My understanding is that the number of such sender aliases is limited, at most 50 or 250, depending on the plan. There are ways to use a custom domain for sending where you end up using a larger number of localparts fairly quickly, and it would be a hassle to have to manage them, instead of just typing whatever sender you want (or on replies, having the email client automatically use the address from the original email, without having to worry whether it’s still in the set of registered aliases).

The limit is only enforced in the web interface. You can send from any alias using any third party email client, and on the website you can configure a catchall mailbox and create a rule to filter out the aliases that receive spam.

When you have a custom domain you can list @mydomain.com as sending domain allowing you every string before the at character. So that means you could use 50 different domains with infinite adresses on these domains.

I also use mailbox.org and use my own domain for email. Not sure what issue the author ran into.

SPF or DKIM maybe?

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47492820

...also migrating AWAY from Fastmail (Australian) and TO an European provider sounds like a very bad idea - I'd kind of want both the US and the EU legally away from my coms at all costs (!)

Is it that different? Being Australia in alliances like "Five Eyes" I don't think you can keep your stuff away from the US at least when using Fastmail.

If you want both US & EU away from your data, I suppose you will have to consider things like Yandex Mail, which comes with its own set of problems too, of course :)

Fastmails servers are in the US IIRC.

While I agree in principle, I have to remind you (and to myself) that Australia is part of the Five Eyes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

The problem is that, even if Fastmail are Australian, they host exclusively in the US. They state that sure, there is the possibility of interference at the data center level, but they rely on their anti-hacking measures to prevent unlawful access

As EU citizen I at least got some influence into EU policy. A government far away doesn't even have to pretend to care about me.

You have influence over policy? Wow. What do you do?

The EU has about 450 million citizens, which of course limits my direct vote. Downside of a democracy (EU is a complicated democracy, but still) is that a majority probably has other priorities than me.

However there are many ways to impact policy makers. From individual contact to impact on the public debate. Even a small post here may lead to people considering their vote or contacting a local or EU parliamentarian, which in sum pushes the needle. In the end they are receptive, as they need the votes by the people.

It's long and tedious and not all things go anywhere, but then again: I am just one in 450 millionand for most of those priority is to have a Job which pays the rent and food and thus I have to break it down to be relevant for them.

The actual answer as to how much you influence policy is: none at all.

The European commission proposes laws. European commissioners are proposed through existing EU institutions. They are not voted in.

You vote for MEPs, who discuss laws, pass them, perhaps amending them. They do not propose them.

And by the way, this is not democracy, it is 'representative democracy' - you vote for one person to represent you and 100,000s of others for all the decisions an MEP makes over their 5 year term. They are not bound in any way to stick to their campaign promises.

Anyway, you might be happy or not about the laws these unelected bodies pass - I'm glad you seem happy about it. You might or might not see Europe as a triumph for its subjects. But there is no need to kid yourself or others that you have any impact over policy.

The European commission are appointed by the Council of the EU which is composed by elected individual member countries' heads of government. Commissioners also need to be individually approved by the European Parliament which is directly elected.

Representative democracy is democracy. Basically all nation level democratic governments are representative democracies.

Being a cynic doesn't make you look clever.

EU has citizens initiatives. Citizens can propose changes to the law and the parliament has to discuss it.

Stop Killing Games movement actually got a foothold.

EU as every healthy democracy has also non-elected experts (just like judiciary side) in its organs who can create law proposals. That's how we got USB-C and GDPR.

I do think you're cynical and wrong if you think you can't influence any political decisions on the EU level.

Have you made any policy changes? Do you know someone who has?

> And by the way, this is not democracy, it is 'representative democracy'

Representative democracy has been part of the definition of democracy (in English) since before the USA existed: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=democracy

(Only in the US have I had to argue about whether representative democracy is a "real" democracy, so I assume you're American)

Fastmail runs exclusively of AWS in the US.

I looked into this, there are lots of people in forums discussing/ asking for EU based servers.

Fastmail does not run on AWS: https://www.fastmail.com/blog/why-we-use-our-own-hardware/

Hmmm this looks like a really nice option! Any issues with deliverability?

I use mailbox for the past few years and I think it's the best option out there. But they have one major issue, which is that anyone can impersonate your domain:

https://userforum-en.mailbox.org/topic/anti-spoofing-for-cus...

Oof, what a drag

I think that is not up to date. Mailbox publishes DKIM records: https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/custom-domains/spf-dkim-an...

SPF is here https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/custom-domains/spf-dkim-an...

DMARC is up to the domain owner to set.

Lack of records isn't the issue. You authorize mailbox's servers to sent on behalf of your domain. Then they let anyone with a mailbox account set the from to your domain.

I see, so their SMTP authentication is woefully broken and they let anybody who can send an e-mail from their SMTP server to put anything in From: ? That's rather hard to believe. The defaults of most SMTP servers like Postfix prevent that. Since I don't want to get banned I don't really want to test that option with their SMTP server.

I took the https://emailspooftest.com/ and while the "spoof" mail gets delivered to mailbox.org's Inbox, my Thunderbird client is all red and it warns me about DKIM and SPF fails.

I think on the sending side, being able to send from others’ addresses is fixed by now: https://userforum-en.mailbox.org/topic/anti-spoofing-for-cus...

But it definitely used to be possible, I tried once with success.

Anti spoofing for incoming mails was not perfect the last time I checked either, but is a different issue.

For incoming mail, your client should check regardless of the server provider. On Thunderbird I have this extension: https://github.com/mcortt/EagleEye . It checks for any SPF, DKIM and DMARC fails and shows a banner. SPF/DKIM/DMARC is minimum and pretty useless against spam though. All phishing e-mails in my GMail account have impeccable SPF/DKIM records.

Works for me as well.

Have been using mailbox.org with a custom domain (including catch-all wildcard) for the last 5 years or so, so it's definitely possible and as far I remember quite straightforward.

Yea been using mailbox.org for couple months and i can send from any address of my own domain...this is bad article. He probably doesn't know how to.

Can confirm, I use mailbox.org with my own domain and can send from any *@mydomain

I wish they had retained one awesome Thunderbird desktop feature on mobile as well - being able to set the "from" address on the go while composing the email, without having to add an identity/sender-mail in advance. Alas, it seems that hasn't been the case.

I don’t understand why this feature isn‘t more widespread, do people not use subaddressing?

I know it is late, but for anyone reading this now, as I am:

Mailbox.org is completely ignoring DMARC since months... And their handling of the issue IMHO is incompetent at best.

See this thread (in German) https://userforum.mailbox.org/topic/10676-mailbox-org-akzept...

That's just inexcusably bad. They claimed to be working on the issue 7 months ago, but that was obviously a straight up lie.