5 ms·

Fastmail costs $40/yr. You can get a half-decent VPS for that with a few bucks to spare on Tarsnap.

OSWJimlo 12y ago
Unfortunately, there are other costs associated with running than just "a half-decent vps"... IN addition your vps probably has to be better than you expect. For example, ramnode ($20/year) does not give near enough ram to run anti-spam (e.g. amavisd or just clamav solo). You need on the order of a gig of ram. You won't get that for less than $5/mo or $50/year. You also must buy an ssl cert or else many other email providers will mark your email spam score up. You also must go through the operational burdon of setting things up and managing backups, restores, etc. This is perhaps 30 hours / year, which means you're already well over the cost of $40/yr. One thing to note is that for more than a few accounts (bring your own address, catchall, many aliases) you're unlikely to find something that costs as little as $40/year and the cost of running that yourself is identical, so that's where you can start to make money. I've gone down the route of using hosted and hosting my own mail and feel like I have a good understanding of the costs. Your flippant remark, completely disregarding even the system requirements, shows that you have not. Good day sir.
gojomo 12y ago
Just curious, what's the "half-decent VPS" you're thinking of for ~$3/month?
- hackmiester 12y ago
  I'm not spindritf, but I am thinking of BuyVM: http://buyvm.net/ http://buyvm.net/
  - spindritf 12y ago
    You will probably need to go a little lower on the price than BuyVM to squeeze SpamAssasin in.
  - glomph 12y ago
    They do not have fantastic uptime.
- spindritf 12y ago
  Whatever you can find at the time on http://lowendbox.com/ http://lowendbox.com/ http://lowendstock.com/ http://lowendstock.com/ http://www.lowendtalk.com/ http://www.lowendtalk.com/ or lowendwhatever from a provider that wasn't started yesterday and has decent reviews. A couple of weeks ago there was a dedicated server offer from online.net floating around for €1.99/mo http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/33122/1-99-%C2%A0dedicated-server http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/33122/1-99-%C2%A0dedicated-...
  - csmattryder 12y ago
    Definitely a +1 for LowEndSpirit, I've got two boxes with them, one for a blog and another working as a VPN to the US. They only provide IPv6 though, but it's trivial to set-up forwarding using Cloudflare's v6 to v4 proxy service.
- lvillani 12y ago
  I have deployed Sovereign (https://github.com/al3x/sovereign https://github.com/al3x/sovereign) on a VPS at OVH. It costs me about 2.5 EUR a month and I also use it for purposes other than email.
  - corv 12y ago
    As a current user of Mailinabox I would recommend Sovereign instead of Mailinabox for the HN crowd. Mailinabox is extremely frustrating to customize - in fact Josh strictly advises against it.
- fredsted 12y ago
  Ramnode has been treating me extremely well considering the price. Their plans are a steal

Unfortunately, there are other costs associated with running than just "a half-decent vps"... IN addition your vps probably has to be better than you expect. For example, ramnode ($20/year) does not give near enough ram to run anti-spam (e.g. amavisd or just clamav solo). You need on the order of a gig of ram. You won't get that for less than $5/mo or $50/year. You also must buy an ssl cert or else many other email providers will mark your email spam score up. You also must go through the operational burdon of setting things up and managing backups, restores, etc. This is perhaps 30 hours / year, which means you're already well over the cost of $40/yr. One thing to note is that for more than a few accounts (bring your own address, catchall, many aliases) you're unlikely to find something that costs as little as $40/year and the cost of running that yourself is identical, so that's where you can start to make money. I've gone down the route of using hosted and hosting my own mail and feel like I have a good understanding of the costs. Your flippant remark, completely disregarding even the system requirements, shows that you have not. Good day sir.

gojomo 12y ago

Just curious, what's the "half-decent VPS" you're thinking of for ~$3/month?

hackmiester 12y ago
I'm not spindritf, but I am thinking of BuyVM: http://buyvm.net/ http://buyvm.net/
- spindritf 12y ago
  You will probably need to go a little lower on the price than BuyVM to squeeze SpamAssasin in.
- glomph 12y ago
  They do not have fantastic uptime.
spindritf 12y ago
Whatever you can find at the time on http://lowendbox.com/ http://lowendbox.com/ http://lowendstock.com/ http://lowendstock.com/ http://www.lowendtalk.com/ http://www.lowendtalk.com/ or lowendwhatever from a provider that wasn't started yesterday and has decent reviews. A couple of weeks ago there was a dedicated server offer from online.net floating around for €1.99/mo http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/33122/1-99-%C2%A0dedicated-server http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/33122/1-99-%C2%A0dedicated-...
- csmattryder 12y ago
  Definitely a +1 for LowEndSpirit, I've got two boxes with them, one for a blog and another working as a VPN to the US. They only provide IPv6 though, but it's trivial to set-up forwarding using Cloudflare's v6 to v4 proxy service.
lvillani 12y ago
I have deployed Sovereign (https://github.com/al3x/sovereign https://github.com/al3x/sovereign) on a VPS at OVH. It costs me about 2.5 EUR a month and I also use it for purposes other than email.
- corv 12y ago
  As a current user of Mailinabox I would recommend Sovereign instead of Mailinabox for the HN crowd. Mailinabox is extremely frustrating to customize - in fact Josh strictly advises against it.
fredsted 12y ago
Ramnode has been treating me extremely well considering the price. Their plans are a steal