Recommended email providers?

I'm setting up my Nextcloud server and am at the point of needing to connect an email server. I'm not interested in selfhosting an email server (not yet anyway), and I don't particularly like Proton as my current email provider (which was what I migrated to when de-Googling my life).

What email providers do y'all like that aren't run by shady tech bros and are easy to integrate with your other selfhosted services?

70 points · 60 comments · view on lemmy.world

60 Comments

anticonnor@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 241d

I want to thank everyone who replied. I did some research on most of these and think PurelyMail is the winner for me. Feel free to correct me if I got some details wrong. I want to give a shoutout to @mbirth for mentioning Disroot, which looks like a really interesting experiment in federated services.

Also, I know this post is really bending the rules for c/selfhosted, but connecting your selfhosted services to an email provider is essential, and having a reliable and affordable email provider just makes this weird hobby of ours a little easier.

My Rating (1-5) Service Website Annual Cost Only Email?
5 PurelyMail https://purelymail.com/ $10, pay for added storage Yes
4 MXRoute https://mxroute.com/ $50/year small plan Yes
4 Disroot https://disroot.org/ Free, pay to add storage and domains Yes, separated from other Disroot services
3 Fastmail https://www.fastmail.com/ $60 individual plan Yes-ish
3 Mailo https://www.mailo.com/ ~$14 premium plan No
3 Proton https://mail.proton.me/ $48/year plus plan $120/year unlimited plan No
2 Mailbox.org https://mailbox.org/ ~$14 light plan ~$42 standard Light plan
2 Migadu https://migadu.com/ $90 mini plan Yes
1 GMX https://www.gmx.com/mail/ Free, ad supported No
maj@piefed.social · 21 pts · 242d (1 reply)

Have a look at posteo. Gives you IMAP so you can use any client. Its only €1 a month and is supposed to be good with privacy. Have had no complaints so far. https://posteo.de/en

JASN_DE@feddit.org · 3 pts · 241d

Seconded. Works really well for me.

nbailey@lemmy.ca · 20 pts · 242d (5 replies)

Fastmail. It’s been around forever and it just works. And they don’t do anything weird with SMTP/IMAP.

mailbox dot org is also pretty good, but I wasn’t a fan of their 2FA implementation.

conrad82@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 242d (1 reply)

When did you try mailbox.org last? they improved 2FA this year. It is now TOTP + possibility to make application passwords. Finally works great!

https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/security-and-privacy/how-to-use-two-factor-authentication-2fa/

nbailey@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 242d

Ah very nice, good to hear they addressed that. It was the only real deciding factor last time I moved my mail around ~2 yrs ago

418_im_a_teapot@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 241d

Plus, if you are a 1Password user, it integrates to give you randomly generated email addresses.

https://1password.com/fastmail/

https://www.fastmail.com/features/masked-email/

fizzle@quokk.au · 3 pts · 241d

Fastmail is probably the best, but their pricing is egregious.

I was with them for a decade or so but with a large archive of emails and multiple users i couldn't justify the cost.

victorz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 242d
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irmadlad@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 242d

I been using mailo.com for years now. It's a small EU business that's been in business for 20 years iirc. Never had an issue. Other than that, I predominately use aliases that forward to my main email address.

DigDoug@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 242d (5 replies)

Check out PurelyMail

irmadlad@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 242d

Is this for me? Do you want email? Then yes, probably.

Well, you really can't argue with that logic. LOL

anticonnor@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 242d (1 reply)

I'm liking what I'm seeing here! Most other services try to be like Google, where you can't get a mail account without also paying for drive, calendar, office, etc. All I want here is an email service, and this looks good and cheap for that.

hoppolito@mander.xyz · 6 pts · 242d

It’s good but it’s also been bought out by, at least to me, an ‘unknown’ early this year. Since then, there’s been a couple outages though nothing too drastic. New owner also promised to only make changes that are ‘thoughtful and focused on making your experience better’ but I am still cautiously eyeing other options since then - I’ve learned never to trust those words by new owners.

northernlights@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 242d

Seconded, been using them for years. It's just... mail. No weird stuff.

airikr@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 241d

Based in USA and using AWS? Hard pass. Even Stripe is bad enough, but I do understand that one.

confuser@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 242d (1 reply)

Nobody mentioning fastmail, sad times.

Brunette6256@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 242d

I love fastmail! Great price for what you get!!

hanrahan@slrpnk.net · 9 pts · 242d (2 replies)

Tuta ?

merde@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 242d (1 reply)

tuta isn't "easy to integrate" :(

sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 241d

I regret going all in on Tuta :(

nieminen@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 242d

Purelymail is nice. Stupid cheap and really easy.

chris@discuss.tchncs.de · 7 pts · 242d

Mailbox.org

exu@feditown.com · 7 pts · 242d (1 reply)

I use Migadu, it's probably the closest you can come to fully managing email while not hosting your own server. All their plans are limited on inbound/outbound mails per day and storage used. Beyond that you add as many domains as you want (within reason on their cheapest plan) and create any number of separate mailboxes/users.

myrmidex@belgae.social · 3 pts · 242d

I second migadu. I've been with them for about a year, no problems so far, works nice with thunderbird and K9-mail.

TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub · 6 pts · 242d (6 replies)

I can highly recommend MXroute. Just works. Great for integrations.

KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 242d (1 reply)

Came here to say this. They even have decently priced “lifetime” accounts. Though that price raises by a reasonable amount every year or so.

TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 241d

Love the lifetime deal. 10GB across any number of accounts. That's what I've got.

epyon22@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 242d (1 reply)

I have plenty of server storage. Can mx route be used almost like a mail proxy? Mail stored locally and mx route used for just receiving and sending? Needs to be spouse friendly as well. Or if anyone else can recommend something else that fits that bill more.

TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 242d

I only use it for automations (both send and receive); I'm on Proton for regular mail. They've got a few different web interfaces, so I think you can get spouse approval. Not sure on local storage (outside of POP/IMAP).

fizzle@quokk.au · 1 pts · 241d (1 reply)

Sorry what integrations?

TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 241d

Apps that need to send emails or receive emails.

TechnoCat@piefed.social · 6 pts · 242d (4 replies)

I've enjoyed ProtonMail quite a bit the last year.

goatinspace@feddit.org · 7 pts · 242d (3 replies)

They are becoming like gmail

TechnoCat@piefed.social · 3 pts · 242d

Ah shoot. Didn't realize this was the self-hosted community. My bad.

Nighed@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 241d (1 reply)

In what way?

goatinspace@feddit.org · 2 pts · 241d

Centralised server, services. Logging IPs. Partially open source. Not all apps on F-droid

sznowicki@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 242d (5 replies)

Mailo.com. French company. They have quite a quirky UI. like one can tell it's made by a backend guy and the junior version is made by his younger nephew but technical wise it's perfect. All standards are there plus price is OK.

tuxec@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 235d (4 replies)

French government is trying to crack down on encrypted services. https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1993035936800584103 I'm avoiding anything from France for now.

BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 233d

GrapheneOS also has an official Bluesky account. Here's a link to the same post except you don't need to visit that nazi-bar website and don't need to login: https://bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/post/3m6fm6vseik27

sznowicki@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 235d (2 replies)

Email is not encrypted.

tuxec@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 235d (1 reply)

True. Maybe it was not the best phrasing. It may apply to some email providers (eg. Proton) if email communication happens only between recipients of the same provider, which is rarely the case.

I mentioned this to highlight that if this pressure is put on legitimate secure services like GrapheneOS, then you can imagine that your email data is scrutinized without your knowledge.

sznowicki@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 235d

At this point if I have to choose between French government looking at my email and yellow man minions I go with French.

northernlights@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 242d (2 replies)

I've using purelymail.com for a few years with my own domain, never had one problem, and they're cheap.

bmcgonag@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 242d

Purelynail has been awesome.

victorz@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 242d

That's the most lucrative desk I've seen I think.

Engywuck@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 242d (4 replies)

Mxroute for me. Or Zoho.

fizzle@quokk.au · 2 pts · 241d (1 reply)

My small team using mxroute for a few years now.

Its fine. Its cheap. Support is very responsive.

Engywuck@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 241d

It's great... And having Jar reply to your question/doubts in Discord almst in real time is a big plus.

rageagainstmachines@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 241d (1 reply)

I have had delivery issues with Zoho in the past. Just me?

Engywuck@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 241d

I didn't experience that (or I just didn't notice it).

BonkTheAnnoyed@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 241d

Runbox (Norway) is a good option, good privacy protection and outside of EU chat control zone

cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 242d

I use inleed.xyz. It's free, has IMAP/SMTP access and you can have as many accounts as you want. It's limited to 1GB of storage shared between all accounts though.

mbirth@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 242d

I've got a so-called "Asteroid" with UberSpace. You just have to bring your own domain and configure DNS to use their servers. Unlimited mailboxes, unlimited aliases, Sieve scripts ... and SSH access.

Apart from that, I've got a free account with disroot for emergencies.

vas@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 242d

disroot is quite decent. I like their (privacy) vibe and the set of semi-independent services they provide.

d00phy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 242d

Careful, I had a post like this locked almost a month ago.

FWIW, I went with purelymail, and it’s been pretty good. Basic, but solid.

sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 241d

Gmx for automatic emails to myself since the Calibre days. Maybe there is something better now.

sbeak@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 239d (1 reply)

Disroot (Netherlands) is pretty good, that's one that I have used before, and I've also heard that Fastmail (Australia) and mailbox.org (Germany) are good paid options but have never tried either.

sbeak@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 239d

Of note, PurelyMail sounds pretty good, I might have to check that one out. Looks like it's based in the U.S. though, so that could be a problem for some.

fdnomad@programming.dev · 2 pts · 241d

I've been happy with Fastmail and its web & android clients so far but I havent tried to integrate it anywhere yet.

The_TKS@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 241d

Thexyz https://www.thexyz.com/email/ Based in Toronto