Ask HN: How do you handle email servers?
so, like many of you probably, I have like a bazillion of ideas and emails for every kind of startup-idea I am trying to push out.
I found it (very early on) necessary to have a "corporate" domains for each idea with the domain. At least not a generic gmail.com domain. But its also not feasible to register always with google business (or anything else) for $5/user just for having my own domains. It quickly adds up.
So, I was looking into different alternatives and found the sweet spot for me with a part of sovereign [1] and a cheap scaleway [2] instance.
I was looking into mail-in-a-box, but decided it really isn't for me, because I want to do some customizations on my own - including a few websites I want to let run there.
Still, having the own server means maintenance etc. I wouldn't call myself a great sysadmin either. Mailserver setup was (and still is) one of the biggest questionmarks for me and, while analyzing the sovereign ansible scripts, it really shed some light on it, I still think I just scratched the surface. Especially with spamfilters, virusscanning, greylisting, etc. I think I was able to setup everything correctly, but hey, one little update and I am f*'d, right?!
The question is now: I can't possibly be the only one with that struggle of price/time/difficulty/...
How do you handle that?
[1] https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign [2] https://www.scaleway.com/
I gave up running my own server about 15 years ago. Best decision ever!
I use Fastmail and I add domains whenever I need and it doesn't cost anymore. I assume many other services are similar.
I'm using FastMail with 17 domains, each with different addresses, different catch all addresses etc., and no problems so far.
Either the registrar provides a free forwarding service (e.g. Google Domains), or I have a $5 DO droplet which has a postfix server running that forwards email to a free gmail account. I create a new gmail account for each domain I want an email address with. e.g. for awesome-domain.com, I have a corresponding [email protected]
Outgoing
Depending on how much I care about the domain, I'll either setup gmail's SMTP (which shows it's using Gmail to send on the receiving end). Or I use some like Mailgun or Sendgridwith correct SPF, DKIM, DMARC settings. Usually their monthly free tier is enough to cover my needs for sending emails.
I can dig up my postfix forwarding setting if you really want.
[1] https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html
If its just for you it can be done quite cheaply with a account at fastmail or mailbox.org
I was actually looking into it, but have the same problem as before with Gsuite. Running 10 different domains with two or three people usually then means a fixed expense of $5 x10 x2 = $100/month only for mail. Or do I miss anything? Is that not bothering anyone that it _is_ quite expensive?