So I own the domains, I can register them for 10 years at a time with ICANN, with that I can switch providers at will. Most of the reputable domain registrars have been around for the past 20 years and offer free basic DNS hosting... All I need is a MX record.

Next step is buying IP space, that's a lot more expensive with the yearly AS fees, I'm not sure I can afford that, and ARIN/RIPE seem just as bad as the [PS]aaS cartel where if you don't pay up your IP space gets re-sold.

Posted this on a few comments because I find them really helpful: https://improvmx.com/

Thanks for the link @collin128! I'm the founder of ImprovMX, happy to answer any questions!

Hi "cx". If you skim this page you'll notice the predominant personas and their own-domain email use-cases. Something like: 1 domain, 10 aliases, ability to send/receive messages. So, why don't you create a "Google Workspace Rescue" plan at $1/$2 per month? I'm a potential customer myself, and it seems to me that the free plan lacks functionality and the Premium is too resourceful (at a $9 tag). Just adding my 2 cents.

Thank you for the suggestion. We had had this requests since the beginning, but the issue is that at $1/$2 per month, one chargeback cost us 7 to 15 customers at these plans to support just the implicated costs. That's why we never got lower than 9$.

Granted, we don't have chargebacks everyday, but we get some occasionals one that, at these price, would hurt way more.

Now, we still offer an alternative plan that is available only upon request (or on certain occasions). We call it the "Lite plan" at 30$ per year, where you have all the advantages of the premium plan, but without the SMTP sending part. If that interests you, just send a request to the support and we'll enable it for your account :=)

Maybe you can charge annually for this, so it's more than $9. I don't mind if PayPal costs as much for chargebacks.

Big fans of yours. Thanks for making an awesome tool.

Thank you! I really appreciate it! :)

Just to answer one of my own questions. I am tossing up between ProtonMail and Runbox. Both have custom domains for the first paid level tier and I'll get better security to boot. Both take BTC so it comes from my trading account and not the family funds. :) DNS I'll probably look at when Larry from Oracle kicks the last of the VIPS off dyndns. Looking at hosting on a container in my DMZ. Something I have not done for 20 years. djdns anyone?

I used Runbox for very many years and loved it. I cannot even remember why I migrated off; I was probably naively seduced by the launch of GMail (it was a long while ago) and getting similar stuff for free (I was an idiot).

Every couple of years I get a new trial account with them as I liked it so much, and each time I think 'nothing has really changed'. I read their dev blog and it's interesting, and their staff were great each time, but it just seems to take forever for anything to get done.

It may have been finished now, but the last time I tried them (only maybe a year or two ago) I was put off by wanting to move my calendar entries over and finding out that the new(ish) CalDav support they'd added had no web interface to it.

I get that the basics don't really change (and they are good at it); I just get irritated at the lack of pace. Otherwise I'd definitely consider returning to them.

I switched from Dyn to Namecheap (who is the registrar for my family domain) for their free DNS service. No issues but we really only use it for e-mail.

I have some domains with Namecheap but I didn't know they would host DNS for me. Thanks I'll look into this.

Check out https://improvmx.com/

Thanks. The free tier looks good. The only issue I have is I use a different alias for every account so I think I'd run out with only 25.

By default it sets up a wild card local-part so any and all email sent to your domain will be forwarded. So you don't have to predefine aliases for every online account/service that use.

What the 25 aliases allotted in the free tier allows you to do is have 25 different domains.

Hi! I'm ImprovMX's founder. You are correct that you'd reach the limit of 5 free alias in your case. Upgrading to the monthly plan at 9$ would allow you to have up to 100 aliases.

Happy to answer any questions that you might need!

TLS please?

What about TLS? We support it on both standard SMTP connections and for sending emails.

https://imgur.com/a/8CtFSgv doesn't look like it :)

That got me thinking. I tested again on CheckTLS.com and if you use the port 465 and direct TLS, everything is fine. If you use port 587 and use STARTTLS, it's all good too.

Our decision was to not use STARTTLS for port 25, but that's maybe not a good idea and we should allow it back: this would make both services happier ;)

In a nutshell: TLS via 465 works correctly, and STARTTLS via 587 too.

Don't hesitate if you want to weight on this, happy to discuss this further!

Thanks for deciding to support STARTTLS on port 25 as well, and for updating your certificates!

You are welcome. Seeing that MXToolbox was testing STARTTLS on port 25, and a few other indicators made us decide to enable it :)

Good but no TLS. I don't know how I feel about this...

I've been using AWS Route53 DNS for my domain for many years, very cheap and easy to automate a DDNS setup if desired (e.g. https://crazymax.dev/ddns-route53/)

I have been using NoIP for my simple home setup. It’s free but requires a monthly acknowledgment, but it’s relatively quick and easy.