Interesting that self-hosting isn't on his list. It hits every one of his checkboxes and only costs you an old Linux server collecting dust at home (or at most, a $5/mo VPS), which you can also use to host other things.
It's never been easier to self-host, but it feels like, in general, when faced with "I want to do X with a computer," people are more and more reaching for paid, hosted services rather than DIY anymore.
I've tried this approach, but I found that most email providers aggressively filter out all incoming messages that don't come from validated sources. No matter what I tried deliverability of emails remained very spotty. I did configure DKIM, DMARC, SPIF, etc as suggested. But minimal improvements. Eventually ended up going with AWS SES.
I haven't spent any real amount of time looking into this, but from the basic research I did perform, I found that well-written guides that aren't grossly out of date are hard to find.
Also, my understanding is that Google, Outlook and other major email services have been implementing as many roadblocks for self-hosted setups as possible to the point where it's a constant battle and difficult to keep up with.
I’ve actually tried before to self host on my VPS as well as my homelab that I use for various services. I honestly just didn’t trust the stability of my own services enough for something as important as email. As a project I definitely want to try again in the future.
It depends a lot on whether you need the account for reading email, sending email to your own accounts, or sending email to other people. The first two are very easy to self-host.
But agreed that mass-mailing (even account registration style emails) seems a lot less reliable because of those spam filters.
it's only "difficult" because google, microsoft, etc have conivenced the community that self-hosting e-mail is not possible and for some reason, further propetuated by IT influencers that have drank that koolaid.
all complete bullshit; they arbitrraly occasionally block to protect their moat raping privacy. e-mail is the most rewarding self-hosting capability. like anything, there is a learning curve but at the end of the day: it's easy, stable, a pleasure to host. there are solutions that ease the learning curve. after a while, all the e-mail do make it through.
i'm so happy that my communications are not indexed by these hyperscalers.
stop listening to these pussies claiming how difficult it is. they're projecting their limitations.
Isnt email blacklisting/actually getting mails to inbox infamously hard? I otherwise think the rest of the stack is indeed solved, but its probably cheaper to pay Amazon SES or whatever for getting your emails to an inbox reliably
Email receivers (be it Gmail or your local council) don't differentiate if you're self hosting or a business. So long as small businesses can manage (who have like one part-time sysadmin that also manages a ton of other IT stuff; email doesn't take much of their time), so can you. If you set up the usual suspects like SPF and DMARC, the domain is not a known spammer, and the IP not in a blocked address range, it's mostly hands-off (source: I self host my email)
Hi Jacob, Ado here, from FounderMail. I'm really glad you ended up on-boarding with us, and I wanted to reach out to thank you for the review and feedback.
The manual approve to outbound sending helped a lot to keep spammers out of the platform.
We ensure that domain exists and you're the owner, the website is legit, etc, making impossible for a bot to operate throughout our channel.
And is working, almost 4 weeks in, no complaints, less than 0.1 bounce rate.
You know, having an high reputation is vital to ensure the emails we send on behalf of our customers are reaching the inbox not the spam folder.
Said that, you continue to be right: it's annoying. We're working to reduce the pain autoapproving it for cases like your.
Thank you again (I hope you'll never find a reason to leave us! :)
I went to your site to check this out, and I found the bright orange from the first slide was killing my eyes, and my coworkers. The other landing page slides were great, the first one made me want to leave.
Overall looks like a great tool that I'll look into for my next projects.
Thank you for creating such a great service! It’s always great using a product and getting to thank the developer directly. Your platform seems perfect so far and it was extremely quick to get approved for outbound sending (definitely less than 12 hours). Seems to be working perfectly so far, and I don’t think i’ll be switching anytime soon.
Building a website with Claude is literally "a bot operating on their channels". Whether these are morally equivalent is an unrelated axis - it's the literal claim that's being disputed
I use Migadu(migadu.com), but Apple's iCloud email hosting is basically tailor fit to your expectations, so I don't have any idea why you don't use it.
But you can host your own email too. It's not the easiest option, but it can be done, and there has been some newer email server software written that tries to make it easier.
Protonmail doesn't have unlimited addresses for sending, which is one of his requirements. It has catch-all , which means you can receive from an arbitary number, so it's okay for one -email-per-vendor, but if you ever need to send via one of those addresses then you have to use up one of your 10 or 20 allowed addresses.
This is because like most other vendors, they do price discrimination based on number of users. Which is no doubt why the other large vendors were also ruled out.
One vendor who doesn't do this is Migadu. I don't use them as they lack 2FA support, but they are one of a small number of businesses who make their proposition easy to evaluate quickly, as opposed to making you swipe through a pitch before you get to the facts. This is so unusual that I remember them despite evaluating them multiple years ago.
The shared hosting package that I bought with my domain 20 years ago from a local hosting company comes with all of these, it cost I think €12/year originally. They got acquired some time ago by a large hosting company who charges more than €120/year for the same package. Then I switched to another local mail provider who charge €40/year (but with more storage). Aren't there many such providers?
There are, but I've seen several of those price increases in a row so you may be moving a lot. And mail deliverability to Outlook and Gmail from those hosts isn't always great.
With Google sunsetting support for custom domain in Gmail (scheduled for Jan 2027) I am looking for solutions to sending email from custom domains. Amazon SES works well and is cheap for SMTP.
I want to continue to use Gmail for email storage--mainly because of the awesome search function, but also for longevity--while using a third-party app for pulling specific emails from Gmail and replying to them through my custom domain(s).
The solutions mentioned in this blog aren't that--they have their own storage.
Ditto. The cheapest iCloud subscription includes everything necessary. My partner and I both have emails through our respective personal domains, all on the same sub – I think the limit is 3 custom domains.
Resend just kept getting stuck in spam folders for me when sending, maybe I set something up wrong. On their documentation it just says you have to pay for the extremely expensive certificate needed for gmail to trust your messages.
I just dealt with this due to the impending termination of .name email. I use a combination of gmail as my mail agent, CloudFlare for the domain, and SMTP2Go for low volume outbound with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. I don't have any Apple usage or requirements.
Oh, I just remembered that I send mail received by my CloudFlare domain to both gmail and zohomail, and use Thunderbird as the mail agent for the latter.
I've got my domain at namecheap, and they just forward all mail to two different pre-existing mailboxes. I configure my mailreader to use my address at my own domain when sending mail, and that works perfectly fine. Sure, headers may show them going through different mail servers, but nobody ever looks at that anymore.
Protonmail has worked great for me. Never had any issues and I like the inclusion of docs + sheets (even though their apps are ridiculously slow to load)
> There was one annoying limitation. I had to submit a special request before I could send emails to new addresses that had not previously messaged me.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but this sounds absolutely wild. What?
The founder of foundermail actually left a comment here talking about this. I will likely update the article that it took less than 7 hours to be approved.
MXRoute's lifetime plans (which they usually offer around black Friday) are a great option if you can get one. I paid $99 for mine five years ago. The service has only improved since then.
Unpopular opinion, but I've used Google Workspace for years and I really like having my email via gmail. SSO and spam filtering and Google Docs. I thought about switching to Amazon Workmail but the price I pay for Workspace is worth it.
> Unpopular opinion, but I've used Google Workspace for years ...
Not that unpopular. I've used it since way before it was called "Google Workspace" and it Just Works [TM]. Also once you pay for it, suddenly they pick up the phone if you ever need support.
A shitload of SMEs are using Google Workspace to get their own domain and all the Google suite.
I know it's cool to hate on Google on HN but for my part I'll forever be hating on Microsoft and Meta. I tolerate Google.
Interesting that self-hosting isn't on his list. It hits every one of his checkboxes and only costs you an old Linux server collecting dust at home (or at most, a $5/mo VPS), which you can also use to host other things.
It's never been easier to self-host, but it feels like, in general, when faced with "I want to do X with a computer," people are more and more reaching for paid, hosted services rather than DIY anymore.
I've tried this approach, but I found that most email providers aggressively filter out all incoming messages that don't come from validated sources. No matter what I tried deliverability of emails remained very spotty. I did configure DKIM, DMARC, SPIF, etc as suggested. But minimal improvements. Eventually ended up going with AWS SES.
I haven't spent any real amount of time looking into this, but from the basic research I did perform, I found that well-written guides that aren't grossly out of date are hard to find.
Also, my understanding is that Google, Outlook and other major email services have been implementing as many roadblocks for self-hosted setups as possible to the point where it's a constant battle and difficult to keep up with.
I’ve actually tried before to self host on my VPS as well as my homelab that I use for various services. I honestly just didn’t trust the stability of my own services enough for something as important as email. As a project I definitely want to try again in the future.
The problem with self hosting is getting through google, microsoft, etc spam filters.
It depends a lot on whether you need the account for reading email, sending email to your own accounts, or sending email to other people. The first two are very easy to self-host.
But agreed that mass-mailing (even account registration style emails) seems a lot less reliable because of those spam filters.
it's only "difficult" because google, microsoft, etc have conivenced the community that self-hosting e-mail is not possible and for some reason, further propetuated by IT influencers that have drank that koolaid.
all complete bullshit; they arbitrraly occasionally block to protect their moat raping privacy. e-mail is the most rewarding self-hosting capability. like anything, there is a learning curve but at the end of the day: it's easy, stable, a pleasure to host. there are solutions that ease the learning curve. after a while, all the e-mail do make it through.
i'm so happy that my communications are not indexed by these hyperscalers.
stop listening to these pussies claiming how difficult it is. they're projecting their limitations.
Isnt email blacklisting/actually getting mails to inbox infamously hard? I otherwise think the rest of the stack is indeed solved, but its probably cheaper to pay Amazon SES or whatever for getting your emails to an inbox reliably
Everyone has the same problem. For example, Apple recently blocked a service that notifies you of parliamentary documents (source in Dutch: https://chaos.social/@tkdocs@mastodon.nl/117370967171338864)
Email receivers (be it Gmail or your local council) don't differentiate if you're self hosting or a business. So long as small businesses can manage (who have like one part-time sysadmin that also manages a ton of other IT stuff; email doesn't take much of their time), so can you. If you set up the usual suspects like SPF and DMARC, the domain is not a known spammer, and the IP not in a blocked address range, it's mostly hands-off (source: I self host my email)
Hi Jacob, Ado here, from FounderMail. I'm really glad you ended up on-boarding with us, and I wanted to reach out to thank you for the review and feedback.
The manual approve to outbound sending helped a lot to keep spammers out of the platform.
We ensure that domain exists and you're the owner, the website is legit, etc, making impossible for a bot to operate throughout our channel.
And is working, almost 4 weeks in, no complaints, less than 0.1 bounce rate.
You know, having an high reputation is vital to ensure the emails we send on behalf of our customers are reaching the inbox not the spam folder.
Said that, you continue to be right: it's annoying. We're working to reduce the pain autoapproving it for cases like your.
Thank you again (I hope you'll never find a reason to leave us! :)
I went to your site to check this out, and I found the bright orange from the first slide was killing my eyes, and my coworkers. The other landing page slides were great, the first one made me want to leave.
Overall looks like a great tool that I'll look into for my next projects.
Thank you for creating such a great service! It’s always great using a product and getting to thank the developer directly. Your platform seems perfect so far and it was extremely quick to get approved for outbound sending (definitely less than 12 hours). Seems to be working perfectly so far, and I don’t think i’ll be switching anytime soon.
Is it actually free to use? i cant find the pricing page
> making impossible for a bot to operate throughout our channel.
Somewhat ironic, given your entire website is AI generated.
Seems you're... conflating the concepts of spamming people with using a language model to generate code
You're saying that building their own website using AI is equivalent to sending spam emails?
Building a website with Claude is literally "a bot operating on their channels". Whether these are morally equivalent is an unrelated axis - it's the literal claim that's being disputed
I use Migadu(migadu.com), but Apple's iCloud email hosting is basically tailor fit to your expectations, so I don't have any idea why you don't use it.
But you can host your own email too. It's not the easiest option, but it can be done, and there has been some newer email server software written that tries to make it easier.
Feels weird to ignore the largest players, e.g. Fastmail or Protonmail
Protonmail doesn't have unlimited addresses for sending, which is one of his requirements. It has catch-all , which means you can receive from an arbitary number, so it's okay for one -email-per-vendor, but if you ever need to send via one of those addresses then you have to use up one of your 10 or 20 allowed addresses.
This is because like most other vendors, they do price discrimination based on number of users. Which is no doubt why the other large vendors were also ruled out.
One vendor who doesn't do this is Migadu. I don't use them as they lack 2FA support, but they are one of a small number of businesses who make their proposition easy to evaluate quickly, as opposed to making you swipe through a pitch before you get to the facts. This is so unusual that I remember them despite evaluating them multiple years ago.
Or iCloud+. He specifically asked for Apple Mail integration ffs
I use the iCloud custom domain for my personal email and I can confidently say it's worth the cost.
I am definitely engrossed in the Apple Ecosystem™ though so I can't speak to how it would fit any other setup that isn't almost entirely Apple-based.
The shared hosting package that I bought with my domain 20 years ago from a local hosting company comes with all of these, it cost I think €12/year originally. They got acquired some time ago by a large hosting company who charges more than €120/year for the same package. Then I switched to another local mail provider who charge €40/year (but with more storage). Aren't there many such providers?
There are, but I've seen several of those price increases in a row so you may be moving a lot. And mail deliverability to Outlook and Gmail from those hosts isn't always great.
With Google sunsetting support for custom domain in Gmail (scheduled for Jan 2027) I am looking for solutions to sending email from custom domains. Amazon SES works well and is cheap for SMTP.
I want to continue to use Gmail for email storage--mainly because of the awesome search function, but also for longevity--while using a third-party app for pulling specific emails from Gmail and replying to them through my custom domain(s).
The solutions mentioned in this blog aren't that--they have their own storage.
I can recommend Fastmail. Reasonably priced, modern tech & features, good service. Never had any issues.
“Integration with Apple Mail” shy not just use iCloud with a custom domain?
AFAIK it doesn’t allow you to have a direct IMAP/SMTP login for your own domain.
iCloud Mail silently filters emails (more info in my comment linked). The sender isn’t told, receiver can’t ever see the message.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958660
Why not using iCloud custom domains? Is the simplest option if you want apple mail compatibility
Ditto. The cheapest iCloud subscription includes everything necessary. My partner and I both have emails through our respective personal domains, all on the same sub – I think the limit is 3 custom domains.
iCloud Mail will silently filter emails with certain words (including in attachments).
You aren’t told something has been filtered and it doesn’t go to spam. It’s just deleted with zero recourse. The sender isn’t notified either.
https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/icloud-mail-what-to-do-when...
I had this happen as recently as June 2026 when my current provider was up. It happens on @mac.com @me.com @icloud.com and custom domains.
I second this recommendation. My custom domain emails work wonderfully through Apple iCloud account.
I’d suggest cloudflare + resend + https://workspace.google.com/essentials/ (which is $0) + forwarding and alias to personal google account for gmail ui.
Big benefit of this combination is that you get "login with google", docs, drive, hangouts
Resend just kept getting stuck in spam folders for me when sending, maybe I set something up wrong. On their documentation it just says you have to pay for the extremely expensive certificate needed for gmail to trust your messages.
Possibly the only free soltuion: setup email forwarding in gmail using https://improvmx.com/about/.
Can even send email, although recipient sees that it has been forwarded.
I use StartMail [1], which I believe ticks all of OP's boxes (I had similar boxes).
[1] https://www.startmail.com/
I just dealt with this due to the impending termination of .name email. I use a combination of gmail as my mail agent, CloudFlare for the domain, and SMTP2Go for low volume outbound with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. I don't have any Apple usage or requirements.
Oh, I just remembered that I send mail received by my CloudFlare domain to both gmail and zohomail, and use Thunderbird as the mail agent for the latter.
I've got my domain at namecheap, and they just forward all mail to two different pre-existing mailboxes. I configure my mailreader to use my address at my own domain when sending mail, and that works perfectly fine. Sure, headers may show them going through different mail servers, but nobody ever looks at that anymore.
Protonmail has worked great for me. Never had any issues and I like the inclusion of docs + sheets (even though their apps are ridiculously slow to load)
Unless something had changed recently, they don't let you use third party email clients.
> There was one annoying limitation. I had to submit a special request before I could send emails to new addresses that had not previously messaged me.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but this sounds absolutely wild. What?
The founder of foundermail actually left a comment here talking about this. I will likely update the article that it took less than 7 hours to be approved.
I use zoho mail, works well.
[dead]
I added my custom domain to my provider email. Yes, those still exist in places
MXRoute's lifetime plans (which they usually offer around black Friday) are a great option if you can get one. I paid $99 for mine five years ago. The service has only improved since then.
iCloud+ mail was definitely a better choice. I'll send my feedback through email.
I've been very happy with MXRoute
I like Fastmail a lot
I can recommend Lark. Free tier does everything.
Unpopular opinion, but I've used Google Workspace for years and I really like having my email via gmail. SSO and spam filtering and Google Docs. I thought about switching to Amazon Workmail but the price I pay for Workspace is worth it.
> Unpopular opinion, but I've used Google Workspace for years ...
Not that unpopular. I've used it since way before it was called "Google Workspace" and it Just Works [TM]. Also once you pay for it, suddenly they pick up the phone if you ever need support.
A shitload of SMEs are using Google Workspace to get their own domain and all the Google suite.
I know it's cool to hate on Google on HN but for my part I'll forever be hating on Microsoft and Meta. I tolerate Google.
[dead]