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Ask HN: Recommendations for an SMTP Sending Service?

With the Google Apps changes I am looking at moving my emails somewhere else. One solution is a SaaS service that would cover all my needs, but they all have limitations (except at very premium levels of prices). I am considering hosting the incoming part (having my MX pointing to my home server) but I do not want to deal with the outbound part because of apparently how difficult it is to have consistent deliveries (because of spam filtering - there were several comments in HN about that). Is there a good SMTP sending service that is affordable for home users (6 users sending a normal (low) amount of emails)? I guess that what I need is a service that will forward @mydomain emails (with the possibility to set up SFP, DMARC, ...) and handle at least two domains.

1nf_ 5y ago
I have had an awesome experience with https://mxroute.com/ https://mxroute.com/. The owner takes deliverability very seriously and I have never had an email go to spam. I would recommend it.
- kijin 5y ago
  +1 for MXRoute if you're just looking for an affordable alternative to Google Apps and not some fancy API. They bill by storage and not by the number of accounts, and they offer discounts around the year if you look around. Also don't be fooled by their frontend that looks like some run of the mill shared hosting. Their backend is absolutely professional.
- throw3847282 5y ago
  If it's for a single user, at that price, Microsoft's Exchange Online Plan 1 might be another option. Otherwise Migadu or PurelyMail are a lot cheaper.
  - mariusor 5y ago
    I second PurelyMail. Their price schema is based mostly on mailbox storage size, and I believe I paid under 10$ for the last two years of hosting some catch-all mailboxes for multiple domains.
- mxuribe 5y ago
  I had heard of mxroute previously, but for some reason, i only thought they focused around transactional email...like sendgrid, etc...and not what others might refer to as conventional mail hosts. Their price is really compelling, and the honesty of their documentation is refreshing! Take a gander at some of their commentary around hosting calendars, contacts for example: "...Just know, that’s not where the bulk of our time and energy is going." [https://mxroute.com/docs/#/General/Do_You_Sell_Calendars https://mxroute.com/docs/#/General/Do_You_Sell_Calendars] Granted i have the need for email as well as calendar and contacts, but damn that level of honesty is compelling for me to at least consider them for my short list. Kudos to the MXRoute folks for being honest!
- ryan29 5y ago
  My favorite thing about MXRoute is the super simple rate limits that you can configure when adding a user. I use it on devices for notification e-mails and being able to limit those logins to something low like 5-10 emails per day is awesome. It really minimizes the damage if something goes haywire, a device gets compromised, or a device gets stolen.
3np 5y ago
The most well-renowned specializing in outbound SMTP AFAIK would be Mailroute, Mailgun, Sendgrid, mxroute. They’re all comparable; pick whichever you think suits you best. There’s also “mail-hosters” like Posteo, Migadu, Fastmail.
softwarebeware 5y ago
Check out https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2022/01/email-thoughts https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2022/01/email-thoughts - it was posted here recently
petee 5y ago
I use the registrar Gandi, but there are a couple limiting catches - you have to transfer your domain to them (good service though), and only 2 email accounts are included per domain with unlimited aliases, and additional cost per address is either usd$0.40/per month for 3GB storage, or $2/mo for 50GB. They offer webmail and all that but still give you imap & smtp access So on the low end it would be $1.60 a month additional, not bad
- BrandoElFollito 5y ago
  One of my domains is actually with Gandi (I am French - the other one is with OVH). I was not aware of their offer but you made me realize that, maybe, I could use their SMTP while hosting my emails. I am not sure which checks they do (it is possible/likely that they filter on the email addresses that are registered with them) but it is worth a try. Thanks.
tiernano 5y ago
Try migadu: https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ about 20 quid for the year, nearly unlimited domains, and good service. I use it for a good few domains. Happy with them.
- marban 5y ago
  Keep the quotas in mind on the cheapo plans.
theblazehen 5y ago
I've been using sendinblue, reliable and a very generous free tier. Smtp2go is good as well, with a bit of a lower free tier (9000 vs 1000 mails / month)
patja 5y ago
Amazon SES will cost pennies for personal use volumes. You really need to stay on top of any reported abuse complaints or they will shut you down quickly, which is a good thing in the big picture.
rootsudo 5y ago
Sendgrid, but SES also is a good choice too.
gfykvfyxgc 5y ago
I’m guessing all the major clouds provide this?
- BrandoElFollito 5y ago
  Yes, but for addresses that are hosted by them.
philip1209 5y ago
I've been using Postmark for my personal email domain. I was using Sparkpost, but I had problems. Specifically, some email help desks seemed to reject the emails - so I was unable to respond to some inquiries. Many friends reported that my emails were going to Spam, too. With Postmark, I've had zero deliverability issues. I recommend monitoring DMARC closely to ensure deliverability. I use this free tool from Postmark: https://dmarc.postmarkapp.com/ https://dmarc.postmarkapp.com/
emptybottle 5y ago
Fastmail has been great for both final deivery and outbound smtp for personal email.
- jsmith99 5y ago
  I'm very happy with fastmail too but I'm only paying for one inbox. If OP needs half a dozen users, then that's $300 a year, which is excessive for light personal use. I suppose as they only need SMTP they could set them all up as identities on a single inbox but that's not what fastmail is meant for.
jcun4128 5y ago
Been using mailgun for a long time free for 5000 emails/mo.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  I use them for my infrastructure's notification mail needs. Written a small tool to send e-mails from command-line via an API key. They're a joy to use.
  - brightball 5y ago
    The lack of automatic DKIM rotation is the only thing that keeps me from using them instead of Sendgrid.
bayindirh 5y ago
Why not purelymail? It's cheap, allows multiple users, multiple boxes, TOTP, Application Passwords, SMTP, Webmail, custom domains and more. Starting $10/year. https://purelymail.com/ https://purelymail.com/
g8oz 5y ago
Postmark. Be sure to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
brightball 5y ago
I’ve considered doing the same thing many times. My vote would go to Sendgrid based on my last round of research 2-3 years ago. Reasons: 1. Automatic DKIM rotation. Sendgrid will setup 2 CNAMES so that they can automatically rotate your DKIM keys making this a “set and forget” situation. 2. Good delivery logs so you can see exactly why something wasn’t delivered if there was a problem. 3. Different permission levels for different users included. You can create a user with only SMTP permissions to use to send with while not having to worry that if it’s compromised someone can go ballistic on your account settings. 3a. Solid 2FA 4. They fiercely guard their IPs against abuse. 5. Ample free tier for personal use. 6. I believe they have an option to spam filter your outgoing messages so that even if the account (or machine) was compromised, you could prevent delivery. Those are the main reasons from my experience. Plus all the other more standard features like read receipts, etc if you want.
- nkmnz 5y ago
  Sendgrid has the worst IP addresses I ever used for sending email and the customer support has been even worse.
  - wutwutwutwut 5y ago
    Yeah, there free tier was useless when I tried it. Essentially couldn't send email to anyone, including myself, since their fiercely guarded IP addresses were crap.
  - briHass 5y ago
    Worse than SES? I agree, though. You need to pony up for a dedicated IP from Sendgrid to get good deliverability to many hosts. Small ISPs tend to be the worst, IME, where Google, Comcast, etc work pretty well with SG.
    - nkmnz 5y ago
      I’ve tried a dedicated IP from sendgrid as well, but our sending volumes were way too low even for transactional mails. It would have taken months of sending fake emails to warm the address up.
Aeolun 5y ago
My vote (like someone else here) goes to Sendgrid. I’ve been using them since before they were sold to Twilio and they haven’t let me down yet. They also have a reasonable free tier that I basically never exceed. I’m not sure if their basic features would fulfill all your needs though. That said, if you need personal email I’d say just use Fastmail, and you won’t be disappointed.
- rawoke083600 5y ago
  Just wait for it ! They can close your account on a moments notice and there will be no way to get your data ! Sure use it if you sending spam'ish email (seems most do) but for anything critical stay far far away !!
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    What data is in there? It’s a SMTP server to me. As long as it sends my emails everything is good.
    - rawoke083600 5y ago
      Normal transactional mails. Password resets. Ticket Notifications (think JIRA) etc. >As long as it sends my emails everything is good. Lol ja it was good until it stopped sending my mails. They closed down our free account after 5 years when we wanted to upgrade to paid tier to get better analytics. EXACT SAME mails (content,recipients, amount etc) we just wanted to give them money and get better reporting. Boom closed down our account over the weekend. No access to our data or account. No recourse !
kennydude 5y ago
Zoho is usually pretty cheap and reliable. Been around for a long time and don't seem to be going anywhere fast. Their latest blog says to expect a well priced family solution in the next couple of days
- toomanydoubts 5y ago
  Been using the free version of zoho for about 10 years. What an amazing little piece of software.
- mxuribe 5y ago
  > ...Their latest blog says to expect a well priced family solution in the next couple of days Oooh, now that is interesting! Reference (near bottom of blog post): https://www.zoho.com/blog/workplace/honouring-the-commitment-we-made-ten-years-ago.html https://www.zoho.com/blog/workplace/honouring-the-commitment...
- freedomben 5y ago
  I use Zoho for a small company and indeed the pricing is really good and the product is reliable. The UI is really well designed and they have thought about (and implemented) nearly any feature I can ever think of. Really great service. I plan to move my family to Zoho in the next couple of years. I only haven't yet because I've got so many other items on the to-do list.
ryandrake 5y ago
I know you specifically say you don’t want to try self-hosting outbound, but I’m going to still vote for it because I think the reasoning you cited is a little second-hand FUD. I self-host mail and yes, I occasionally run into annoying delivery problems, but not often, and once you’re configured (SPF, DKIM, and so on), E-mail is set-and-forget. I think the reassurance of not relying on the whims of yet another cloud provider outweighs the convenience, but definitely reasonable people can disagree! Good luck though. The cloud hosted solutions mentioned in other threads are fine choices.
- ziffusion 5y ago
  I am trying iRedMail to self host an email server. What do you use? I've setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC. The PTR record is not possible for me to setup. How did you get around that? Did you get a static IP address? What else do you think is necessary to make this better?
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    My stack is exim4, dovecot, and spamassassin, running on Debian stable. I do have a static IP address as the machine is a VPS. Admittedly this makes me reliant on my VPS provider so technically the whole stack isn’t in my control. I can however in theory fail over to metal on my residential IP if my VPS fails, although 1. I would want to request a static IP from my ISP and 2. I have not tested this transition recently. At one point in the past I needed to get a different IP address and suddenly had deliverability problems because the IP I got from the VPS provider was previously naughty. Re-requesting another IP was all it took to solve that.
- defanor 5y ago
  While I like personal mail servers and would suggest tech-savvy people at least to try them, OP mentions a home server, which probably involves a residential IP address, an ISP that won't set a reverse DNS for regular users, and likely other annoyances that would complicate mail delivery considerably more than usual. If you'll decide to give it a try, BrandoElFollito, it's best to have at least one IPv4 address that isn't in a residential range and not in DNSBLs, a /64 IPv6 subnet (since blacklists tend to add at least a /64 subnet for those), ability to set in-addr.arpa records.
catern 5y ago
I use Sendgrid's free tier in this exact way, for mail from catern.com.
ei8ths 5y ago
aws ses, super cheap, fairly easy to setup. I just wish they had better or easier things like sendgrid has for analytics and troubleshooting. But i am paying pennies for my low sends.
- ftrobro 5y ago
  In my experience a few email services refuse to accept emails from AWS SES, probably because a lot of automated emails are sent from AWS SES.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  I came to recommend AWS SES as well. I also use Google to handle my mail, but I use a catchall email address and Google does not support changing the From address of outbound mail. I've been extremely happy with SES, as it is easy to set up and so far as I know I've not had delivery issues.
  - Rastonbury 5y ago
    Gmail? You can add sending from other address/SMTP in the settings
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      > Gmail? Yes. I use Thunderbird to browse the mail, but Gmail is the MX record. > You can add sending from other address/SMTP in the settings Occasionally I do open a web browser to view the mail from there, so that might be useful. Thanks. But I still would have no way to alter the From header in the web interface.
windex 5y ago
I use simplelogin.io for a bunch of my personal domains. They route it all to a catchall mailbox on gmail.
cientifico 5y ago
I can recommend https://docs.postalserver.io/ https://docs.postalserver.io/
samwillis 5y ago
Can wholeheartedly recommend Postmark, fabulous service and support. Virtually no problems over the last 6 years and always incredibly responsive to any questions. Used to be with SendGrid, had a very bad experience with them where (at the time) they showed little interest in small customers and wouldn’t go back. A lot can change in 6 years, they may well be brilliant and now care more about small customers, but for reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142728
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  Wow, that's great. Suggesting you rent a dedicated IP from them to improve deliverability right after saying the move to new IPs reduced deliverability.
- black-tusk 5y ago
  In the last year I went through many of the SMTP sending services. SendGrid's non-dedicated IPs offered the worst deliverability I'd ever seen, and yeah the proposed solution was move to a Pro (dedicated IP) plan
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  I have an upcoming project in the pipeline that would injest emails based on a users custom email handle. The software should parse the email, strip one time password out of it, and send the data (otp and email Id and time" forward. At the same time, the user uses a browser extension to tell the server that an otp has been sent. The software should "match" the two api calls which would "give" the user the requested otp. I dunno. Should I use amazon ses+lambda+ api gateway or is there a Foss selfhosted option
nkmnz 5y ago
Try uberspace! Small German hosting provider that should cover all your needs for sending and receiving email with a pay-what-you-want model (>5€ monthly encouraged). I host email adresses for several projects with them and never had any deliverability problems. Plus, they don't want any data from you. https://uberspace.de/en/ https://uberspace.de/en/ Edit: they don't sell domains, but you can bring your own domain that you have registered elsewhere.
blueatlas 5y ago
A relative new player is MailerSend (https://mailersend.com/ https://mailersend.com/). We've moved all of our transactional e-mail over to their service. They have a sensible onboarding and UI/dashboard. The dashboard makes it clear how to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC. There is a generous free tier for a single domain. A single paid account supports multiple domains starting at $25/mo for 50k outbound. Support has been excellent. And the biggest upside is that their shared IP range, so far, is clean and not blacklisted. That was the clincher for us. I have no connection to MailerSend other than as a happy customer.
StayTrue 5y ago
I run all my own services but just relented and setup mailgun as an outbound SMTP relay. It works well and solves the deliverability problems associated with low-traffic IP addresses. The only tricky thing was making sure my outbound SMTP requests authenticate to mailgun using domain-specific credentials depending on which address I'm sending from (I have 5 different domains).
nacs 5y ago
I moved my 5 domains, 3 user setup with around 50K emails to Migadu.com after Google Workspace deprecation in the last 2 days. Cheap ($20 a year, free trial), lots of features, decent webmail interface and has no problem sending to/from Google servers and a few other email services I've tested with so far. I used imapsync (free/OSS) to move the emails.
- shimonabi 5y ago
  Your comment should be on top. You really helped me. I also transfered to Migadu today (before I saw your comment) and was just looking for a tool to transfer the e-mails to an old free Gmail account. It's really a scandal that Google doesn't enable this in the Workspace migration wizard. You also have to enable access to less secure apps on Gmail to be able to use imapsync.
jsisto 5y ago
I have been using mailjet to do this for years. Their free tier allows for 6000 emails a month or 200 emails a day https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/#email https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/#email
njhaveri 5y ago
If you really want to host your own server for incoming mail, SES would probably be fine for SMTP and very cheap. With things set up correctly (SPF, DKIM), my personal experience with deliverability has been problem-free. However, I've seen others say they've still had issues because of the SES IPs. For double-checking the quality of your setup, mail-tester.com is handy. If you want to migrate to a free consumer service (like a personal Gmail account and using aliases), a forwarding service that also provides SMTP is an option. I've been testing Pobox.com and it looks great ($20/yr for up to 20 addresses). I first tried using my registrar's forwarding service, and sending from aliased addresses via the Gmail SMTP Server, and had lots of trouble with deliverability, so I wouldn't recommend that.
mkdirp 5y ago
I know you're probably not looking for a SaaS based on your message, however, I recently migrated from ProtonMail to mailbox.org because of reasons, and I really think it is worth using over self-hosted solutions. A big reason for not going with self-hosted setup is because of the exact reason you mentioned. I just wasn't in the mood to manage everything myself and keeping my IPs in good standing. On top of that, the only place I could host it is on some cloud (I live in a small apartment in London, so self-hosting isn't very feasible), or worse, some smaller provider that potentially has low to no accountability. I felt like I'm just moving the trust from an email provider (who can arguably do a better job than I can) to a cloud hosting provider. For me, mailbox.org has been great, better than PM. I got the standard package, which is €3 per month. It allows me to use both of my email domains (using a catch-all), and allows me to send emails from any sender (combined with Thunderbird's customisable send field, it's great!). It has full integration with any email client, as opposed to PM which requires either their app, or ProtonMail Bridge. The initial set up was a bit weird, and definitely not as refined as ProtonMail's but in the end it worked. I'm able to use one of my domains as a 1 email per website, and the other for professional communications. They've also got an option to encrypt all your email using a PGP key, which you can combine with Thunderbird's PGP integration, or MailVelope.
bobbob1921 5y ago
I’m assuming google gsuite (“Gmail paid” where you can use your own domain) is not an option bc of the 6 x users (and gsuite is $/per user / per month) And same goes for office365. I only Bring those two up as no one else has mentioned them, and I was seeing other replies that were around the $25 a month mark (which is close to these 2x for 6 x users). However with both you get many more services/features than just email (especially with office 365). Actually I think office 365 has a family plan that is around the $10 /mo mark for up to six users
- that_guy_iain 5y ago
  Google Workspace no longer has a minimum user count. I use it with just one user.
  - shmoe 5y ago
    Did it ever? I've always used GApps/GWS with one user.
strickman 5y ago
I recommend mailjet. I can send email from my openbsd terminal that passes SPF and DKIM.
rawoke083600 5y ago
Well in my experience - I would HIGHLY recommended PostMark ! - Great bunch of clever guys. I would also HIGHLY NOT RECOMMEND Sendgrid.com - Used to use them for 5 years and suddenly closed my production account over a weekend when I wanted to move to paid service for better analytics. No I wasn't sending spam or against their terms of service. Mostly password-resets and ticket-notifications. More importantly if you look at discussion below seems I'm not the only one ! Previous comments + discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29297229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29297229
- schappim 5y ago
  I have used both Postmark and Sendgrid. I’ve found that Postmark gets stuck in Barracuda spam filters used by large organisations. We do however continue to use Postmark.
daneel_w 5y ago
posteo.de and tutanota.com are both affordable. I previously used the former for several years. No complaints.
yashg 5y ago
For sending emails Amazon SES is what I would recommend. SPF, multiple domains, SNS for bounced mails. It has it all. You have to gradually grow the reputation. Been using for many years now. Never faced any issues.
ilmiont 5y ago
Another vote for Postmark. It works and it's a paid but relatively affordable service - this is a good thing in this area, as it keeps the spammers out, and means you have real human support. I've not had a problem yet. Same can't be said for SendGrid which is used on some client projects but has sporadic deliverability issues at times.
CodeWriter23 5y ago
I’m using Migadu for user and transactional emails currently. The price is amazing, though the setup for mail on macOS is somewhat different than what their FAQ suggests so that’s a small headache to have to deal with. Their approach to pricing is usage based on the number of messages, and NOT the number of domains/email addresses, that’s awesome if you’re into idea validation at minimal cost. Supports SPF, DKIM, DMARC, forwarding, vacation messages. https://www.migadu.com/ https://www.migadu.com/ *not receiving any compensation from Migadu in any way
junon 5y ago
Migadu has been great so far.
rikkipitt 5y ago
Mailgun are pretty good. I use them on a couple of email services I’ve built.
xupybd 5y ago
Have you thought about Mail-in-a-box and a cheap VPS? I've had one up for testing and am surprised at the reliability and ease of use. https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/
black-tusk 5y ago
I'd recommend a service that lets you take bite sized portions on a pay-as-you go plan. In this case, Elastic Email is well-priced, offering email at a nickel per CPM and they have great support too
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Daegalus 5y ago
I use ImprovMX for inbound forwarding from my domain to whatever email service I use, but they also offer SMTP sending for their paid service. So for $9 a month, I get great forwarding for many domains and users per domain, and I get SMTP service for each domain per user. I highly recommend them. Their support is great too. https://improvmx.com https://improvmx.com
- cx42net 5y ago
  Thank you so much for your awesome comment :) I'm glad ImprovMX is useful for you!
afiori 5y ago
https://serversmtp.com/ https://serversmtp.com/ It is the only one I have used, it offers both SMTP and a REST API of which I have only used REST, at $COMPANY it was valued as "the cheapest working service to send thousands of email/month from a few email address (the usual noreply@xxx.yy)"
kevincox 5y ago
I recently started a business that is centered around sending mail so I looked through a lot of these. For me the primary concern was price, but I also wanted to ensure that I could DKIM sign without the signature being mangled (I didn't want to trust them to do the signing) and cost (I want to be profitable). I ended up choosing Amazon SES as it is very cheap and simple. It is also nice that they have regional endpoints that are supposedly largely independent. his allowed me to verify my domain in multiple locations so that I can fail between them if there are problems. Other interesting mentions: Oracle Cloud is even cheaper. 0.0008 vs 0.001 per message and no egress charge (IIUC). However you can only verify individual addresses (not a whole domain) and you need to interact with oracle. TurboSMTP is a more "batteries included" solution which may be better for your use case of personal email. It also has a generous free tier which may just cover your use case.

1nf_ 5y ago

I have had an awesome experience with https://mxroute.com/ https://mxroute.com/. The owner takes deliverability very seriously and I have never had an email go to spam. I would recommend it.

kijin 5y ago
+1 for MXRoute if you're just looking for an affordable alternative to Google Apps and not some fancy API. They bill by storage and not by the number of accounts, and they offer discounts around the year if you look around. Also don't be fooled by their frontend that looks like some run of the mill shared hosting. Their backend is absolutely professional.
throw3847282 5y ago
If it's for a single user, at that price, Microsoft's Exchange Online Plan 1 might be another option. Otherwise Migadu or PurelyMail are a lot cheaper.
- mariusor 5y ago
  I second PurelyMail. Their price schema is based mostly on mailbox storage size, and I believe I paid under 10$ for the last two years of hosting some catch-all mailboxes for multiple domains.
mxuribe 5y ago
I had heard of mxroute previously, but for some reason, i only thought they focused around transactional email...like sendgrid, etc...and not what others might refer to as conventional mail hosts. Their price is really compelling, and the honesty of their documentation is refreshing! Take a gander at some of their commentary around hosting calendars, contacts for example: "...Just know, that’s not where the bulk of our time and energy is going." [https://mxroute.com/docs/#/General/Do_You_Sell_Calendars https://mxroute.com/docs/#/General/Do_You_Sell_Calendars] Granted i have the need for email as well as calendar and contacts, but damn that level of honesty is compelling for me to at least consider them for my short list. Kudos to the MXRoute folks for being honest!
ryan29 5y ago
My favorite thing about MXRoute is the super simple rate limits that you can configure when adding a user. I use it on devices for notification e-mails and being able to limit those logins to something low like 5-10 emails per day is awesome. It really minimizes the damage if something goes haywire, a device gets compromised, or a device gets stolen.

3np 5y ago

The most well-renowned specializing in outbound SMTP AFAIK would be Mailroute, Mailgun, Sendgrid, mxroute. They’re all comparable; pick whichever you think suits you best. There’s also “mail-hosters” like Posteo, Migadu, Fastmail.

softwarebeware 5y ago

Check out https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2022/01/email-thoughts https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2022/01/email-thoughts - it was posted here recently

petee 5y ago

I use the registrar Gandi, but there are a couple limiting catches - you have to transfer your domain to them (good service though), and only 2 email accounts are included per domain with unlimited aliases, and additional cost per address is either usd$0.40/per month for 3GB storage, or $2/mo for 50GB. They offer webmail and all that but still give you imap & smtp access So on the low end it would be $1.60 a month additional, not bad

BrandoElFollito 5y ago
One of my domains is actually with Gandi (I am French - the other one is with OVH). I was not aware of their offer but you made me realize that, maybe, I could use their SMTP while hosting my emails. I am not sure which checks they do (it is possible/likely that they filter on the email addresses that are registered with them) but it is worth a try. Thanks.

tiernano 5y ago

Try migadu: https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ https://www.migadu.com/pricing/ about 20 quid for the year, nearly unlimited domains, and good service. I use it for a good few domains. Happy with them.

marban 5y ago
Keep the quotas in mind on the cheapo plans.

theblazehen 5y ago

I've been using sendinblue, reliable and a very generous free tier. Smtp2go is good as well, with a bit of a lower free tier (9000 vs 1000 mails / month)

patja 5y ago

Amazon SES will cost pennies for personal use volumes. You really need to stay on top of any reported abuse complaints or they will shut you down quickly, which is a good thing in the big picture.

rootsudo 5y ago

Sendgrid, but SES also is a good choice too.

gfykvfyxgc 5y ago

I’m guessing all the major clouds provide this?

BrandoElFollito 5y ago
Yes, but for addresses that are hosted by them.

philip1209 5y ago

I've been using Postmark for my personal email domain. I was using Sparkpost, but I had problems. Specifically, some email help desks seemed to reject the emails - so I was unable to respond to some inquiries. Many friends reported that my emails were going to Spam, too. With Postmark, I've had zero deliverability issues. I recommend monitoring DMARC closely to ensure deliverability. I use this free tool from Postmark: https://dmarc.postmarkapp.com/ https://dmarc.postmarkapp.com/

emptybottle 5y ago

Fastmail has been great for both final deivery and outbound smtp for personal email.

jsmith99 5y ago
I'm very happy with fastmail too but I'm only paying for one inbox. If OP needs half a dozen users, then that's $300 a year, which is excessive for light personal use. I suppose as they only need SMTP they could set them all up as identities on a single inbox but that's not what fastmail is meant for.

jcun4128 5y ago

Been using mailgun for a long time free for 5000 emails/mo.

bayindirh 5y ago
I use them for my infrastructure's notification mail needs. Written a small tool to send e-mails from command-line via an API key. They're a joy to use.
- brightball 5y ago
  The lack of automatic DKIM rotation is the only thing that keeps me from using them instead of Sendgrid.

bayindirh 5y ago

Why not purelymail? It's cheap, allows multiple users, multiple boxes, TOTP, Application Passwords, SMTP, Webmail, custom domains and more. Starting $10/year. https://purelymail.com/ https://purelymail.com/

g8oz 5y ago

Postmark. Be sure to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

brightball 5y ago

I’ve considered doing the same thing many times. My vote would go to Sendgrid based on my last round of research 2-3 years ago. Reasons: 1. Automatic DKIM rotation. Sendgrid will setup 2 CNAMES so that they can automatically rotate your DKIM keys making this a “set and forget” situation. 2. Good delivery logs so you can see exactly why something wasn’t delivered if there was a problem. 3. Different permission levels for different users included. You can create a user with only SMTP permissions to use to send with while not having to worry that if it’s compromised someone can go ballistic on your account settings. 3a. Solid 2FA 4. They fiercely guard their IPs against abuse. 5. Ample free tier for personal use. 6. I believe they have an option to spam filter your outgoing messages so that even if the account (or machine) was compromised, you could prevent delivery. Those are the main reasons from my experience. Plus all the other more standard features like read receipts, etc if you want.

nkmnz 5y ago
Sendgrid has the worst IP addresses I ever used for sending email and the customer support has been even worse.
- wutwutwutwut 5y ago
  Yeah, there free tier was useless when I tried it. Essentially couldn't send email to anyone, including myself, since their fiercely guarded IP addresses were crap.
- briHass 5y ago
  Worse than SES? I agree, though. You need to pony up for a dedicated IP from Sendgrid to get good deliverability to many hosts. Small ISPs tend to be the worst, IME, where Google, Comcast, etc work pretty well with SG.
  - nkmnz 5y ago
    I’ve tried a dedicated IP from sendgrid as well, but our sending volumes were way too low even for transactional mails. It would have taken months of sending fake emails to warm the address up.

Aeolun 5y ago

My vote (like someone else here) goes to Sendgrid. I’ve been using them since before they were sold to Twilio and they haven’t let me down yet. They also have a reasonable free tier that I basically never exceed. I’m not sure if their basic features would fulfill all your needs though. That said, if you need personal email I’d say just use Fastmail, and you won’t be disappointed.

rawoke083600 5y ago
Just wait for it ! They can close your account on a moments notice and there will be no way to get your data ! Sure use it if you sending spam'ish email (seems most do) but for anything critical stay far far away !!
- Aeolun 5y ago
  What data is in there? It’s a SMTP server to me. As long as it sends my emails everything is good.
  - rawoke083600 5y ago
    Normal transactional mails. Password resets. Ticket Notifications (think JIRA) etc. >As long as it sends my emails everything is good. Lol ja it was good until it stopped sending my mails. They closed down our free account after 5 years when we wanted to upgrade to paid tier to get better analytics. EXACT SAME mails (content,recipients, amount etc) we just wanted to give them money and get better reporting. Boom closed down our account over the weekend. No access to our data or account. No recourse !

kennydude 5y ago

Zoho is usually pretty cheap and reliable. Been around for a long time and don't seem to be going anywhere fast. Their latest blog says to expect a well priced family solution in the next couple of days

toomanydoubts 5y ago
Been using the free version of zoho for about 10 years. What an amazing little piece of software.
mxuribe 5y ago
> ...Their latest blog says to expect a well priced family solution in the next couple of days Oooh, now that is interesting! Reference (near bottom of blog post): https://www.zoho.com/blog/workplace/honouring-the-commitment-we-made-ten-years-ago.html https://www.zoho.com/blog/workplace/honouring-the-commitment...
freedomben 5y ago
I use Zoho for a small company and indeed the pricing is really good and the product is reliable. The UI is really well designed and they have thought about (and implemented) nearly any feature I can ever think of. Really great service. I plan to move my family to Zoho in the next couple of years. I only haven't yet because I've got so many other items on the to-do list.

ryandrake 5y ago

I know you specifically say you don’t want to try self-hosting outbound, but I’m going to still vote for it because I think the reasoning you cited is a little second-hand FUD. I self-host mail and yes, I occasionally run into annoying delivery problems, but not often, and once you’re configured (SPF, DKIM, and so on), E-mail is set-and-forget. I think the reassurance of not relying on the whims of yet another cloud provider outweighs the convenience, but definitely reasonable people can disagree! Good luck though. The cloud hosted solutions mentioned in other threads are fine choices.

ziffusion 5y ago
I am trying iRedMail to self host an email server. What do you use? I've setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC. The PTR record is not possible for me to setup. How did you get around that? Did you get a static IP address? What else do you think is necessary to make this better?
- ryandrake 5y ago
  My stack is exim4, dovecot, and spamassassin, running on Debian stable. I do have a static IP address as the machine is a VPS. Admittedly this makes me reliant on my VPS provider so technically the whole stack isn’t in my control. I can however in theory fail over to metal on my residential IP if my VPS fails, although 1. I would want to request a static IP from my ISP and 2. I have not tested this transition recently. At one point in the past I needed to get a different IP address and suddenly had deliverability problems because the IP I got from the VPS provider was previously naughty. Re-requesting another IP was all it took to solve that.
defanor 5y ago
While I like personal mail servers and would suggest tech-savvy people at least to try them, OP mentions a home server, which probably involves a residential IP address, an ISP that won't set a reverse DNS for regular users, and likely other annoyances that would complicate mail delivery considerably more than usual. If you'll decide to give it a try, BrandoElFollito, it's best to have at least one IPv4 address that isn't in a residential range and not in DNSBLs, a /64 IPv6 subnet (since blacklists tend to add at least a /64 subnet for those), ability to set in-addr.arpa records.

catern 5y ago

I use Sendgrid's free tier in this exact way, for mail from catern.com.

ei8ths 5y ago

aws ses, super cheap, fairly easy to setup. I just wish they had better or easier things like sendgrid has for analytics and troubleshooting. But i am paying pennies for my low sends.

ftrobro 5y ago
In my experience a few email services refuse to accept emails from AWS SES, probably because a lot of automated emails are sent from AWS SES.
dotancohen 5y ago
I came to recommend AWS SES as well. I also use Google to handle my mail, but I use a catchall email address and Google does not support changing the From address of outbound mail. I've been extremely happy with SES, as it is easy to set up and so far as I know I've not had delivery issues.
- Rastonbury 5y ago
  Gmail? You can add sending from other address/SMTP in the settings
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    > Gmail? Yes. I use Thunderbird to browse the mail, but Gmail is the MX record. > You can add sending from other address/SMTP in the settings Occasionally I do open a web browser to view the mail from there, so that might be useful. Thanks. But I still would have no way to alter the From header in the web interface.

windex 5y ago

I use simplelogin.io for a bunch of my personal domains. They route it all to a catchall mailbox on gmail.

cientifico 5y ago

I can recommend https://docs.postalserver.io/ https://docs.postalserver.io/

samwillis 5y ago

Can wholeheartedly recommend Postmark, fabulous service and support. Virtually no problems over the last 6 years and always incredibly responsive to any questions. Used to be with SendGrid, had a very bad experience with them where (at the time) they showed little interest in small customers and wouldn’t go back. A lot can change in 6 years, they may well be brilliant and now care more about small customers, but for reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142728

notreallyserio 5y ago
Wow, that's great. Suggesting you rent a dedicated IP from them to improve deliverability right after saying the move to new IPs reduced deliverability.
black-tusk 5y ago
In the last year I went through many of the SMTP sending services. SendGrid's non-dedicated IPs offered the worst deliverability I'd ever seen, and yeah the proposed solution was move to a Pro (dedicated IP) plan
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
I have an upcoming project in the pipeline that would injest emails based on a users custom email handle. The software should parse the email, strip one time password out of it, and send the data (otp and email Id and time" forward. At the same time, the user uses a browser extension to tell the server that an otp has been sent. The software should "match" the two api calls which would "give" the user the requested otp. I dunno. Should I use amazon ses+lambda+ api gateway or is there a Foss selfhosted option

nkmnz 5y ago

Try uberspace! Small German hosting provider that should cover all your needs for sending and receiving email with a pay-what-you-want model (>5€ monthly encouraged). I host email adresses for several projects with them and never had any deliverability problems. Plus, they don't want any data from you. https://uberspace.de/en/ https://uberspace.de/en/ Edit: they don't sell domains, but you can bring your own domain that you have registered elsewhere.

blueatlas 5y ago

A relative new player is MailerSend (https://mailersend.com/ https://mailersend.com/). We've moved all of our transactional e-mail over to their service. They have a sensible onboarding and UI/dashboard. The dashboard makes it clear how to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC. There is a generous free tier for a single domain. A single paid account supports multiple domains starting at $25/mo for 50k outbound. Support has been excellent. And the biggest upside is that their shared IP range, so far, is clean and not blacklisted. That was the clincher for us. I have no connection to MailerSend other than as a happy customer.

StayTrue 5y ago

I run all my own services but just relented and setup mailgun as an outbound SMTP relay. It works well and solves the deliverability problems associated with low-traffic IP addresses. The only tricky thing was making sure my outbound SMTP requests authenticate to mailgun using domain-specific credentials depending on which address I'm sending from (I have 5 different domains).

nacs 5y ago

I moved my 5 domains, 3 user setup with around 50K emails to Migadu.com after Google Workspace deprecation in the last 2 days. Cheap ($20 a year, free trial), lots of features, decent webmail interface and has no problem sending to/from Google servers and a few other email services I've tested with so far. I used imapsync (free/OSS) to move the emails.

shimonabi 5y ago
Your comment should be on top. You really helped me. I also transfered to Migadu today (before I saw your comment) and was just looking for a tool to transfer the e-mails to an old free Gmail account. It's really a scandal that Google doesn't enable this in the Workspace migration wizard. You also have to enable access to less secure apps on Gmail to be able to use imapsync.

jsisto 5y ago

I have been using mailjet to do this for years. Their free tier allows for 6000 emails a month or 200 emails a day https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/#email https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/#email

njhaveri 5y ago

If you really want to host your own server for incoming mail, SES would probably be fine for SMTP and very cheap. With things set up correctly (SPF, DKIM), my personal experience with deliverability has been problem-free. However, I've seen others say they've still had issues because of the SES IPs. For double-checking the quality of your setup, mail-tester.com is handy. If you want to migrate to a free consumer service (like a personal Gmail account and using aliases), a forwarding service that also provides SMTP is an option. I've been testing Pobox.com and it looks great ($20/yr for up to 20 addresses). I first tried using my registrar's forwarding service, and sending from aliased addresses via the Gmail SMTP Server, and had lots of trouble with deliverability, so I wouldn't recommend that.

mkdirp 5y ago

I know you're probably not looking for a SaaS based on your message, however, I recently migrated from ProtonMail to mailbox.org because of reasons, and I really think it is worth using over self-hosted solutions. A big reason for not going with self-hosted setup is because of the exact reason you mentioned. I just wasn't in the mood to manage everything myself and keeping my IPs in good standing. On top of that, the only place I could host it is on some cloud (I live in a small apartment in London, so self-hosting isn't very feasible), or worse, some smaller provider that potentially has low to no accountability. I felt like I'm just moving the trust from an email provider (who can arguably do a better job than I can) to a cloud hosting provider. For me, mailbox.org has been great, better than PM. I got the standard package, which is €3 per month. It allows me to use both of my email domains (using a catch-all), and allows me to send emails from any sender (combined with Thunderbird's customisable send field, it's great!). It has full integration with any email client, as opposed to PM which requires either their app, or ProtonMail Bridge. The initial set up was a bit weird, and definitely not as refined as ProtonMail's but in the end it worked. I'm able to use one of my domains as a 1 email per website, and the other for professional communications. They've also got an option to encrypt all your email using a PGP key, which you can combine with Thunderbird's PGP integration, or MailVelope.

bobbob1921 5y ago

I’m assuming google gsuite (“Gmail paid” where you can use your own domain) is not an option bc of the 6 x users (and gsuite is $/per user / per month) And same goes for office365. I only Bring those two up as no one else has mentioned them, and I was seeing other replies that were around the $25 a month mark (which is close to these 2x for 6 x users). However with both you get many more services/features than just email (especially with office 365). Actually I think office 365 has a family plan that is around the $10 /mo mark for up to six users

that_guy_iain 5y ago
Google Workspace no longer has a minimum user count. I use it with just one user.
- shmoe 5y ago
  Did it ever? I've always used GApps/GWS with one user.

strickman 5y ago

I recommend mailjet. I can send email from my openbsd terminal that passes SPF and DKIM.

rawoke083600 5y ago

Well in my experience - I would HIGHLY recommended PostMark ! - Great bunch of clever guys. I would also HIGHLY NOT RECOMMEND Sendgrid.com - Used to use them for 5 years and suddenly closed my production account over a weekend when I wanted to move to paid service for better analytics. No I wasn't sending spam or against their terms of service. Mostly password-resets and ticket-notifications. More importantly if you look at discussion below seems I'm not the only one ! Previous comments + discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29297229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29297229

schappim 5y ago
I have used both Postmark and Sendgrid. I’ve found that Postmark gets stuck in Barracuda spam filters used by large organisations. We do however continue to use Postmark.

daneel_w 5y ago

posteo.de and tutanota.com are both affordable. I previously used the former for several years. No complaints.

yashg 5y ago

For sending emails Amazon SES is what I would recommend. SPF, multiple domains, SNS for bounced mails. It has it all. You have to gradually grow the reputation. Been using for many years now. Never faced any issues.

ilmiont 5y ago

Another vote for Postmark. It works and it's a paid but relatively affordable service - this is a good thing in this area, as it keeps the spammers out, and means you have real human support. I've not had a problem yet. Same can't be said for SendGrid which is used on some client projects but has sporadic deliverability issues at times.

CodeWriter23 5y ago

I’m using Migadu for user and transactional emails currently. The price is amazing, though the setup for mail on macOS is somewhat different than what their FAQ suggests so that’s a small headache to have to deal with. Their approach to pricing is usage based on the number of messages, and NOT the number of domains/email addresses, that’s awesome if you’re into idea validation at minimal cost. Supports SPF, DKIM, DMARC, forwarding, vacation messages. https://www.migadu.com/ https://www.migadu.com/ *not receiving any compensation from Migadu in any way

junon 5y ago

Migadu has been great so far.

rikkipitt 5y ago

Mailgun are pretty good. I use them on a couple of email services I’ve built.

xupybd 5y ago

Have you thought about Mail-in-a-box and a cheap VPS? I've had one up for testing and am surprised at the reliability and ease of use. https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/

black-tusk 5y ago

I'd recommend a service that lets you take bite sized portions on a pay-as-you go plan. In this case, Elastic Email is well-priced, offering email at a nickel per CPM and they have great support too

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Daegalus 5y ago

I use ImprovMX for inbound forwarding from my domain to whatever email service I use, but they also offer SMTP sending for their paid service. So for $9 a month, I get great forwarding for many domains and users per domain, and I get SMTP service for each domain per user. I highly recommend them. Their support is great too. https://improvmx.com https://improvmx.com

cx42net 5y ago
Thank you so much for your awesome comment :) I'm glad ImprovMX is useful for you!

afiori 5y ago

https://serversmtp.com/ https://serversmtp.com/ It is the only one I have used, it offers both SMTP and a REST API of which I have only used REST, at $COMPANY it was valued as "the cheapest working service to send thousands of email/month from a few email address (the usual noreply@xxx.yy)"

kevincox 5y ago

I recently started a business that is centered around sending mail so I looked through a lot of these. For me the primary concern was price, but I also wanted to ensure that I could DKIM sign without the signature being mangled (I didn't want to trust them to do the signing) and cost (I want to be profitable). I ended up choosing Amazon SES as it is very cheap and simple. It is also nice that they have regional endpoints that are supposedly largely independent. his allowed me to verify my domain in multiple locations so that I can fail between them if there are problems. Other interesting mentions: Oracle Cloud is even cheaper. 0.0008 vs 0.001 per message and no egress charge (IIUC). However you can only verify individual addresses (not a whole domain) and you need to interact with oracle. TurboSMTP is a more "batteries included" solution which may be better for your use case of personal email. It also has a generous free tier which may just cover your use case.