does include IMAP access, and you'll need to do some calculations to see whether Purelymail or Zoho Mail is cheaper. https://purelymail.com/advancedpricing https://purelymail.com/advancedpricing https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html
  - bartvk 5y ago
    I've tried Zoho mail and the "problem" is that it's so much more than mail. It's a huge suite of online apps, really. That means if you purely need mail, it'll take a bit of time to find the setting you need. (It's been three years since I tried it, and looking at my notes, I couldn't get Zoho to sync contacts for me, and somehow didn't get calendar notifications.)
  - listenallyall 5y ago
    Well, I'm no expert and I'm not in any position to say anything negative about Zoho Mail... but the free tier you mention seems to allow for one domain. So it likely won't work if you have, say, 5 active domains you want to receive and send email.
johnwheeler 5y ago
Screenshots of the mail UI would be awesome. On the drawbacks blurb, it mentions potential deliverability issues and says they’re usually resolved in a day or two. Through blog entries by mailchimp, I've read this is an extremely hard problem to solve and like playing whack-a-mole. How true is that? For example, I’ve read that trying to host your own email on digital ocean is pointless, which is understandable because of the amount of spam likely coming out of their subnets. Is this service downplaying the issue?
- pwrplus1 5y ago
  The webmail is RoundCube with Classic, Larry or Elastic skins. I have had a handful of deliverability issues, but every one of these has been due to one of those awful "enterprise network solutions" that does everything wrong.
- Nullabillity 5y ago
  It's worth keeping in mind that MailChimp is primarily a spam delivery service, of course they're going to have issues where they get stuck in spam filters.
calltrak 5y ago
This looks like a good deal. We could use this at https://fabform.io https://fabform.io our web forms "google forms alternative" platform.
toastal 5y ago
I recently switched to Posteo from a few years with ProtonMail. Reading from Purelymail's docs and with price being within $3 annually of one another (Posteo is €12 annually) Posteo pros: comes with calendar and contacts via WebDAV, not registered in the US (Germany is part of 14 Eyes, but not 5 or 9, and the EU is better about privacy), cash payment option Purelymail pros: more storage @ $10, custom domain support, security key 2FA (though unclear according to docs if this is WebAuthn/FIDO2 or Yubikey vendor lock-in) Neither: cryptocurrency payment option
- pwrplus1 5y ago
  The 2FA is just regular TOTP RFC 6238.
- npteljes 5y ago
  Posteo also runs on FOSS and is being endorsed by the FSF - if that matters. They also do 2FA, via TOTP (which many apps support). They offer a migration tool that downloads email from your other accounts.
  - toastal 5y ago
    Both of these email provider options support TOTP so I omitted it; and TOTP ≠ U2F/WebAuthn with a USB token. I have an OnlyKey, but it’s mostly full of TOTP keys already because applications are not supporting WebAuthn. Posteo does not support this, and last I emailed them, they said they do not release information about future features.
- srg0 5y ago
  Never heard about Posteo. Too bad it does not support custom domains.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Another alternative to Posteo is Mailbox.org [1]. Personally, I use Soverin [2], but that's mostly cause I get it for free with Freedom Internet plus its hosted in The Netherlands. And I can always leave. [1] https://mailbox.org/en/ https://mailbox.org/en/ [2] https://soverin.net/ https://soverin.net/
notRobot 5y ago
I have a question: if this is hosted on AWS, what (and I'm sure there's something, I just don't know what) is stopping Amazon from accessing my mail and using it for whatever?
- Felz 5y ago
  I believe this is part of the AWS's explicit policy, possibly also in the terms of service: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/ https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/ It would be crazy suicidal for their cloud business to break it, and possibly open them up to lawsuit.
  - estaseuropano 5y ago
    And of course it would be even more crazy for them to refuse a request e.g. by the FBI or NSA. I'm sure they respect SLAs as much as OnePlus, Huawei & co don't share data with Chinese government.
    - Felz 5y ago
      Yea, they say as much in the data privacy FAQ. I think my recommendation is that if you're worried about being explicitly targeted by state actors, don't use email. (Not even Protonmail.) If you're worried about general data hoovering, AWS would probably need to implement very sophisticated introspection into what your machines are doing to break the SSL on SMTPS, and courts might not be sympathetic to that. I expect state actors would find it easier and more convenient to just hoover from big providers like Gmail instead.
      - piaste 5y ago
        > Yea, they say as much in the data privacy FAQ. I think my recommendation is that if you're worried about being explicitly targeted by state actors, don't use email. (Not even Protonmail.) Protonmail (and Tutanota, which I went with) both offer E2E encrypted email via open-source client apps, so they should be fine even against state actors if you use their encryption. In the case of Tutanota, this has even been tested in court. Of course, if you use them to send or receive plain ol' unencrypted email, this largely goes out of the window regardless of the provider.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
can anyone explain what benefits are to a managed email service over rolling your own on a vps server with stuff like mailinabox? you use your custom domain anyways and it allows s3 or backblaze backups so data retention is not an issue. you use your custom domain so in case something stupid happens to your vps provider, you can just restore and be done with it? and its not like managing your own vps email server is much of a hassle, every few months you have to update the install script and thats it
- vzaliva 5y ago
  because of spam many systems agessively block email delivery from IP addresses which do not known to belong to well established mail providers with millions of users. And it is very tedious to unblock it on case by case basis. This is the reason I've stopped running my personal mail server 10 years ago.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    well there are checks to see if your ip address is blocked as spam. even then you can just ask your vps provider for giving you a fresh one.
    - vzaliva 5y ago
      yea, but it have to be done constantly. Somehow you never sure your messages are delivered or if people can reach you. At some point after running my onw mail infrastructure for 15 years I gave up and decided that I would like to oursource this to somebody else, a email provider who have a dedicated team of admins making sure my mail is delivered, so I do not have to worry and spend time on it myself.
  - ZWoz 5y ago
    If you have new IP and that IP don't have bad history, then your main issue is hotmail and Office365. There is little bit rate limiting over next 24h period, but if you host yourself and don't send unsolicidated bulk messages, then you don't see those limits. Some anti-spam services graylist you, that causes usually 5 minute delay for delivery. 90% spam score comes from message, sending server isn't that relevant (if you base configuration is reasonable: PTR is right, server knows it's hostname and don't EHLO himself as localhost and so on). You can look at SpamAssassin default rulebase[1] for common rules. --- [1] - https://spamassassin.apache.org/old/tests_3_3_x.html https://spamassassin.apache.org/old/tests_3_3_x.html
Felz 5y ago
Oh cool, my project is on HackerNews! I was wondering about the sudden uptick in user signups, and then I checked HN... I'm Scott, feel free to ask me anything about the service.
- rolleiflex 5y ago
  Great work, and as somebody who self hosted my own email from 2013 to 2021, I don’t envy you. What broke me down was Google starting to spam my emails that were replies to conversations that I did not start — even with a stellar domain reputation and DKIM, SPF, reverse DNS, greylisting, everything set up right. I hope you have personal contacts on the Gmail team at Google, much as I’d like for this to be a joke.
  - Felz 5y ago
    I actually haven't had huge problems with Google (yet). I'm not sure why.
    - rolleiflex 5y ago
      My experience has been cyclical, as long as you stick to IPv4 with good SPF and your reverse DNS works it will work 95% of the time. The remaining 5% appears to be completely random however. It’s possible that my issue was too low a traffic to ‘hold onto’ my score with Gmail, since it was one domain and one email address. With some luck you should be able to have enough traffic to avoid that. Best of luck.
  - techsupporter 5y ago
    I had this exact same problem. When I finally got hold of someone who worked for Google (via a friend of a friend on a mailing list) and with the ability to check whatever their logs were claiming, I was informed that my domain's reputation was "too recent" or something like that. My domain is a year older than Google itself and has been in continuous use for e-mail that whole time. The IP addresses it is on haven't changed in a decade. But that didn't matter. DKIM, SPF, DMARC, forward and reverse matching DNS, exactly four users who do not send spam under penalty of being buried under legal solicitations for green cards, and all the rest didn't help. Randomly getting sent to /dev/null for no good reason. And not enough traffic to qualify me to use their Postmaster utilities. Three years ago I gave up and ported to Fastmail with a tear in my eye for the days when even the smallest net on the Internet could be a full participant.
thirdplace_ 5y ago
I am using migadu after recommendation from drew devault. It's nice if you have a couple domains you want mail for.
mullsork 5y ago
This looks great! Sign up for the free trial was pretty slick. I'm not sure how well known Klarna is outside of Europe (I know they launched in the US), but that would be my preferred method of payment. Or.. anything but Paypal (and giving my CC information)
- mcintyre1994 5y ago
  At least according to their marketing Klarna make their money by charging retailers, so it's probably not viable for this sort of business.
- shadowoflight 5y ago
  FYI, the credit card checkout option allows for using Apple Pay, so I went that route to obfuscate my CC info (and get cash back, because hey, why not).
supermatt 5y ago
FYI: your pricing calculator is incorrect. If you choose more than 1 year, it multiplies the "price per year".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dustymcp 5y ago
this is great, services that actually does what they where supposed to at a low cost instead of ad spamming/tracking/spying on me for additional cash i wish you luck my friend!
fredsted 5y ago
I'm not sure price is the parameter to compete on for email services, at least for me. Email is extremely important to most businesses, and if I'm already paying for a domain, and running a business, even the $70 for a Workspace solution is a drop in the bucket. What I need, however, is deliverability, strong privacy and security, good spam filtering, and support when I need it. I'd encourage you to try doubling or tripling the price so you can afford to hire more people and grow the business :) I suspect the rate of signups will stay the same.
- maxk42 5y ago
  Perhaps you're not the target customer?
p5a0u9l 5y ago
> We're not trying to bamboozle you with glossy images, or sell you a lofty ideal. I appreciate the dig at psuedo-righteous slogan-eering like "Don't be evil.", "Bring the worked closer together". Just fucking email.
zubspace 5y ago
Looks good. Fair pricing. I hope it works out for them. I started out with self-hosting mail-in-a-box [1]. If you really want to self-host, I can highly recommend it. Would be the cheapest option. At some point I decided to let go of it, because maintenance and configuration can still be a bit cumbersome. There was one thing (DMARC or DNSSEC?) which I never was able to set up properly for some unknown reason, even after long hours tinkering around with it... So I started to look at other mail hosting offerings with custom domain. One thing I like is that gandi offers free mail hosting for a domain you order through them. [2] That's quite unique for a domain registrar. Also, be aware that free 3rd-party mail hosting with a custom domain does not exist. I started out with the free plan at migadu, but they switched to a paid plan soon after. [3] The same happened to postale.io after a while. [4] At least I could keep my free plan there. Zoho is free [5], but their custom mail application and the countless other services they try to sell you completely put me off. [1] https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ [2] https://www.gandi.net/en/domain/email https://www.gandi.net/en/domain/email [3] https://www.migadu.com/pricing/#what-happened-to-the-free-plan https://www.migadu.com/pricing/#what-happened-to-the-free-pl... [4] https://postale.io/faq#What%20happened%20to%20the%20free%20plan https://postale.io/faq#What%20happened%20to%20the%20free%20p...? [5] https://www.zoho.com/mail/ https://www.zoho.com/mail/
- spindle 5y ago
  +1 for gandi as a mail host.
- BelenusMordred 5y ago
  I'll throw my hat in the ring for postale, they are a good service for both individuals and business. Is $1 a month really going to put you in financial stress? Is your business going to die paying $5 a month? > Also, be aware that free 3rd-party mail hosting with a custom domain does not exist. You can set up a custom domain on a free gmail account, it's hidden away but certainly possible.
- Lex-2008 5y ago
  > Also, be aware that free 3rd-party mail hosting with a custom domain does not exist. I believe two of them still exist in Russia. * Yandex even has a page in English: https://360.yandex.com/business/tariff https://360.yandex.com/business/tariff * Mail.Ru has a page only in Russian: https://biz.mail.ru/mail/#tariffs https://biz.mail.ru/mail/#tariffs
dial8gue 5y ago
https://mailbox.org https://mailbox.org I pay 1 euro per month. With calendar, contacts, file storage and DAV. With aliases and your own domain. Plus it's a well-known company.
- vince14 5y ago
  Custom domains and cloud storage are €3/month. Not included in €1/month.
  - dial8gue 5y ago
    Old users had the option to stay on the of 1 euro tariff with all included
- newscracker 5y ago
  But mailbox.org is also priced per mailbox by default. When I checked with Mailbox.org support a few years ago, there was no way to go beyond 25 aliases on a single mailbox (even when one is willing to pay).
rplnt 5y ago
Isn't Google free? Perhaps with certain limitations... I know I never paid for email.
- chin123 5y ago
  GMail has ads. It's free because you are the product, not the customer. Google's customers are the advertisers. The money has to come from somewhere.
  - rplnt 5y ago
    I'm not talking about gmail. This post is about hosting an email with your own domain.
    - ripdog 5y ago
      Google workspace isn't free.
      - rplnt 5y ago
        Can't find any free plan either now. I guess they just discontinued them and are not upgrading existing accounts.
        robjan 5y ago
        It's not been free for around a decade now. The free version was mostly a ploy to attract people away from Outlook at the time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- neogodless 5y ago
  Early editions of Google Apps for Business (aka G Suite aka Google Workspace) included a free version which included support for custom domains and catch-all email. Those accounts got grandfathered (i.e. stayed free) when Google discontinued them. The cheapest plan seems to be $72/year per user. https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html
edwinyzh 5y ago
Well Well, I've just gone through the setup with fastmail and currently trialing their platform, for a new domain of mine, otherwise if I know this earlier, I should have tried it first...
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
> An honest list of drawbacks I appreciate putting up a list like this. That said, I want to comment on one of the listed drawbacks: > Occasionally, obscure email servers will block emails sent through us I have a few years of experience running my own email server and I can tell you this is a major pain in the ass. When you send your email via a small email server (a server that sends a low volume of email), you will have constant issues getting mail delivered. Also, most of the issues will not be with obscure email servers, they will be with Outlook and Gmail. When you send email, you will never know if your email will be delivered to inbox, delivered to spam folder, or blackholed entirely. Related: > We're not a suitable platform for sending marketing emails (although you should use a dedicated marketing platform anyway). Please explicitly ban people from using your platform to send "marketing email". Clients like that are going to ruin deliverability for your other clients.
- shaicoleman 5y ago
  > Occasionally, obscure email servers will block emails sent through us The worst offender is Microsoft and their email services (hotmail.com/live.com/outlook.com/etc.). They reject all emails from my server, because it's on DigitalOcean. They are ignoring all requests to unblock my IP address. They don't mark it as spam, they just outright block emails, so you can't even workaround it by checking the spam folder.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    > They don't mark it as spam, they just outright block emails, so you can't even workaround it by checking the spam folder. And there’s no reason for them to do that IMO. They should dump it into the quarantine as high confidence spam. I wonder if the drop shows up in the mail flow logs. I deal with a lot of small businesses and more than once I’ve seen bad spam filtering or silent drops cost people money (upset customers). The spam filters I can understand. The silently dropped messages should get them a class action lawsuit.
    - johnklos 5y ago
      There is a reason - DigitalOcean. A more appropriate name would be DigitalCesspool. They allow anything, so long as you pay them. I'd block email from their networks, but there are already plenty of ways that spam servers on their networks screw up (bad EHLO name, broken reverse DNS, SPF for all IP addresses), so that email is not accepted anyway. Microsoft sucks for rejecting email without recourse, but you're on DigitalOcean, so can you really blame them?
Markoff 5y ago
well he lists there also Zoho for 12USD, so what exactly is benefit over Zoho which offers 5GB for 10.8EUR and 10GB for 13.5EUR?
- aembleton 5y ago
  Unlimited user accounts for $10/year, whereas Zoho charges per account.
jobarion 5y ago
When using subaddressing (e.g. example+tag@purelymail.com), can I also send from that address? The holy grail for me would be an email service that lets me set up catch-all, with the ability to send/reply with any address I want.
- spindle 5y ago
  I'm not the right person to answer but I happen to know that the answer is yes!
- deadbunny 5y ago
  > The holy grail for me would be an email service that lets me set up catch-all, with the ability to send/reply with any address I want. I have this with fastmail. *@my.tld all gets shoved in my inbox and I can send from whatever@my.tld.
  - mvolfik 5y ago
    With improvmx.com you can point a domain at them, and then set catch-all forwarding to e.g. Gmail. Sending is possible thanks to most providers (incl. Gmail) allowing sending from different address after verification, and if you set DKIM and SPF it shouldn't cause any issues.
  - jobarion 5y ago
    Do you need to set up each *@my.tld address manually, or can you just seamlessly reply to emails send to neverusedbefore@my.tld?
    - MandieD 5y ago
      The latter, which often makes for an interesting conversation at medical offices and shops when I jot down their-business-name@mydomain.com. The FastMail mobile client makes replying to those emails without “breaking character” easy.
      - deleted 5y ago
Wronnay 5y ago
Some other possibilities which offer more features and are cheaper: https://blog.m5e.de/post/comparison-of-email-hosting-possibilities/ https://blog.m5e.de/post/comparison-of-email-hosting-possibi...
antihero 5y ago
Whether we wish to switch or not (I'd be inclined to consider it but I am quite happy with Fastmail and am not super worried about a saving a few bucks a month): Is there a generic solution for moving over IMAP inboxes from one provider to another?
- mongrol-smush 5y ago
  I can recommend imapsync. Liked it so much I donated a little dosh to the developer. https://imapsync.lamiral.info https://imapsync.lamiral.info
cryptos 5y ago
I consider the usage of Roundcube for the UI a downside. I've tried Roundcube myself and was not really satisfied. It is difficult for to describe what exactly is wrong with the UI but somehow the usability is not really good. Outlook (web), GMail, or Yahoo Mail all feel better to me. What I'd really miss would the integration of an external adress book (Google), because I wouldn't want to duplicate all my addresses.
frank1234 5y ago
"We host our servers through Amazon Web Services" As long as you outsource the hosting to another company -- an American company in particular -- then you're not really in the business of secure e-mail. Secure from other users? Sure. Secure from the hosting company and the government it answers to? Never.
ibdf 5y ago
This might be just what I need. I used to run my own email server but don’t have time for that anymore. I run small sites with low budgets and finding a simple email server that costs next to nothing has been pretty hard, specially if I have more than one user. I use AWS SES free tier for sending emails from these sites but unfortunately forwarding email received at SES is not as straight forward.
baggachipz 5y ago
I've been using this service for the past year or so and it's perfect for my needs: - Just works - Minimal downtime - All features of email supported - No frills - Fast support response - Dirt-ass cheap. I use "advanced billing" and last month's fees were $0.58.
bdcravens 5y ago
My first thought was that this was a great advertisement for Zoho
subhro 5y ago
You are charging additional for shorter email addresses? Why?
- neogodless 5y ago
  Note that it's only for shared domain names, not your own (custom) domain. There's a good chance people want and reserve shorter email addresses on shared domains. e.g. subhro @ domain.tld vs subhro7783 @ domain.tld (or in this case @ purelymail.com)
neogodless 5y ago
> Support for custom domains at no additional charge. You may have as many users on as many custom domains as you like. Custom routing rules are supported, including catchalls to capture any email sent to your domain. This is huge. This is one of those features that just gets omitted by many email hosts (especially inexpensive ones) and has been holding me back from switching away from a very old, grandfathered, free Google Apps for Business plan.
webmobdev 5y ago
I was very interested until I learnt that you use AWS to host your services. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. are parasitic tech companies that try their best to access and mine our personal data. Privacy conscious techie individuals try their best to avoid the services of these companies. Please consider hosting your email elsewhere.
landemva 5y ago
Founder could add "officer" to his titles. Much like USA school admins inflate their egos ... Chief Learning Officer. As far as the service goes, grow and grow fast.
_joel 5y ago
Speaking personally, it's not worth the hastle to save a little bit of money per year. I'll stick with Fastmail as it never gets in the way and always works.
skeeter2020 5y ago
I would love to have more options in this space but email is to foundational to leave to a beta service that doesn't have 24/7 support, may have black-hole delivery issues and doesnt' have a calendar solution. Charge more and address these drawbacks, or get out of the business. You're offerring 1/2 the required features instead of focusing on the core requirements.
- cyborgx7 5y ago
  >Charge more and address these drawbacks, or get out of the business. Why? It seems like this is meeting plenty of people's needs just fine. Not everything has to meet your needs.
cyborgx7 5y ago
From the LLC I'm assuming this is based in the US. I'm not hosting my e-mail with a company based in the US. Other than that, I love everything about this.
devwastaken 5y ago
This looks good for the price. I've been looking for a service I can throw up under my domain simply to receive email under that official domain, but the site doesn't make money so most other services are far too expensive. Tbh idunno why Cloudflare doesn't just do this. People will use domains under google because it provides domain email.
uiui1 5y ago
purelymail is based
eirikurh 5y ago
I have used purelymail for about a year, moved almost all of my correspondance to it (custom domain) and am very happy with it. Good and speedy support when needed. I recommend it.
0x073 5y ago
I guess purelymail is used for contact@purelymail.com itself. But I see only one my record, does this service has mx backup servers for the customers?
Jakob1337 5y ago
I like the idea but you should consider offering something more than just the Roundcube. If I pay for an email service I expect a better webmail and Android/iOS apps. MXroute offers all of this and I don't see a reason why I should migrate. Best of luck anyway!
sxiao 5y ago
The left out porkbun's mail service for $24.00/year, still more expensive than their solution but not much.
ybbond 5y ago
I tried Purelymail and though I trust the service, Runbox's web interface left much to be desired. I also have mail went to spam with Fastmail that makes me paranoid and always BCC my gmail account for every important email. One thing that I don't like with Microsoft and Google's mail service is the need to create new account to have a custom domain mail.

606 points by pwrplus1 5y ago

This seems great, would be pretty popular through a tor service I imagine.

I've been using Purelymail as my sole mail provider for over a year now (previously with Fastmail) and it has been my best email experience. It's a one-man enterprise, which may frighten some people, but I prefer boutique internet companies to the faceless monoliths. (I'd like more of the internet to be made of these small corner bodegas.)

eganist 5y ago
> It's a one-man enterprise For this reason alone, I can't trust that they meet all the security considerations email providers now have as a consequence of all the services effectively delegating either secondary or primary authentication factors (or reset mechanisms) to email.
jakecopp 5y ago
> It's a one-man enterprise, which may frighten some people Email is super critical for most people these days (eg. 2FA). That sounds like a really scary bus-factor [1] risk, especially considering data is encrypted at rest. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
- Felz 5y ago
  I actually get asked about this semi-frequently. Probably nobody could replace me as a _developer_ on Purelymail, but I've been training my brother to handle extended maintenance and to have handover credentials if anything happens to me personally. (This might be in the FAQ?)
  - mfashby 5y ago
    Thanks! Have you looked into source code escrow for this situation?
    - Felz 5y ago
      No, but I will. Thanks for giving me a term to research!
  - jakecopp 5y ago
    That eliminates some of my worry! Thanks for replying.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  I think my odds of getting banned by Google’s shitty AI is just as much of a risk for me as the bus-factor for a one person show.
- lawl 5y ago
  > Email is super critical for most people these days (eg. 2FA). That sounds like a really scary bus-factor [1] risk Not such a big deal if you have your own domain (you should). Update the MX record and point it elsewhere. I've switched from Gmail to a similar setup a year ago. Honestly, it's been way easier than I expected, in terms of updating everywhere. And I can just point my MX somewhere else should I ever be unhappy with the current provider. No delivery issues either so far. Seriously, the hardest part about this whole ordeal was getting imapsync to run, to transfer my mails over. Not using gmail or another big silo is really not that hard, as HN often makes it out to be.
- mfashby 5y ago
  I _always_ use that particular phrase for highlighting the importance of information sharing, but I never knew this page existed, thanks!
zerof1l 5y ago
From the FAQ > Occasionally, obscure email servers will block emails sent through us. Maybe it's good for personal use or as a throwaway email, but it is not good for main business email. Certainly not a replacement for Gmail or Fastmail kinds. Because you expect the email service to have 24/7 availability and near-perfect email delivery and receiving. > It's a one-man enterprise A person can get sick or just wish to take a holiday for a couple of weeks. What happens when service goes down or I need customer support urgently?
- pwrplus1 5y ago
  > A person can get sick or just wish to take a holiday for a couple of weeks. What happens when service goes down or I need customer support urgently? I think the expectation of urgency should be put into perspective alongside the $10/year price tag, i.e. if you need someone to get out of bed in the middle of the night $10 is probably not enough incentive. That said, any issues or questions I've had have been resolved way faster than I experienced with Fastmail.
- EveYoung 5y ago
  For me, this would be a major issue for personal emails as well. Even if an undelivered email wouldn't cause a monetary loss it still could have significant consequences, such as upsetting friends or family or missing the signup deadline for your kid's sports team. Personally, I don't mind paying the higher Fastmail prices to not have to worry about this.
brongondwana 5y ago
Fastmail isn't entirely faceless either :p But we're definitely not still the 3-man show that we were before the Opera years (up until 2010). Obviously, I think Fastmail is worth the extra for the multi-copy redundancy & backups, new features, contributions we're making to the standards world, and not being dependent on a single person - the past few years in particular we've been focusing on not only being able to survive any server dying, but also being able to survive the unavailability of any single person! Anyway - glad you're happy. Fastmail will still be here if you ever find that you want to move back.
- pwrplus1 5y ago
  Oh sorry I did not mean to suggest Fastmail was a faceless megacorp, I was thinking of Google, MS, Apple, etc. I fondly recall many years ago I had some WebDAV issue and got a reply directly from you saying you'd fixed the issue but you were just heading out to dinner and so you'd push to production when you got back. That convinced a few friends to join too. After about 10 years, Fastmail felt it was shifting to a more "enterprise" focus, which I can understand, and I just wanted to try something a little more "indie web".
  - brongondwana 5y ago
    Hah, yeah - fair enough. Glad I could fix your issue. Ahh, Webdav. I know the XML libraries a lot better these days and could make that code a lot tighter, but it's still chugging along just fine, pretty much untouched since :) As for enterprise focus - not so much enterprise, but we are focusing more on the non-technical user. All the power is still there under the hood and available, but it's not so much in your face if you don't want it to be!
    - crossroadsguy 5y ago
      Hi, is there going to be a plan like the lowest tier of mailbox.org (esp. the price)? People who just need email with 1-2GB and probably a catch all?

Brajeshwar 5y ago

These tiny services are cool. I have the cheapest account on Migadu[1] for all my random custom domain emails. 1. https://www.migadu.com https://www.migadu.com

marban 5y ago
Plus one. Great, small Swiss shop with decent support and response time. Never had any issues with them.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  Can only second migadu, only think I really miss is a Calendar support.
nikodunk 5y ago
Thanks so much for sharing this! Just spent half an hour reading about this hidden gem and will switch all my projects to them!!
nmlt 5y ago
How does Migadu compare to purelymail? I’m not using either and it looks like migadu has their own software stack instead of using something like roundcube, etc. And not just a single person behind it.

eclectric 5y ago

Where is this hosted?

Gaelan 5y ago
AWS us-east-1, it looks like: $ dig mx purelymail.com ;; ANSWER SECTION: purelymail.com. 86400 IN MX 50 mailserver.purelymail.com. $ dig mailserver.purelymail.com ;; ANSWER SECTION: mailserver.purelymail.com. 60 IN A 18.204.123.63 $ whois 18.204.123.63 OrgName: Amazon Technologies Inc. https://awsips.co https://awsips.co for the region information
- bigshell 5y ago
  For some stupid reason I can't bare to see that done in 3 lines. whois $(dig +short A $(dig +short MX purelymail.com | head -n 1) | head -n 1)
  - indigodaddy 5y ago
    I stopped using -n X for head/tail in favor of just -X (eg -1 or -10 or whatever). Save a few keystrokes, plus certain unixes (eg Solaris) only work with -X and don’t the support -n switch.
  - neogodless 5y ago
    > bear
sebmellen 5y ago
From the website: > our infrastructure runs on the highly reliable AWS cloud,

boba7 5y ago

Switching emails every N years would really piss off my cutomers. I need one email for as long as the company exists, you see.

gostsamo 5y ago
Use your own domain and your customers will notice nothing.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Then you really should be using your own domain, at which point you can replace the service at will.

mikelward 5y ago

Spam filtering is by SpamAssassin. How is it these days?

mikelward 5y ago
Still memory hungry, at least. https://news.purelymail.com/posts/status/2021-03-31-instance-death.html https://news.purelymail.com/posts/status/2021-03-31-instance...

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

The price is right, but the polish isn't.

fumar 5y ago
Grammarly will eliminate verbose and passive-voice copy, and that will increase its polish. I can take or leave the existing design aesthetic.
Felz 5y ago
That's partly intentional! Hopefully it scares away the users who expect perfection, and they can be better handled by a glossier service. (Also I'm just genuinely mediocre at design, and kind of personally prefer less frills anyway.)
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  I'm glad someone posted it here. You're filling a very much needed service in the industry, even if it doesn't meet my particular desires.

1-6 5y ago

$10/year is not bad but I already have more email addresses than necessary.

listenallyall 5y ago

Thank you for making this service available. For entrepreneurs who like to launch new ideas with custom domains, pricing models like the one here is a HUGE savings over pay-per-account (or domain) pricing found at most major email providers. Further, it's not easy making much money charging just $10/year, even if the business gets quite popular... so again, thanks for making it available.

faraaz98 5y ago
I'm curious, what are your thoughts on Zoho mail. You can use your custom domains even in their free tier
- commoner 5y ago
  Zoho Mail's free tier doesn't include IMAP (for new accounts since about 3 years ago), so you wouldn't be able to use Thunderbird, FairEmail, K-9 Mail, or other third-party apps. Offline access on the free tier is restricted to Zoho Mail's desktop and mobile apps. Zoho's Mail Lite plan ($1/user/month) does include IMAP access, and you'll need to do some calculations to see whether Purelymail or Zoho Mail is cheaper. https://purelymail.com/advancedpricing https://purelymail.com/advancedpricing https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html
- bartvk 5y ago
  I've tried Zoho mail and the "problem" is that it's so much more than mail. It's a huge suite of online apps, really. That means if you purely need mail, it'll take a bit of time to find the setting you need. (It's been three years since I tried it, and looking at my notes, I couldn't get Zoho to sync contacts for me, and somehow didn't get calendar notifications.)
- listenallyall 5y ago
  Well, I'm no expert and I'm not in any position to say anything negative about Zoho Mail... but the free tier you mention seems to allow for one domain. So it likely won't work if you have, say, 5 active domains you want to receive and send email.

johnwheeler 5y ago

Screenshots of the mail UI would be awesome. On the drawbacks blurb, it mentions potential deliverability issues and says they’re usually resolved in a day or two. Through blog entries by mailchimp, I've read this is an extremely hard problem to solve and like playing whack-a-mole. How true is that? For example, I’ve read that trying to host your own email on digital ocean is pointless, which is understandable because of the amount of spam likely coming out of their subnets. Is this service downplaying the issue?

pwrplus1 5y ago
The webmail is RoundCube with Classic, Larry or Elastic skins. I have had a handful of deliverability issues, but every one of these has been due to one of those awful "enterprise network solutions" that does everything wrong.
Nullabillity 5y ago
It's worth keeping in mind that MailChimp is primarily a spam delivery service, of course they're going to have issues where they get stuck in spam filters.

calltrak 5y ago

This looks like a good deal. We could use this at https://fabform.io https://fabform.io our web forms "google forms alternative" platform.

toastal 5y ago

I recently switched to Posteo from a few years with ProtonMail. Reading from Purelymail's docs and with price being within $3 annually of one another (Posteo is €12 annually) Posteo pros: comes with calendar and contacts via WebDAV, not registered in the US (Germany is part of 14 Eyes, but not 5 or 9, and the EU is better about privacy), cash payment option Purelymail pros: more storage @ $10, custom domain support, security key 2FA (though unclear according to docs if this is WebAuthn/FIDO2 or Yubikey vendor lock-in) Neither: cryptocurrency payment option

pwrplus1 5y ago
The 2FA is just regular TOTP RFC 6238.
npteljes 5y ago
Posteo also runs on FOSS and is being endorsed by the FSF - if that matters. They also do 2FA, via TOTP (which many apps support). They offer a migration tool that downloads email from your other accounts.
- toastal 5y ago
  Both of these email provider options support TOTP so I omitted it; and TOTP ≠ U2F/WebAuthn with a USB token. I have an OnlyKey, but it’s mostly full of TOTP keys already because applications are not supporting WebAuthn. Posteo does not support this, and last I emailed them, they said they do not release information about future features.
srg0 5y ago
Never heard about Posteo. Too bad it does not support custom domains.
Fnoord 5y ago
Another alternative to Posteo is Mailbox.org [1]. Personally, I use Soverin [2], but that's mostly cause I get it for free with Freedom Internet plus its hosted in The Netherlands. And I can always leave. [1] https://mailbox.org/en/ https://mailbox.org/en/ [2] https://soverin.net/ https://soverin.net/

notRobot 5y ago

I have a question: if this is hosted on AWS, what (and I'm sure there's something, I just don't know what) is stopping Amazon from accessing my mail and using it for whatever?

Felz 5y ago
I believe this is part of the AWS's explicit policy, possibly also in the terms of service: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/ https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/ It would be crazy suicidal for their cloud business to break it, and possibly open them up to lawsuit.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  And of course it would be even more crazy for them to refuse a request e.g. by the FBI or NSA. I'm sure they respect SLAs as much as OnePlus, Huawei & co don't share data with Chinese government.
  - Felz 5y ago
    Yea, they say as much in the data privacy FAQ. I think my recommendation is that if you're worried about being explicitly targeted by state actors, don't use email. (Not even Protonmail.) If you're worried about general data hoovering, AWS would probably need to implement very sophisticated introspection into what your machines are doing to break the SSL on SMTPS, and courts might not be sympathetic to that. I expect state actors would find it easier and more convenient to just hoover from big providers like Gmail instead.
    - piaste 5y ago
      > Yea, they say as much in the data privacy FAQ. I think my recommendation is that if you're worried about being explicitly targeted by state actors, don't use email. (Not even Protonmail.) Protonmail (and Tutanota, which I went with) both offer E2E encrypted email via open-source client apps, so they should be fine even against state actors if you use their encryption. In the case of Tutanota, this has even been tested in court. Of course, if you use them to send or receive plain ol' unencrypted email, this largely goes out of the window regardless of the provider.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

can anyone explain what benefits are to a managed email service over rolling your own on a vps server with stuff like mailinabox? you use your custom domain anyways and it allows s3 or backblaze backups so data retention is not an issue. you use your custom domain so in case something stupid happens to your vps provider, you can just restore and be done with it? and its not like managing your own vps email server is much of a hassle, every few months you have to update the install script and thats it

vzaliva 5y ago
because of spam many systems agessively block email delivery from IP addresses which do not known to belong to well established mail providers with millions of users. And it is very tedious to unblock it on case by case basis. This is the reason I've stopped running my personal mail server 10 years ago.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  well there are checks to see if your ip address is blocked as spam. even then you can just ask your vps provider for giving you a fresh one.
  - vzaliva 5y ago
    yea, but it have to be done constantly. Somehow you never sure your messages are delivered or if people can reach you. At some point after running my onw mail infrastructure for 15 years I gave up and decided that I would like to oursource this to somebody else, a email provider who have a dedicated team of admins making sure my mail is delivered, so I do not have to worry and spend time on it myself.
- ZWoz 5y ago
  If you have new IP and that IP don't have bad history, then your main issue is hotmail and Office365. There is little bit rate limiting over next 24h period, but if you host yourself and don't send unsolicidated bulk messages, then you don't see those limits. Some anti-spam services graylist you, that causes usually 5 minute delay for delivery. 90% spam score comes from message, sending server isn't that relevant (if you base configuration is reasonable: PTR is right, server knows it's hostname and don't EHLO himself as localhost and so on). You can look at SpamAssassin default rulebase[1] for common rules. --- [1] - https://spamassassin.apache.org/old/tests_3_3_x.html https://spamassassin.apache.org/old/tests_3_3_x.html

Felz 5y ago

Oh cool, my project is on HackerNews! I was wondering about the sudden uptick in user signups, and then I checked HN... I'm Scott, feel free to ask me anything about the service.

rolleiflex 5y ago
Great work, and as somebody who self hosted my own email from 2013 to 2021, I don’t envy you. What broke me down was Google starting to spam my emails that were replies to conversations that I did not start — even with a stellar domain reputation and DKIM, SPF, reverse DNS, greylisting, everything set up right. I hope you have personal contacts on the Gmail team at Google, much as I’d like for this to be a joke.
- Felz 5y ago
  I actually haven't had huge problems with Google (yet). I'm not sure why.
  - rolleiflex 5y ago
    My experience has been cyclical, as long as you stick to IPv4 with good SPF and your reverse DNS works it will work 95% of the time. The remaining 5% appears to be completely random however. It’s possible that my issue was too low a traffic to ‘hold onto’ my score with Gmail, since it was one domain and one email address. With some luck you should be able to have enough traffic to avoid that. Best of luck.
- techsupporter 5y ago
  I had this exact same problem. When I finally got hold of someone who worked for Google (via a friend of a friend on a mailing list) and with the ability to check whatever their logs were claiming, I was informed that my domain's reputation was "too recent" or something like that. My domain is a year older than Google itself and has been in continuous use for e-mail that whole time. The IP addresses it is on haven't changed in a decade. But that didn't matter. DKIM, SPF, DMARC, forward and reverse matching DNS, exactly four users who do not send spam under penalty of being buried under legal solicitations for green cards, and all the rest didn't help. Randomly getting sent to /dev/null for no good reason. And not enough traffic to qualify me to use their Postmaster utilities. Three years ago I gave up and ported to Fastmail with a tear in my eye for the days when even the smallest net on the Internet could be a full participant.

thirdplace_ 5y ago

I am using migadu after recommendation from drew devault. It's nice if you have a couple domains you want mail for.

mullsork 5y ago

This looks great! Sign up for the free trial was pretty slick. I'm not sure how well known Klarna is outside of Europe (I know they launched in the US), but that would be my preferred method of payment. Or.. anything but Paypal (and giving my CC information)

mcintyre1994 5y ago
At least according to their marketing Klarna make their money by charging retailers, so it's probably not viable for this sort of business.
shadowoflight 5y ago
FYI, the credit card checkout option allows for using Apple Pay, so I went that route to obfuscate my CC info (and get cash back, because hey, why not).

supermatt 5y ago

FYI: your pricing calculator is incorrect. If you choose more than 1 year, it multiplies the "price per year".

deleted 5y ago

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dustymcp 5y ago

this is great, services that actually does what they where supposed to at a low cost instead of ad spamming/tracking/spying on me for additional cash i wish you luck my friend!

fredsted 5y ago

I'm not sure price is the parameter to compete on for email services, at least for me. Email is extremely important to most businesses, and if I'm already paying for a domain, and running a business, even the $70 for a Workspace solution is a drop in the bucket. What I need, however, is deliverability, strong privacy and security, good spam filtering, and support when I need it. I'd encourage you to try doubling or tripling the price so you can afford to hire more people and grow the business :) I suspect the rate of signups will stay the same.

maxk42 5y ago
Perhaps you're not the target customer?

p5a0u9l 5y ago

> We're not trying to bamboozle you with glossy images, or sell you a lofty ideal. I appreciate the dig at psuedo-righteous slogan-eering like "Don't be evil.", "Bring the worked closer together". Just fucking email.

zubspace 5y ago

Looks good. Fair pricing. I hope it works out for them. I started out with self-hosting mail-in-a-box [1]. If you really want to self-host, I can highly recommend it. Would be the cheapest option. At some point I decided to let go of it, because maintenance and configuration can still be a bit cumbersome. There was one thing (DMARC or DNSSEC?) which I never was able to set up properly for some unknown reason, even after long hours tinkering around with it... So I started to look at other mail hosting offerings with custom domain. One thing I like is that gandi offers free mail hosting for a domain you order through them. [2] That's quite unique for a domain registrar. Also, be aware that free 3rd-party mail hosting with a custom domain does not exist. I started out with the free plan at migadu, but they switched to a paid plan soon after. [3] The same happened to postale.io after a while. [4] At least I could keep my free plan there. Zoho is free [5], but their custom mail application and the countless other services they try to sell you completely put me off. [1] https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ [2] https://www.gandi.net/en/domain/email https://www.gandi.net/en/domain/email [3] https://www.migadu.com/pricing/#what-happened-to-the-free-plan https://www.migadu.com/pricing/#what-happened-to-the-free-pl... [4] https://postale.io/faq#What%20happened%20to%20the%20free%20plan https://postale.io/faq#What%20happened%20to%20the%20free%20p...? [5] https://www.zoho.com/mail/ https://www.zoho.com/mail/

spindle 5y ago
+1 for gandi as a mail host.
BelenusMordred 5y ago
I'll throw my hat in the ring for postale, they are a good service for both individuals and business. Is $1 a month really going to put you in financial stress? Is your business going to die paying $5 a month? > Also, be aware that free 3rd-party mail hosting with a custom domain does not exist. You can set up a custom domain on a free gmail account, it's hidden away but certainly possible.
Lex-2008 5y ago
> Also, be aware that free 3rd-party mail hosting with a custom domain does not exist. I believe two of them still exist in Russia. * Yandex even has a page in English: https://360.yandex.com/business/tariff https://360.yandex.com/business/tariff * Mail.Ru has a page only in Russian: https://biz.mail.ru/mail/#tariffs https://biz.mail.ru/mail/#tariffs

dial8gue 5y ago

https://mailbox.org https://mailbox.org I pay 1 euro per month. With calendar, contacts, file storage and DAV. With aliases and your own domain. Plus it's a well-known company.

vince14 5y ago
Custom domains and cloud storage are €3/month. Not included in €1/month.
- dial8gue 5y ago
  Old users had the option to stay on the of 1 euro tariff with all included
newscracker 5y ago
But mailbox.org is also priced per mailbox by default. When I checked with Mailbox.org support a few years ago, there was no way to go beyond 25 aliases on a single mailbox (even when one is willing to pay).

rplnt 5y ago

Isn't Google free? Perhaps with certain limitations... I know I never paid for email.

chin123 5y ago
GMail has ads. It's free because you are the product, not the customer. Google's customers are the advertisers. The money has to come from somewhere.
- rplnt 5y ago
  I'm not talking about gmail. This post is about hosting an email with your own domain.
  - ripdog 5y ago
    Google workspace isn't free.
    - rplnt 5y ago
      Can't find any free plan either now. I guess they just discontinued them and are not upgrading existing accounts.
      - robjan 5y ago
        It's not been free for around a decade now. The free version was mostly a ploy to attract people away from Outlook at the time.
deleted 5y ago
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neogodless 5y ago
Early editions of Google Apps for Business (aka G Suite aka Google Workspace) included a free version which included support for custom domains and catch-all email. Those accounts got grandfathered (i.e. stayed free) when Google discontinued them. The cheapest plan seems to be $72/year per user. https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html

edwinyzh 5y ago

Well Well, I've just gone through the setup with fastmail and currently trialing their platform, for a new domain of mine, otherwise if I know this earlier, I should have tried it first...

baobabKoodaa 5y ago

> An honest list of drawbacks I appreciate putting up a list like this. That said, I want to comment on one of the listed drawbacks: > Occasionally, obscure email servers will block emails sent through us I have a few years of experience running my own email server and I can tell you this is a major pain in the ass. When you send your email via a small email server (a server that sends a low volume of email), you will have constant issues getting mail delivered. Also, most of the issues will not be with obscure email servers, they will be with Outlook and Gmail. When you send email, you will never know if your email will be delivered to inbox, delivered to spam folder, or blackholed entirely. Related: > We're not a suitable platform for sending marketing emails (although you should use a dedicated marketing platform anyway). Please explicitly ban people from using your platform to send "marketing email". Clients like that are going to ruin deliverability for your other clients.

shaicoleman 5y ago
> Occasionally, obscure email servers will block emails sent through us The worst offender is Microsoft and their email services (hotmail.com/live.com/outlook.com/etc.). They reject all emails from my server, because it's on DigitalOcean. They are ignoring all requests to unblock my IP address. They don't mark it as spam, they just outright block emails, so you can't even workaround it by checking the spam folder.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  > They don't mark it as spam, they just outright block emails, so you can't even workaround it by checking the spam folder. And there’s no reason for them to do that IMO. They should dump it into the quarantine as high confidence spam. I wonder if the drop shows up in the mail flow logs. I deal with a lot of small businesses and more than once I’ve seen bad spam filtering or silent drops cost people money (upset customers). The spam filters I can understand. The silently dropped messages should get them a class action lawsuit.
  - johnklos 5y ago
    There is a reason - DigitalOcean. A more appropriate name would be DigitalCesspool. They allow anything, so long as you pay them. I'd block email from their networks, but there are already plenty of ways that spam servers on their networks screw up (bad EHLO name, broken reverse DNS, SPF for all IP addresses), so that email is not accepted anyway. Microsoft sucks for rejecting email without recourse, but you're on DigitalOcean, so can you really blame them?

Markoff 5y ago

well he lists there also Zoho for 12USD, so what exactly is benefit over Zoho which offers 5GB for 10.8EUR and 10GB for 13.5EUR?

aembleton 5y ago
Unlimited user accounts for $10/year, whereas Zoho charges per account.

jobarion 5y ago

When using subaddressing (e.g. example+tag@purelymail.com), can I also send from that address? The holy grail for me would be an email service that lets me set up catch-all, with the ability to send/reply with any address I want.

spindle 5y ago
I'm not the right person to answer but I happen to know that the answer is yes!
deadbunny 5y ago
> The holy grail for me would be an email service that lets me set up catch-all, with the ability to send/reply with any address I want. I have this with fastmail. *@my.tld all gets shoved in my inbox and I can send from whatever@my.tld.
- mvolfik 5y ago
  With improvmx.com you can point a domain at them, and then set catch-all forwarding to e.g. Gmail. Sending is possible thanks to most providers (incl. Gmail) allowing sending from different address after verification, and if you set DKIM and SPF it shouldn't cause any issues.
- jobarion 5y ago
  Do you need to set up each *@my.tld address manually, or can you just seamlessly reply to emails send to neverusedbefore@my.tld?
  - MandieD 5y ago
    The latter, which often makes for an interesting conversation at medical offices and shops when I jot down their-business-name@mydomain.com. The FastMail mobile client makes replying to those emails without “breaking character” easy.
    - deleted 5y ago

Wronnay 5y ago

Some other possibilities which offer more features and are cheaper: https://blog.m5e.de/post/comparison-of-email-hosting-possibilities/ https://blog.m5e.de/post/comparison-of-email-hosting-possibi...

antihero 5y ago

Whether we wish to switch or not (I'd be inclined to consider it but I am quite happy with Fastmail and am not super worried about a saving a few bucks a month): Is there a generic solution for moving over IMAP inboxes from one provider to another?

mongrol-smush 5y ago
I can recommend imapsync. Liked it so much I donated a little dosh to the developer. https://imapsync.lamiral.info https://imapsync.lamiral.info

cryptos 5y ago

I consider the usage of Roundcube for the UI a downside. I've tried Roundcube myself and was not really satisfied. It is difficult for to describe what exactly is wrong with the UI but somehow the usability is not really good. Outlook (web), GMail, or Yahoo Mail all feel better to me. What I'd really miss would the integration of an external adress book (Google), because I wouldn't want to duplicate all my addresses.

frank1234 5y ago

"We host our servers through Amazon Web Services" As long as you outsource the hosting to another company -- an American company in particular -- then you're not really in the business of secure e-mail. Secure from other users? Sure. Secure from the hosting company and the government it answers to? Never.

ibdf 5y ago

This might be just what I need. I used to run my own email server but don’t have time for that anymore. I run small sites with low budgets and finding a simple email server that costs next to nothing has been pretty hard, specially if I have more than one user. I use AWS SES free tier for sending emails from these sites but unfortunately forwarding email received at SES is not as straight forward.

baggachipz 5y ago

I've been using this service for the past year or so and it's perfect for my needs: - Just works - Minimal downtime - All features of email supported - No frills - Fast support response - Dirt-ass cheap. I use "advanced billing" and last month's fees were $0.58.

bdcravens 5y ago

My first thought was that this was a great advertisement for Zoho

subhro 5y ago

You are charging additional for shorter email addresses? Why?

neogodless 5y ago
Note that it's only for shared domain names, not your own (custom) domain. There's a good chance people want and reserve shorter email addresses on shared domains. e.g. subhro @ domain.tld vs subhro7783 @ domain.tld (or in this case @ purelymail.com)

neogodless 5y ago

> Support for custom domains at no additional charge. You may have as many users on as many custom domains as you like. Custom routing rules are supported, including catchalls to capture any email sent to your domain. This is huge. This is one of those features that just gets omitted by many email hosts (especially inexpensive ones) and has been holding me back from switching away from a very old, grandfathered, free Google Apps for Business plan.

webmobdev 5y ago

I was very interested until I learnt that you use AWS to host your services. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. are parasitic tech companies that try their best to access and mine our personal data. Privacy conscious techie individuals try their best to avoid the services of these companies. Please consider hosting your email elsewhere.

landemva 5y ago

Founder could add "officer" to his titles. Much like USA school admins inflate their egos ... Chief Learning Officer. As far as the service goes, grow and grow fast.

_joel 5y ago

Speaking personally, it's not worth the hastle to save a little bit of money per year. I'll stick with Fastmail as it never gets in the way and always works.

skeeter2020 5y ago

I would love to have more options in this space but email is to foundational to leave to a beta service that doesn't have 24/7 support, may have black-hole delivery issues and doesnt' have a calendar solution. Charge more and address these drawbacks, or get out of the business. You're offerring 1/2 the required features instead of focusing on the core requirements.

cyborgx7 5y ago
>Charge more and address these drawbacks, or get out of the business. Why? It seems like this is meeting plenty of people's needs just fine. Not everything has to meet your needs.

cyborgx7 5y ago

From the LLC I'm assuming this is based in the US. I'm not hosting my e-mail with a company based in the US. Other than that, I love everything about this.

devwastaken 5y ago

This looks good for the price. I've been looking for a service I can throw up under my domain simply to receive email under that official domain, but the site doesn't make money so most other services are far too expensive. Tbh idunno why Cloudflare doesn't just do this. People will use domains under google because it provides domain email.

uiui1 5y ago

purelymail is based

eirikurh 5y ago

I have used purelymail for about a year, moved almost all of my correspondance to it (custom domain) and am very happy with it. Good and speedy support when needed. I recommend it.

0x073 5y ago

I guess purelymail is used for contact@purelymail.com itself. But I see only one my record, does this service has mx backup servers for the customers?

Jakob1337 5y ago

I like the idea but you should consider offering something more than just the Roundcube. If I pay for an email service I expect a better webmail and Android/iOS apps. MXroute offers all of this and I don't see a reason why I should migrate. Best of luck anyway!

sxiao 5y ago

The left out porkbun's mail service for $24.00/year, still more expensive than their solution but not much.

ybbond 5y ago

I tried Purelymail and though I trust the service, Runbox's web interface left much to be desired. I also have mail went to spam with Fastmail that makes me paranoid and always BCC my gmail account for every important email. One thing that I don't like with Microsoft and Google's mail service is the need to create new account to have a custom domain mail.