13 ms·

Migadu – No-nonsense multi-domain email at a flat price

275 points by tsujp 5y ago

flowerlad 5y ago
The most important feature I look for is Search. Really, email servers should primarily be search engines (and should use something like Lucene for storage). With Gmail I can search the last 15 years of email instantaneously. This is their killer feature. Migadu does not even mention search.
- jordansmith 5y ago
  You would be using thunderbird or whatever your client of choice is so that’s where you would be searching.
  - flowerlad 5y ago
    If I want to search the last 15 days of email then client-side search might work. If I want to search the last 15 years of email instantaneously then I need server-side storage and search.
mouldysammich 5y ago
I've been using migadu for a year-ish, its a nice website. For only 20$ a year I don't think I've ever noticed down time and almost never received spam. I'm looking forward to them deploying 'Alps' their new UI I've been using it on my self-hosted mail and its pretty sweet.
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
I tried Migadu in 2019. I did a lot of testing to make sure it can actually deliver emails to other providers like Gmail and Outlook. The test emails were fine. But then the very first real email that I actually needed to be delivered, it immediately went into the spam folder in Gmail. It's a bad idea to use a small email provider to send emails.
- arghwhat 5y ago
  Have never had that issue in my few years of using it, and I regularly send to Gmail and Office365 addresses. It is a bad idea to support monopolization.
  - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    Why did you downvote me? Good for you if you never had an issue, but I did have an issue, and people should know that this is the risk they take by using small email providers.
    - bdukic 5y ago
      >Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Tepix 5y ago
  We need more small email providers, not fewer. The fewer large providers there are the less power they have.
- jordansmith 5y ago
  Did you have SPF and DKIM records created properly?
Cu3PO42 5y ago
I have used Migadu in the past and I had absolutely no complaints. Everything worked as advertised and I had no delivery issues. I chose them for their pricing model: they charge not per mailbox or domain, but rather per total number of emails in/out and storage. While this probably makes them less money, it always seemed like an honest and fair approach to billing.
- zorked 5y ago
  Me too, it works. I wish it had whatever IMAP feature it is that makes server-side search possible in K9, that's a bit of an annoyance.
Wronnay 5y ago
Here is a comparison which lists some cheaper alternatives to Migadu: https://blog.m5e.de/post/comparison-of-email-hosting-possibilities/ https://blog.m5e.de/post/comparison-of-email-hosting-possibi...
- newscracker 5y ago
  Your conclusion is spot on! I've been looking for providers that are lower on the cost for more than one mailbox with custom domains and being outside surveillance jurisdictions. One point about your post: Migadu has (or at least had) all the data stored in data centers in France. It also doesn't encrypt data at rest. So I'm not sure how the privacy angle exactly works.
- fastball 5y ago
  Why the fixation on religion of founders?
  - Wronnay 5y ago
    I am an Atheist. I don't want that my money goes to people who want that their religious worldview takes over. Using a service from a Hindu nationalism supporter goes against my personal world view. I included the religous connections because some other people might also have similar thoughts.
    - lbriner 5y ago
      You have virtually 0% chance of ever knowing what the recipients of your money spend it on. Anyone could be giving it to extreme political groups, abuse groups, extreme religions. On the other hand, a religious person might not have any interest in supporting extremism. The money also goes to silent partners, investors etc. so where do you stop? We should judge people on their integrity and business model imho, religion is a straw man.
    - ishanjain28 5y ago
      This is a small reason why I am trying to switch away from Zoho right now. :/
ttty2 5y ago
29usd a month is not "Humbly Priced" imo. I receive thousands of spam email.
icy 5y ago
Migadu is fantastic. No complaints. Their support is very responsive -- they even gave me a 50% student discount!
threatofrain 5y ago
Relevant post about Purelymail. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27707857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27707857
Normal_gaussian 5y ago
Ive had a bad enough experience with migadu that I am compelled to actively warn people not to use them (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25054091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25054091). Migadu has taught me bargain basement email is too expensive in the long run.
tsujp 5y ago
I use Migadu myself and have nothing but compliments for them. They do offer a calendar but it's only as a bare-bones complement to their main focus of email, so if you do not care about having invite responses and the like and just want: X is happening at Y functionality it's perfects for that too. I feel like they really care about how they offer their service and given how laser focused it is that translates into me being extremely satisfied with their offering.
malinens 5y ago
inbox.eu is alternative which is much longer in business (since about 2000) with flat price per mailbox 9.99 EUR per year (now it is only 3 EUR with discount- no promo code needed).
- newscracker 5y ago
  I'd never heard of this before. Would you know if the offer will hold good in the future (on signup now) or if it's only for something like the first year (and will be switched to the normal one later)? It's also not clear what the jurisdictions of the company (I presume Latvia) and its data centers are. This looks like a good option for semi-important communications if the need is just for a few mailboxes.
  - malinens 5y ago
    All servers are located in Latvia. We don't use cloud and all servers are managed by us. Discount is available for quite a long time. Maybe even year but can be disabled in near future but I do not know specifics
- wohfab 5y ago
  Migadu has unlimited domains and unlimited mailboxes per domain even on the smalles plan for 19 bucks. I don't see how 9.99 EUR PER mailbox is an alternative to that.
  - malinens 5y ago
    this sounds little bit absurd. in no way somebody with million mailboxes could migrate to migadu and pay just 19 bucks
CaptainMarvel 5y ago
I started using Migadu recently because it offers - as far as I know - unlimited mailboxes and aliases on a single domain, and unlimited domains for a cheap, fixed price. There isn’t anyone else that does this that I know of, and so the value provided in this one area is incredible. There are other limits, like sending 20 emails per day on the cheapest plan, but I don’t think I’ve ever sent that many emails before.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Even Gmail has unlimited aliases, via catch-all (everything after +). With Gmail, specifically, you can use dots (.) in an e-mail address for aliases as well. I'm not using Gmail, but I would not use an e-mail service without catch-all. The dot behavior, however, is weird. Nobody does it that way, 'cept Google.
  - newscracker 5y ago
    The + isn't completely helpful if the intent of using aliases is related to spam. All spammers know how these work and can figure out the main address by discarding the + and whatever comes after it. The dot has been somewhat of a problem to use where it seemed as if Gmail allowed other people to create the same address with dots (I don't recall the details since this was a long, long time ago).
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      You can opt to only ever use + and then put a lot of weight on spam score on anything not using the + (or using whitelisting without the +). It can also help when trying to figure out who leaked your data. Literally, data breaches have been found/exposed by a few heroes who used this feature.
      - rovr138 5y ago
        Or unlimited aliases - service@example.com - anotherservice@example.com And they all land on the same inbox and you don’t have to worry about those services that still don’t allow +
asteroidbelt 5y ago
Simple mail hostings on the rise nowadays. What next? UUCP providers? Flat price BBS?
sbaildon 5y ago
I use migadu for all my side-project-esque domains because of their pricing, and their service has been wonderful. Unfortunately I’m still using another provider for my primary domain because I can’t get real time push notifications on Apple Mail with Migadu—they’re limited to 15 minute fetches for best case scenario
akych 5y ago
Their $19 (Micro) Plan lists "200 in/day and 20 out/day". My email usage, personally, seems to be in bursts. It stays below 1 or 2 outbound mails on most days, however on some days (rarely) there'll be threaded conversations with >50 outbound mails. So, I feel like it would be fantastic if the plan had monthly limits instead of daily limit. Or some other sort of limit, say EC2 like, which would allow the user to consume the resources in bursts.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  "90% of any unused allowance carries over to the next day" is a neat way to allow 10x bursts while keeping allowances understandable.
  - barrkel 5y ago
    That is a 1.9x burst, not 10x, right? And that's at best, assuming you got no emails at all the previous day.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      No, because it can carry over multiple days... So eventually the maximum you'll get is sum 0 to inf [ 0.9^n ] ... Which is 10x
      - barrkel 5y ago
        I read "90% of unused allowance carries over to the next day" as unused allowance carries over exactly 1 day. That is, it's the allowance that carries over, not the carry over. If allowance is fungible like you say, then sure, you're right. My experience of accountants and lawyers is that they don't treat these things as fungible, and are more likely to do something like: Day 1: allowance 200 emails carried over 0 consumed 0 Day 2: allowance 200 carried over 180 consumed 0 Day 3: allowance 200 carried over 180 // 90% of 200 not 380 consumed 50 // consumption taken from allowance first Day 4: allowance 200 carried over 135 // 90% of 150 not 200 or 330 consumed 0 and so on. Maybe it's treated as fungible, but IMO the above is how lawyers and accountants would treat it.
newscracker 5y ago
I'll repeat my comment from nearly seven months ago [1] since it left a really bad taste about how users are dealt with. Nearly a year ago when the initial waves of the pandemic were raging on, Migadu removed its free tier. That's not a problem by itself because businesses have to make money to sustain and grow. But Migadu gave one month’s notice (contrary to the claims in the replies, that's what I saw) for users to switch. The replies to the comment also said that the new lowest paid tier was "affordable in every corner of the planet", which sounded quite ignorant even for a non-pandemic time. Another point, which may matter to some people, is that while Migadu may be a Swiss company, the data centers where the mails are hosted were in France (this was the case at least a year ago). So the situation is somewhat comparable (not entirely though) to Fastmail being an Australian company with data centers in the U.S. being used. For those who want multi-domain email services for a lower (flat) price, look at mxroute. It's based out of the U.S. though, which may not be an option for people who want certain services outside Five Eyes jurisdictions. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382626
- vgalin 5y ago
  > while Migadu may be a Swiss company, the data centers where the mails are hosted were in France > So the situation is somewhat comparable (not entirely though) to Fastmail being an Australian company with data centers in the U.S. being used I don't know if it is a good comparison, as European countries (France included) are subject to GDPR, which does not really have an equivalent in the U.S.
  - newscracker 5y ago
    GP here. My points were about surveillance arrangements and information exchange between countries, like the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, Fourteen Eyes, etc. Also, as far as I know, Migadu does not encrypt data at rest. Anyone who gets access to the servers gets access to all the data.
    - estaseuropano 5y ago
      They have a great FAQ explaining that and I agree with their conclusion - all the encryption claims by other providers are nonsense and don't offer real protection.
marderfarker2 5y ago
I already have email with unlimited addresses/aliases/domain with my hosting provider (a local-run no frills cPanel), I think most of HN will have similar setups.
stingraycharles 5y ago
Question: beyond a certain degree, why would you try to save money on email that much? Email is pretty much the weakest link for most people from a security perspective (ie password recovery), so I would want my email provider to have enough resources to properly secure the thing. What are people using these providers for, and do you feel like they secure your mailbox enough?
- arghwhat 5y ago
  I use it for primary email, and based on communication with them and experience with Gmail and O365, certainly trust migadu more than the usual suspects. Remember that email communication, irrespective of provider, is not secret unless GPG or similar is used. If a MFA enabled account can be accessed with only a password reset email, it is fundamentally insecure.
  - stingraycharles 5y ago
    While of course in theory you are correct, the fact remains that you are able to reset your password using email in many online applications, and that addressing this is out of control of the user. Using a secure email provider, however, is within control and can certainly go a long way in mitigating the risks here.
    - arghwhat 5y ago
      It does very, very little to mitigate risk when you are using an insecure medium. Regardless, their security is respectable and their fair simpler infrastructure makes me much more confident that it isn't full of holes.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  I use MXroute for low volume, automated email from software and devices. Having unlimited mailboxes (one per device) and super low (configurable), per mailbox quotas is a better solution than the expensive providers have. Office 365 is brutal for sending from devices. In fact it’s impossible with security defaults (more like overrides) enforcing 2FA and one of their supported options is literally (I’m not joking here) to use another mail server that’s not Office 365. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow-best-practices/how-to-set-up-a-multifunction-device-or-application-to-send-email-using-microsoft-365-or-office-365#use-your-own-email-server-to-send-email-from-multifunction-devices-and-applications https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow-best-pra...
fortran77 5y ago
For $70/year Microsoft lets me point up to 99 domains at a cloud exchange server. This has been working well for me.
- herbst 5y ago
  Many of us care about their privacy tho. Microsoft does not have a good track record in protecting valueable data.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    The emails in your inbox are primarily coming from Google/MS servers.
    - herbst 5y ago
      Are most transactional or newsletter services hosted with MS or Google? I honestly doubt that, if anything I guess Amazon is the dominant force here. Also Google does not exactly have a bad record with Gmail. However no, most privacy relevant emails I get are either directly sent from a Webservice, company own SMTPS or other privacy aware email providers. Sure some friends hit me up with their Gmails, but I usually do not consider these mails privacy relevant.
- frankietaylr 5y ago
  Can you elaborate this setup a bit more?
  - Neil44 5y ago
    Assume they mean using a basic Office 365 plan. That’s cost per user though, not really a comparable pricing plan.
Neil44 5y ago
I’ve used Migadu for about 3/4 years now to provide email for hosting clients. They’re good. They had a little wobble at the start of the pandemic but otherwise no issues. You get full dmark, dkim etc and autodiscover. Massive mailboxes. Would recommend.
Aeolun 5y ago
I don’t ever want to have a limit on emails in/out per day. Or at least not an advertised limit for emails in. What happens if I go over the limit, people that send me email get a message that their email bounced because my plan doesn’t allow more?
- michalhosna 5y ago
  > If you try blasting mails in or out, your limit will be quickly gone and you will not be able to receive and/or send more. This will also trigged a bunch of alerts on our end. In most normal situations, you will be warned if you are reaching your limits so you have time to analyze the traffic and possibly upgrade your plan. This allows you to pay only what you really use. > If no upgrade is made, incoming messages will be deferred until the following day, and sending messages will be refused If you try blasting mails in or out, your limit will be quickly gone and you will not be able to receive and/or send more. This will also trigged a bunch of alerts on our end. > In most normal situations, you will be warned if you are reaching your limits so you have time to analyze the traffic and possibly upgrade your plan. This allows you to pay only what you really use. > If no upgrade is made, incoming messages will be deferred until the following day, and sending messages will be refused https://www.migadu.com/procon/#daily-limits-apply https://www.migadu.com/procon/#daily-limits-apply
dogo22 5y ago
I wonder why nobody has mentioned tutanota as an alternative in this thread. It's not too expensive and quite safe as far as I'm aware. If anyone knows a downside to it please share it with us.
- bennyp101 5y ago
  Not really the same, you have to use their clients to access your email (and doesn't seem to have a bridge like Protonmail) so you are effectively locked in
- Markoff 5y ago
  Tutanota ain't very safe https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/08/german-secure-email-provider-tutanota-forced-to-monitor-an-account-after-regional-court-ruling/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/08/german-secure-email-provid...
  - gruez 5y ago
    Is there reason to believe other mail providers aren't subject to the same kind of court order?
    - Markoff 5y ago
      Yes, if they are not headquartered in Germany.
- wohfab 5y ago
  What does "user" mean with tutanota? If I want multiple custom domains, I need to go with the business account, which has a 1 GB storage limit and a 5 aliases limit. And then it is only for a single user. Does that mean, I cannot have independent login data for the multiple domains/mailboxes I create? Because then it is not close to a viable alternative to migadu.
  - decrypt 5y ago
    You can have an independent login account but that comes at an additional cost of 12 EUR. That's on the top of the Business plan's cost of 12 EUR + 12 EUR.
Markoff 5y ago
20 outgoing emails per day at micro service for 19USD a year? I really hope that's very bad joke Mini with 100 outgoing emails for only 90USD a year is comparably bad
- necovek 5y ago
  Perfect for a single/family user who's got multiple domains: they are obviously targeting customers like me with it (20 emails per day is over 7000 emails a year: how many did you send out the last year?). The price is right, concerns over privacy and support are not.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  They will happily tune the plan for you. I made a point that we are only 2 in the family abd we need only half of the 90$ plan, they made a custom plan for 45$
woutr_be 5y ago
Also another happy Migadu user, on their micro plan. I mainly use it for small projects, it’s great because I pay a flat $19 fee for unlimited domains. I’m happy to upgrade once a project requires it. For my personal domain email, I use Fastmail, but that comes in at $50 yearly. Not something I can justify when just playing around with an idea.
- yarcob 5y ago
  According to their website, Fastmail allows up to 100 custom domains on a single account, so it's not like you need to buy a second account if you just want to receive/send email on a domain.
  - woutr_be 5y ago
    Yes, but you pay per “user”. So if you want to separate your accounts, you want multiple users.
    - yarcob 5y ago
      Right, but I don't really see why you would need separate accounts. In my experience a single account for multiple projects is actually very convenient (with rules to automatically sort incoming mail). In my opinion, multiple accounts are really only necessary if you have employees or collaborators and want to make sure that not everyone can access your stuff. But that's just my point of view, I understand that what works for me may not be suitable for your projects.
      - woutr_be 5y ago
        The way that users work with Fastmail, is that each user has a single email address, the rest just acts as aliases to that address. So when receiving works, sending always happens with the main address. For small projects, I don’t necessarily want to reply with my main address, hence why I want to have it seperated.
        5y ago
bennyp101 5y ago
Good timing, I'm in the process of looking to migrate my emails. Currently on O365 for 3 of us, but as we now all get Office products via work, I can't justify paying ~£30 a month. Looking at our usage, the biggest account is 3.7GB, and in the last 180 days the most emails sent was 12 in one day, and the most received was 158 - so micro looks like a fit. The pricing looks pretty spot on for what we need, and the features seem good, so I've set up a 14day trial with just my email to see how it goes. I guess the only thing is calendar and contact sync, (I tried to get the calendar to work, but keeps saying it does not exist /shrug) Any recommendations for a calendar/contact provider?
- EwanToo 5y ago
  Fastmail does it all, you can have one user on the professional price and others on the basic plan and share a custom domain https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/ https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    One downside, apparently you can’t use their (great) app on the basic plan and share the domain with the master user.
- decrypt 5y ago
  Speaking for calendar, I basically signed up for a new Google account with that custom domain email address and use calendar on it. Syncs neat to my Android.
- tweetle_beetle 5y ago
  They have pushed a basic CalDAV (and CarDAV?) feature out on Migadu for what it's worth. I think they're new enough that they're considered beta and not in marketing materials. https://www.migadu.com/guides/thunderbird/ https://www.migadu.com/guides/thunderbird/
  - saladuh 5y ago
    Yep, if you contact them about it they'll provide you with more info. Both CardDAV and CalDAV will be available, documented and all, to the public in September/October. When I emailed them earlier today about it (pure coincidence) they gave me the necessary info on CardDAV and also directed me to a post[0] made by another beta tester explaining both DAV services in more detail. [0] https://www.billdietrich.me/SecureCommunication.html?expandall=1#Migadu https://www.billdietrich.me/SecureCommunication.html?expanda...
gingerjoos 5y ago
I got my email hosting via MXRoute when they gave out a lifetime plan for $50 on Black Friday ( https://mxroute.com/pricing/ https://mxroute.com/pricing/ , currently available at $150). It's a very no-frills service, they provide a webUI via Roundcube, Crossbox, Rainloop etc. I am pretty much reliant on Thunderbird on the desktop and K9 on Android. I've never had issues and I'm switching over from gmail slowly.
- damsta 5y ago
  Lifetime these days means 3-4 years.
  - genghizkhan 5y ago
    I'll go out on a limb to defend jarland (the admin of mxroute) and say I genuinely don't think it only means 3 - 4 years here. And even if it does, $50 (or even $150) for a 3 - 4 year service is pretty darn awesome.
    - djvdorp 5y ago
      Oh wow, I remember jarland from LowEndTalk.com, can definitely vouch for him. Quite an interesting interview with him about MXroute there: https://lowendbox.com/blog/interview-qa-with-mxroute-owner-jarland-donnell-on-email-delivery-the-hosting-industry-and-a-look-back/ https://lowendbox.com/blog/interview-qa-with-mxroute-owner-j...
  - jarland 5y ago
    It's a very tight line to walk, when I intend to offer these lifetime packages and run a company that outlives me. That's why you'll see the price rising on it. I'm trying to find the impulse buy threshold and exceed it to stay on mission. These plans can only fill small unused corners of already profitable servers. Anything more is irresponsible on my part.
- avinassh 5y ago
  Damn, $50 is quite sweet for unlimited. $150 seems bit on the higher on the side. I am cursing myself for missing that offer
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brnt 5y ago
I use postale.io after I switched away from Migadu (got in while they had a free tier). Excellent and reliable service over the past year.
- luke2m 5y ago
  Yep, they’ve been great. Too bad they stopped their free tier.
  - brnt 5y ago
    I'd readily pay that dollar though (I guess I should!). Uptime and delivery has been as good as the best for me.
- kwanbix 5y ago
  I like their pricing better than Migadu's, however, I don't want 50 mailboxes with 3GB each, I want 5 mailboxes with 30GB each. That would be perfect.
  - brnt 5y ago
    I have approached them with similar questions and they made the change without any hassle.
xfer 5y ago
I use uberspace for solely email, they provide a shell and bit more. It has been working well for me: i can have full 10gb space for email(now you can even buy more space), aliases/mailboxes as i need. https://manual.uberspace.de/mail-access/ https://manual.uberspace.de/mail-access/
oron 5y ago
I have a decent domain and good knowledge in backend / scaling production servers up. Anyone can recommend a good white label / open source package which I can use to build a Migadu clone ?
nmlt 5y ago
Many people here are mentioning alternatives. The ones I’m using are mailbox.org (although they recently raised prices for new customers) and uberspace.de (includes ssh access).
werds 5y ago
this is the worst landing page i have ever seen for a SaaS product
- bennyp101 5y ago
  Why? It says exactly what it does? It hosts email. That is it. I think it's quite refreshing to not have parallax scrolling, and the same tired looking icons and vector graphics. Everything I need to know is pretty much there on the front page.
  - werds 5y ago
    - there is far too much detailed copy above the fold - the copy around the call to action is too vague - there is no example of "what you have now without migadu" versus "with migadu" in summary it makes it very hard to quickly identify the problem it solves and illustrate how migadu fixes it. take a look at this article: https://blog.roastmylandingpage.com/landing-page-roasts/ https://blog.roastmylandingpage.com/landing-page-roasts/
    - watermelon0 5y ago
      IMO it's one of the better landing pages. It tells you exactly what they offer (email hosting with unlimited domains), and what features they support. Pricing is straightforward (with no nonsense discounts for the first N months) and one click away. Linked article is just an opinion of some person, and I have to say I quite disagree with it: - If I'm looking for a email hosting, I definitely know what the pain is, and I assume they will fix it by providing hosting for my emails. - Testimonials & awards are bullshit. They don't help me determine if I want to use the service or not.
      - werds 5y ago
        Yes the linked article is the opinion of one person. One person with a proven track record of maximising the conversions from landing page visits.
    - 5y ago
robomartin 5y ago
Options: Zimbra [0] and GoDaddy VPS [1]? My current setup is very simple. We have a GoDaddy Gen 4 server (don't knock it, rock solid, no issues at all) were we host email for multiple domains as we please. It's super simple. No email hosting nightmares. Just point the MX record to that server and host the site anywhere else or on the same server. One fixed annual cost (~$600/yr) and you can do whatever you want. This is hard to beat. I've been thinking of migrating to a Zimbra setup to self-host email on something like a Linode server. I absolutely detest per-mailbox/per-user plans. Frankly, it has been very hard to beat our current GoDaddy setup. If you are dealing with multiple domains, each with multiple mailboxes, costs can add-up very quickly. It then becomes a cash bleed. Every service (not just email) wants $5 to $20 per month from you. It is very easy to end-up spending thousands of dollars per month through these "bleed" costs. Anyhow, other than time to make the transition, what has stopped me from taking this path is that Zimbra seems "fat" in the sense that it requires a "fat" server to run. [0] https://www.zimbra.com/ https://www.zimbra.com/ [1] https://pk.godaddy.com/hosting/vps-hosting https://pk.godaddy.com/hosting/vps-hosting
npv789 5y ago
purelymail is a better deal
smashah 5y ago
Umm am I missing something? Wouldn't you just use GSuite and set up other domains as aliases?
- stapled_socks 5y ago
  > Umm am I missing something? Probably. > Wouldn't you just use GSuite and set up other domains as aliases? Not if you think this Migadu or some other service suits your needs better or provides better value.
- andreareina 5y ago
  Some people want to limit their exposure to google. Also a healthy market for email is a good thing.
- Ecto5 5y ago
  some people dontdont want google in their lives.
canada2us 5y ago
For those who want to get their hands dirty, here is a full, step by step tutorial to set up your own email server: https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/setup-basic-postfix-mail-sever-ubuntu https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/setup-basic-postfix-ma... migadu's mail number limit does not make sense to me: This risks losing emails.
- lbriner 5y ago
  That guide is all very well but it is very complicated to follow and setup, and I have been using Linux for a reasonable amount of time (10+ years). I was surprised that there wasn't an open source script, a bit like you would run with apt-get, that would simply ask you some questions and do all the bits for you. Postfix is obviously really powerful but for a noob to it, I found it overwhelming without consulting lots of docs. I did find https://www.iredmail.org/ https://www.iredmail.org/ but that has a feature limit for the free version. The bits you actually really want costs up to $500/year. Not much if it is for your main business, but a lot when you only want it for a part of your larger system.
  - teitoklien 5y ago
    If you’re open to using Docker Try out this [0] , it’s pretty easy to self host , comes with decent defaults and makes it quite easy to setup a bunch of tools from spam checking to anti virus , dkim , dmarc , etc and gives you some handy parameters you can change in its default config file after that you can further customise the tools it uses directly (although I’ve only had to do that once or twice while setting up some custom settings) Takes 5 mins to setup a decent instance [0] https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver
ishanjain28 5y ago
What luck! I have been trying to move away from Zoho. I tried protonmail for the last month but it's not for me. E2E is great but the loss in functionality is a bit much. I switched to fastmail today but I have ran into some issues there as well[1] and so far I have seen a lot of recent reddit posts criticizing the extremely slow response time(2+ days) in support tickets. So, now I am not sure if fastmail is a good option. Migadu has been recommended to me in the past, maybe I should try that out [1] https://reddit.com/r/fastmail/comments/m4rj0g/_/h3tq036/?context=1 https://reddit.com/r/fastmail/comments/m4rj0g/_/h3tq036/?con...
- mdasen 5y ago
  Mind if I ask why you're moving away from Zoho? I've been debating moving my email to Zoho since they offer a cheap $12/year plan. I might just move everything to iCloud+ when they start supporting custom domains this fall since $1/mo for 50GB seems pretty reasonable.
  - ishanjain28 5y ago
    1. Huge email deliverability issues. Quite a few emails just get lost somehow. Just today, someone forwarded a book and hours later I still haven't received it. 2. Terrible, Inconsistent UI. 3. Push notifications are broken and Their apps are broken. I dont get notifications in clients configured with IMAP and their apps also dont send notifications. I have to manually refresh in both cases. 4. Relatively minor issue but I am against Zoho's founder's political alignment, and that is putting this issue mildly.
  - kureikain 5y ago
    Just another data point. I had great delivery with zoho for year even use their free plan. They used to offer SMTP/IMAP on their free tier few years ago and continue to granfathering those my account. If you like consistent UI then no one can beat gmail. Even fastmail/protonmail/outlook cannot beat gmail in UI/UX to me. Stay away from iCloud is my advice. Their proofpoint spam filtering is the worst to deal with. Lots of people are going to have trouble reach iCloud inbox. Anything but not iCloud. That isn't their primary business and consider level of Apple support and randomly ban/block people out of iCloud(you will find some here), I would advice against using them. Give zoho I tried. They are very reliable, their spam filtering isn't as good as gmail so sometime legitimate emails go to Spam but that's a problem with any mail provider. Time to time you have to train spam system. Especially if you got a lot of email from people with a new domains email you first time. New domains that are created within 7 days and send out email are more likely to be flagged.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
I love Migadu, I have been customer for half a year. My major problem is the lack of cross platform email clients with snooze capabilities. This translated in me using gmail UI, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place. You can get to paid email clients, but they all include email hosting, defeating the purpose.

275 points by tsujp 5y ago

The most important feature I look for is Search. Really, email servers should primarily be search engines (and should use something like Lucene for storage). With Gmail I can search the last 15 years of email instantaneously. This is their killer feature. Migadu does not even mention search.

jordansmith 5y ago
You would be using thunderbird or whatever your client of choice is so that’s where you would be searching.
- flowerlad 5y ago
  If I want to search the last 15 days of email then client-side search might work. If I want to search the last 15 years of email instantaneously then I need server-side storage and search.

mouldysammich 5y ago

I've been using migadu for a year-ish, its a nice website. For only 20$ a year I don't think I've ever noticed down time and almost never received spam. I'm looking forward to them deploying 'Alps' their new UI I've been using it on my self-hosted mail and its pretty sweet.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago

I tried Migadu in 2019. I did a lot of testing to make sure it can actually deliver emails to other providers like Gmail and Outlook. The test emails were fine. But then the very first real email that I actually needed to be delivered, it immediately went into the spam folder in Gmail. It's a bad idea to use a small email provider to send emails.

arghwhat 5y ago
Have never had that issue in my few years of using it, and I regularly send to Gmail and Office365 addresses. It is a bad idea to support monopolization.
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  Why did you downvote me? Good for you if you never had an issue, but I did have an issue, and people should know that this is the risk they take by using small email providers.
  - bdukic 5y ago
    >Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Tepix 5y ago
We need more small email providers, not fewer. The fewer large providers there are the less power they have.
jordansmith 5y ago
Did you have SPF and DKIM records created properly?

Cu3PO42 5y ago

I have used Migadu in the past and I had absolutely no complaints. Everything worked as advertised and I had no delivery issues. I chose them for their pricing model: they charge not per mailbox or domain, but rather per total number of emails in/out and storage. While this probably makes them less money, it always seemed like an honest and fair approach to billing.

zorked 5y ago
Me too, it works. I wish it had whatever IMAP feature it is that makes server-side search possible in K9, that's a bit of an annoyance.

Wronnay 5y ago

Here is a comparison which lists some cheaper alternatives to Migadu: https://blog.m5e.de/post/comparison-of-email-hosting-possibilities/ https://blog.m5e.de/post/comparison-of-email-hosting-possibi...

newscracker 5y ago
Your conclusion is spot on! I've been looking for providers that are lower on the cost for more than one mailbox with custom domains and being outside surveillance jurisdictions. One point about your post: Migadu has (or at least had) all the data stored in data centers in France. It also doesn't encrypt data at rest. So I'm not sure how the privacy angle exactly works.
fastball 5y ago
Why the fixation on religion of founders?
- Wronnay 5y ago
  I am an Atheist. I don't want that my money goes to people who want that their religious worldview takes over. Using a service from a Hindu nationalism supporter goes against my personal world view. I included the religous connections because some other people might also have similar thoughts.
  - lbriner 5y ago
    You have virtually 0% chance of ever knowing what the recipients of your money spend it on. Anyone could be giving it to extreme political groups, abuse groups, extreme religions. On the other hand, a religious person might not have any interest in supporting extremism. The money also goes to silent partners, investors etc. so where do you stop? We should judge people on their integrity and business model imho, religion is a straw man.
  - ishanjain28 5y ago
    This is a small reason why I am trying to switch away from Zoho right now. :/

ttty2 5y ago

29usd a month is not "Humbly Priced" imo. I receive thousands of spam email.

icy 5y ago

Migadu is fantastic. No complaints. Their support is very responsive -- they even gave me a 50% student discount!

threatofrain 5y ago

Relevant post about Purelymail. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27707857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27707857

Normal_gaussian 5y ago

Ive had a bad enough experience with migadu that I am compelled to actively warn people not to use them (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25054091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25054091). Migadu has taught me bargain basement email is too expensive in the long run.

tsujp 5y ago

I use Migadu myself and have nothing but compliments for them. They do offer a calendar but it's only as a bare-bones complement to their main focus of email, so if you do not care about having invite responses and the like and just want: X is happening at Y functionality it's perfects for that too. I feel like they really care about how they offer their service and given how laser focused it is that translates into me being extremely satisfied with their offering.

malinens 5y ago

inbox.eu is alternative which is much longer in business (since about 2000) with flat price per mailbox 9.99 EUR per year (now it is only 3 EUR with discount- no promo code needed).

newscracker 5y ago
I'd never heard of this before. Would you know if the offer will hold good in the future (on signup now) or if it's only for something like the first year (and will be switched to the normal one later)? It's also not clear what the jurisdictions of the company (I presume Latvia) and its data centers are. This looks like a good option for semi-important communications if the need is just for a few mailboxes.
- malinens 5y ago
  All servers are located in Latvia. We don't use cloud and all servers are managed by us. Discount is available for quite a long time. Maybe even year but can be disabled in near future but I do not know specifics
wohfab 5y ago
Migadu has unlimited domains and unlimited mailboxes per domain even on the smalles plan for 19 bucks. I don't see how 9.99 EUR PER mailbox is an alternative to that.
- malinens 5y ago
  this sounds little bit absurd. in no way somebody with million mailboxes could migrate to migadu and pay just 19 bucks

CaptainMarvel 5y ago

I started using Migadu recently because it offers - as far as I know - unlimited mailboxes and aliases on a single domain, and unlimited domains for a cheap, fixed price. There isn’t anyone else that does this that I know of, and so the value provided in this one area is incredible. There are other limits, like sending 20 emails per day on the cheapest plan, but I don’t think I’ve ever sent that many emails before.

Fnoord 5y ago
Even Gmail has unlimited aliases, via catch-all (everything after +). With Gmail, specifically, you can use dots (.) in an e-mail address for aliases as well. I'm not using Gmail, but I would not use an e-mail service without catch-all. The dot behavior, however, is weird. Nobody does it that way, 'cept Google.
- newscracker 5y ago
  The + isn't completely helpful if the intent of using aliases is related to spam. All spammers know how these work and can figure out the main address by discarding the + and whatever comes after it. The dot has been somewhat of a problem to use where it seemed as if Gmail allowed other people to create the same address with dots (I don't recall the details since this was a long, long time ago).
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    You can opt to only ever use + and then put a lot of weight on spam score on anything not using the + (or using whitelisting without the +). It can also help when trying to figure out who leaked your data. Literally, data breaches have been found/exposed by a few heroes who used this feature.
    - rovr138 5y ago
      Or unlimited aliases - service@example.com - anotherservice@example.com And they all land on the same inbox and you don’t have to worry about those services that still don’t allow +

asteroidbelt 5y ago

Simple mail hostings on the rise nowadays. What next? UUCP providers? Flat price BBS?

sbaildon 5y ago

I use migadu for all my side-project-esque domains because of their pricing, and their service has been wonderful. Unfortunately I’m still using another provider for my primary domain because I can’t get real time push notifications on Apple Mail with Migadu—they’re limited to 15 minute fetches for best case scenario

akych 5y ago

Their $19 (Micro) Plan lists "200 in/day and 20 out/day". My email usage, personally, seems to be in bursts. It stays below 1 or 2 outbound mails on most days, however on some days (rarely) there'll be threaded conversations with >50 outbound mails. So, I feel like it would be fantastic if the plan had monthly limits instead of daily limit. Or some other sort of limit, say EC2 like, which would allow the user to consume the resources in bursts.

londons_explore 5y ago
"90% of any unused allowance carries over to the next day" is a neat way to allow 10x bursts while keeping allowances understandable.
- barrkel 5y ago
  That is a 1.9x burst, not 10x, right? And that's at best, assuming you got no emails at all the previous day.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    No, because it can carry over multiple days... So eventually the maximum you'll get is sum 0 to inf [ 0.9^n ] ... Which is 10x
    - barrkel 5y ago
      I read "90% of unused allowance carries over to the next day" as unused allowance carries over exactly 1 day. That is, it's the allowance that carries over, not the carry over. If allowance is fungible like you say, then sure, you're right. My experience of accountants and lawyers is that they don't treat these things as fungible, and are more likely to do something like: Day 1: allowance 200 emails carried over 0 consumed 0 Day 2: allowance 200 carried over 180 consumed 0 Day 3: allowance 200 carried over 180 // 90% of 200 not 380 consumed 50 // consumption taken from allowance first Day 4: allowance 200 carried over 135 // 90% of 150 not 200 or 330 consumed 0 and so on. Maybe it's treated as fungible, but IMO the above is how lawyers and accountants would treat it.

newscracker 5y ago

I'll repeat my comment from nearly seven months ago [1] since it left a really bad taste about how users are dealt with. Nearly a year ago when the initial waves of the pandemic were raging on, Migadu removed its free tier. That's not a problem by itself because businesses have to make money to sustain and grow. But Migadu gave one month’s notice (contrary to the claims in the replies, that's what I saw) for users to switch. The replies to the comment also said that the new lowest paid tier was "affordable in every corner of the planet", which sounded quite ignorant even for a non-pandemic time. Another point, which may matter to some people, is that while Migadu may be a Swiss company, the data centers where the mails are hosted were in France (this was the case at least a year ago). So the situation is somewhat comparable (not entirely though) to Fastmail being an Australian company with data centers in the U.S. being used. For those who want multi-domain email services for a lower (flat) price, look at mxroute. It's based out of the U.S. though, which may not be an option for people who want certain services outside Five Eyes jurisdictions. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382626

vgalin 5y ago
> while Migadu may be a Swiss company, the data centers where the mails are hosted were in France > So the situation is somewhat comparable (not entirely though) to Fastmail being an Australian company with data centers in the U.S. being used I don't know if it is a good comparison, as European countries (France included) are subject to GDPR, which does not really have an equivalent in the U.S.
- newscracker 5y ago
  GP here. My points were about surveillance arrangements and information exchange between countries, like the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, Fourteen Eyes, etc. Also, as far as I know, Migadu does not encrypt data at rest. Anyone who gets access to the servers gets access to all the data.
  - estaseuropano 5y ago
    They have a great FAQ explaining that and I agree with their conclusion - all the encryption claims by other providers are nonsense and don't offer real protection.

marderfarker2 5y ago

I already have email with unlimited addresses/aliases/domain with my hosting provider (a local-run no frills cPanel), I think most of HN will have similar setups.

stingraycharles 5y ago

Question: beyond a certain degree, why would you try to save money on email that much? Email is pretty much the weakest link for most people from a security perspective (ie password recovery), so I would want my email provider to have enough resources to properly secure the thing. What are people using these providers for, and do you feel like they secure your mailbox enough?

arghwhat 5y ago
I use it for primary email, and based on communication with them and experience with Gmail and O365, certainly trust migadu more than the usual suspects. Remember that email communication, irrespective of provider, is not secret unless GPG or similar is used. If a MFA enabled account can be accessed with only a password reset email, it is fundamentally insecure.
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  While of course in theory you are correct, the fact remains that you are able to reset your password using email in many online applications, and that addressing this is out of control of the user. Using a secure email provider, however, is within control and can certainly go a long way in mitigating the risks here.
  - arghwhat 5y ago
    It does very, very little to mitigate risk when you are using an insecure medium. Regardless, their security is respectable and their fair simpler infrastructure makes me much more confident that it isn't full of holes.
donmcronald 5y ago
I use MXroute for low volume, automated email from software and devices. Having unlimited mailboxes (one per device) and super low (configurable), per mailbox quotas is a better solution than the expensive providers have. Office 365 is brutal for sending from devices. In fact it’s impossible with security defaults (more like overrides) enforcing 2FA and one of their supported options is literally (I’m not joking here) to use another mail server that’s not Office 365. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow-best-practices/how-to-set-up-a-multifunction-device-or-application-to-send-email-using-microsoft-365-or-office-365#use-your-own-email-server-to-send-email-from-multifunction-devices-and-applications https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow-best-pra...

fortran77 5y ago

For $70/year Microsoft lets me point up to 99 domains at a cloud exchange server. This has been working well for me.

herbst 5y ago
Many of us care about their privacy tho. Microsoft does not have a good track record in protecting valueable data.
- atatatat 5y ago
  The emails in your inbox are primarily coming from Google/MS servers.
  - herbst 5y ago
    Are most transactional or newsletter services hosted with MS or Google? I honestly doubt that, if anything I guess Amazon is the dominant force here. Also Google does not exactly have a bad record with Gmail. However no, most privacy relevant emails I get are either directly sent from a Webservice, company own SMTPS or other privacy aware email providers. Sure some friends hit me up with their Gmails, but I usually do not consider these mails privacy relevant.
frankietaylr 5y ago
Can you elaborate this setup a bit more?
- Neil44 5y ago
  Assume they mean using a basic Office 365 plan. That’s cost per user though, not really a comparable pricing plan.

Neil44 5y ago

I’ve used Migadu for about 3/4 years now to provide email for hosting clients. They’re good. They had a little wobble at the start of the pandemic but otherwise no issues. You get full dmark, dkim etc and autodiscover. Massive mailboxes. Would recommend.

Aeolun 5y ago

I don’t ever want to have a limit on emails in/out per day. Or at least not an advertised limit for emails in. What happens if I go over the limit, people that send me email get a message that their email bounced because my plan doesn’t allow more?

michalhosna 5y ago
> If you try blasting mails in or out, your limit will be quickly gone and you will not be able to receive and/or send more. This will also trigged a bunch of alerts on our end. In most normal situations, you will be warned if you are reaching your limits so you have time to analyze the traffic and possibly upgrade your plan. This allows you to pay only what you really use. > If no upgrade is made, incoming messages will be deferred until the following day, and sending messages will be refused If you try blasting mails in or out, your limit will be quickly gone and you will not be able to receive and/or send more. This will also trigged a bunch of alerts on our end. > In most normal situations, you will be warned if you are reaching your limits so you have time to analyze the traffic and possibly upgrade your plan. This allows you to pay only what you really use. > If no upgrade is made, incoming messages will be deferred until the following day, and sending messages will be refused https://www.migadu.com/procon/#daily-limits-apply https://www.migadu.com/procon/#daily-limits-apply

dogo22 5y ago

I wonder why nobody has mentioned tutanota as an alternative in this thread. It's not too expensive and quite safe as far as I'm aware. If anyone knows a downside to it please share it with us.

bennyp101 5y ago
Not really the same, you have to use their clients to access your email (and doesn't seem to have a bridge like Protonmail) so you are effectively locked in
Markoff 5y ago
Tutanota ain't very safe https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/08/german-secure-email-provider-tutanota-forced-to-monitor-an-account-after-regional-court-ruling/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/08/german-secure-email-provid...
- gruez 5y ago
  Is there reason to believe other mail providers aren't subject to the same kind of court order?
  - Markoff 5y ago
    Yes, if they are not headquartered in Germany.
wohfab 5y ago
What does "user" mean with tutanota? If I want multiple custom domains, I need to go with the business account, which has a 1 GB storage limit and a 5 aliases limit. And then it is only for a single user. Does that mean, I cannot have independent login data for the multiple domains/mailboxes I create? Because then it is not close to a viable alternative to migadu.
- decrypt 5y ago
  You can have an independent login account but that comes at an additional cost of 12 EUR. That's on the top of the Business plan's cost of 12 EUR + 12 EUR.

Markoff 5y ago

20 outgoing emails per day at micro service for 19USD a year? I really hope that's very bad joke Mini with 100 outgoing emails for only 90USD a year is comparably bad

necovek 5y ago
Perfect for a single/family user who's got multiple domains: they are obviously targeting customers like me with it (20 emails per day is over 7000 emails a year: how many did you send out the last year?). The price is right, concerns over privacy and support are not.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
They will happily tune the plan for you. I made a point that we are only 2 in the family abd we need only half of the 90$ plan, they made a custom plan for 45$

woutr_be 5y ago

Also another happy Migadu user, on their micro plan. I mainly use it for small projects, it’s great because I pay a flat $19 fee for unlimited domains. I’m happy to upgrade once a project requires it. For my personal domain email, I use Fastmail, but that comes in at $50 yearly. Not something I can justify when just playing around with an idea.

yarcob 5y ago
According to their website, Fastmail allows up to 100 custom domains on a single account, so it's not like you need to buy a second account if you just want to receive/send email on a domain.
- woutr_be 5y ago
  Yes, but you pay per “user”. So if you want to separate your accounts, you want multiple users.
  - yarcob 5y ago
    Right, but I don't really see why you would need separate accounts. In my experience a single account for multiple projects is actually very convenient (with rules to automatically sort incoming mail). In my opinion, multiple accounts are really only necessary if you have employees or collaborators and want to make sure that not everyone can access your stuff. But that's just my point of view, I understand that what works for me may not be suitable for your projects.
    - woutr_be 5y ago
      The way that users work with Fastmail, is that each user has a single email address, the rest just acts as aliases to that address. So when receiving works, sending always happens with the main address. For small projects, I don’t necessarily want to reply with my main address, hence why I want to have it seperated.
      - 5y ago

bennyp101 5y ago

Good timing, I'm in the process of looking to migrate my emails. Currently on O365 for 3 of us, but as we now all get Office products via work, I can't justify paying ~£30 a month. Looking at our usage, the biggest account is 3.7GB, and in the last 180 days the most emails sent was 12 in one day, and the most received was 158 - so micro looks like a fit. The pricing looks pretty spot on for what we need, and the features seem good, so I've set up a 14day trial with just my email to see how it goes. I guess the only thing is calendar and contact sync, (I tried to get the calendar to work, but keeps saying it does not exist /shrug) Any recommendations for a calendar/contact provider?

EwanToo 5y ago
Fastmail does it all, you can have one user on the professional price and others on the basic plan and share a custom domain https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/ https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/
- wrycoder 5y ago
  One downside, apparently you can’t use their (great) app on the basic plan and share the domain with the master user.
decrypt 5y ago
Speaking for calendar, I basically signed up for a new Google account with that custom domain email address and use calendar on it. Syncs neat to my Android.
tweetle_beetle 5y ago
They have pushed a basic CalDAV (and CarDAV?) feature out on Migadu for what it's worth. I think they're new enough that they're considered beta and not in marketing materials. https://www.migadu.com/guides/thunderbird/ https://www.migadu.com/guides/thunderbird/
- saladuh 5y ago
  Yep, if you contact them about it they'll provide you with more info. Both CardDAV and CalDAV will be available, documented and all, to the public in September/October. When I emailed them earlier today about it (pure coincidence) they gave me the necessary info on CardDAV and also directed me to a post[0] made by another beta tester explaining both DAV services in more detail. [0] https://www.billdietrich.me/SecureCommunication.html?expandall=1#Migadu https://www.billdietrich.me/SecureCommunication.html?expanda...

gingerjoos 5y ago

I got my email hosting via MXRoute when they gave out a lifetime plan for $50 on Black Friday ( https://mxroute.com/pricing/ https://mxroute.com/pricing/ , currently available at $150). It's a very no-frills service, they provide a webUI via Roundcube, Crossbox, Rainloop etc. I am pretty much reliant on Thunderbird on the desktop and K9 on Android. I've never had issues and I'm switching over from gmail slowly.

damsta 5y ago
Lifetime these days means 3-4 years.
- genghizkhan 5y ago
  I'll go out on a limb to defend jarland (the admin of mxroute) and say I genuinely don't think it only means 3 - 4 years here. And even if it does, $50 (or even $150) for a 3 - 4 year service is pretty darn awesome.
  - djvdorp 5y ago
    Oh wow, I remember jarland from LowEndTalk.com, can definitely vouch for him. Quite an interesting interview with him about MXroute there: https://lowendbox.com/blog/interview-qa-with-mxroute-owner-jarland-donnell-on-email-delivery-the-hosting-industry-and-a-look-back/ https://lowendbox.com/blog/interview-qa-with-mxroute-owner-j...
- jarland 5y ago
  It's a very tight line to walk, when I intend to offer these lifetime packages and run a company that outlives me. That's why you'll see the price rising on it. I'm trying to find the impulse buy threshold and exceed it to stay on mission. These plans can only fill small unused corners of already profitable servers. Anything more is irresponsible on my part.
avinassh 5y ago
Damn, $50 is quite sweet for unlimited. $150 seems bit on the higher on the side. I am cursing myself for missing that offer

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

brnt 5y ago

I use postale.io after I switched away from Migadu (got in while they had a free tier). Excellent and reliable service over the past year.

luke2m 5y ago
Yep, they’ve been great. Too bad they stopped their free tier.
- brnt 5y ago
  I'd readily pay that dollar though (I guess I should!). Uptime and delivery has been as good as the best for me.
kwanbix 5y ago
I like their pricing better than Migadu's, however, I don't want 50 mailboxes with 3GB each, I want 5 mailboxes with 30GB each. That would be perfect.
- brnt 5y ago
  I have approached them with similar questions and they made the change without any hassle.

xfer 5y ago

I use uberspace for solely email, they provide a shell and bit more. It has been working well for me: i can have full 10gb space for email(now you can even buy more space), aliases/mailboxes as i need. https://manual.uberspace.de/mail-access/ https://manual.uberspace.de/mail-access/

oron 5y ago

I have a decent domain and good knowledge in backend / scaling production servers up. Anyone can recommend a good white label / open source package which I can use to build a Migadu clone ?

nmlt 5y ago

Many people here are mentioning alternatives. The ones I’m using are mailbox.org (although they recently raised prices for new customers) and uberspace.de (includes ssh access).

werds 5y ago

this is the worst landing page i have ever seen for a SaaS product

bennyp101 5y ago
Why? It says exactly what it does? It hosts email. That is it. I think it's quite refreshing to not have parallax scrolling, and the same tired looking icons and vector graphics. Everything I need to know is pretty much there on the front page.
- werds 5y ago
  - there is far too much detailed copy above the fold - the copy around the call to action is too vague - there is no example of "what you have now without migadu" versus "with migadu" in summary it makes it very hard to quickly identify the problem it solves and illustrate how migadu fixes it. take a look at this article: https://blog.roastmylandingpage.com/landing-page-roasts/ https://blog.roastmylandingpage.com/landing-page-roasts/
  - watermelon0 5y ago
    IMO it's one of the better landing pages. It tells you exactly what they offer (email hosting with unlimited domains), and what features they support. Pricing is straightforward (with no nonsense discounts for the first N months) and one click away. Linked article is just an opinion of some person, and I have to say I quite disagree with it: - If I'm looking for a email hosting, I definitely know what the pain is, and I assume they will fix it by providing hosting for my emails. - Testimonials & awards are bullshit. They don't help me determine if I want to use the service or not.
    - werds 5y ago
      Yes the linked article is the opinion of one person. One person with a proven track record of maximising the conversions from landing page visits.
  - 5y ago

robomartin 5y ago

Options: Zimbra [0] and GoDaddy VPS [1]? My current setup is very simple. We have a GoDaddy Gen 4 server (don't knock it, rock solid, no issues at all) were we host email for multiple domains as we please. It's super simple. No email hosting nightmares. Just point the MX record to that server and host the site anywhere else or on the same server. One fixed annual cost (~$600/yr) and you can do whatever you want. This is hard to beat. I've been thinking of migrating to a Zimbra setup to self-host email on something like a Linode server. I absolutely detest per-mailbox/per-user plans. Frankly, it has been very hard to beat our current GoDaddy setup. If you are dealing with multiple domains, each with multiple mailboxes, costs can add-up very quickly. It then becomes a cash bleed. Every service (not just email) wants $5 to $20 per month from you. It is very easy to end-up spending thousands of dollars per month through these "bleed" costs. Anyhow, other than time to make the transition, what has stopped me from taking this path is that Zimbra seems "fat" in the sense that it requires a "fat" server to run. [0] https://www.zimbra.com/ https://www.zimbra.com/ [1] https://pk.godaddy.com/hosting/vps-hosting https://pk.godaddy.com/hosting/vps-hosting

npv789 5y ago

purelymail is a better deal

smashah 5y ago

Umm am I missing something? Wouldn't you just use GSuite and set up other domains as aliases?

stapled_socks 5y ago
> Umm am I missing something? Probably. > Wouldn't you just use GSuite and set up other domains as aliases? Not if you think this Migadu or some other service suits your needs better or provides better value.
andreareina 5y ago
Some people want to limit their exposure to google. Also a healthy market for email is a good thing.
Ecto5 5y ago
some people dontdont want google in their lives.

canada2us 5y ago

For those who want to get their hands dirty, here is a full, step by step tutorial to set up your own email server: https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/setup-basic-postfix-mail-sever-ubuntu https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/setup-basic-postfix-ma... migadu's mail number limit does not make sense to me: This risks losing emails.

lbriner 5y ago
That guide is all very well but it is very complicated to follow and setup, and I have been using Linux for a reasonable amount of time (10+ years). I was surprised that there wasn't an open source script, a bit like you would run with apt-get, that would simply ask you some questions and do all the bits for you. Postfix is obviously really powerful but for a noob to it, I found it overwhelming without consulting lots of docs. I did find https://www.iredmail.org/ https://www.iredmail.org/ but that has a feature limit for the free version. The bits you actually really want costs up to $500/year. Not much if it is for your main business, but a lot when you only want it for a part of your larger system.
- teitoklien 5y ago
  If you’re open to using Docker Try out this [0] , it’s pretty easy to self host , comes with decent defaults and makes it quite easy to setup a bunch of tools from spam checking to anti virus , dkim , dmarc , etc and gives you some handy parameters you can change in its default config file after that you can further customise the tools it uses directly (although I’ve only had to do that once or twice while setting up some custom settings) Takes 5 mins to setup a decent instance [0] https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver

ishanjain28 5y ago

What luck! I have been trying to move away from Zoho. I tried protonmail for the last month but it's not for me. E2E is great but the loss in functionality is a bit much. I switched to fastmail today but I have ran into some issues there as well[1] and so far I have seen a lot of recent reddit posts criticizing the extremely slow response time(2+ days) in support tickets. So, now I am not sure if fastmail is a good option. Migadu has been recommended to me in the past, maybe I should try that out [1] https://reddit.com/r/fastmail/comments/m4rj0g/_/h3tq036/?context=1 https://reddit.com/r/fastmail/comments/m4rj0g/_/h3tq036/?con...

mdasen 5y ago
Mind if I ask why you're moving away from Zoho? I've been debating moving my email to Zoho since they offer a cheap $12/year plan. I might just move everything to iCloud+ when they start supporting custom domains this fall since $1/mo for 50GB seems pretty reasonable.
- ishanjain28 5y ago
  1. Huge email deliverability issues. Quite a few emails just get lost somehow. Just today, someone forwarded a book and hours later I still haven't received it. 2. Terrible, Inconsistent UI. 3. Push notifications are broken and Their apps are broken. I dont get notifications in clients configured with IMAP and their apps also dont send notifications. I have to manually refresh in both cases. 4. Relatively minor issue but I am against Zoho's founder's political alignment, and that is putting this issue mildly.
- kureikain 5y ago
  Just another data point. I had great delivery with zoho for year even use their free plan. They used to offer SMTP/IMAP on their free tier few years ago and continue to granfathering those my account. If you like consistent UI then no one can beat gmail. Even fastmail/protonmail/outlook cannot beat gmail in UI/UX to me. Stay away from iCloud is my advice. Their proofpoint spam filtering is the worst to deal with. Lots of people are going to have trouble reach iCloud inbox. Anything but not iCloud. That isn't their primary business and consider level of Apple support and randomly ban/block people out of iCloud(you will find some here), I would advice against using them. Give zoho I tried. They are very reliable, their spam filtering isn't as good as gmail so sometime legitimate emails go to Spam but that's a problem with any mail provider. Time to time you have to train spam system. Especially if you got a lot of email from people with a new domains email you first time. New domains that are created within 7 days and send out email are more likely to be flagged.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago

I love Migadu, I have been customer for half a year. My major problem is the lack of cross platform email clients with snooze capabilities. This translated in me using gmail UI, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place. You can get to paid email clients, but they all include email hosting, defeating the purpose.