I in general like to self host, but more importantly I don't want to be locked in.
I pay zoho £10 a year to host my email. I could do it via my ISP, I have a good one which doesn't have port blocks, offers as many IPs as I can imagine I need, and is shibboleet compatible, but even setting aside my own time and maintenance, I'd want two MX entries that were geographically resilient, so I'd need to rope in a friend or family member. For £10 a year it's not worth it.
However if zoho stops working, or bumps their price up, I can shift my domains to someone else with a change of MX/spf/etc records.
Only concern is that all 3 zoho entries are on the same AS (zoho), so that's a single point of failure. Not a major concern for personal email.
€0,90/month at Zoho for Mail Lite right? How many domains can you setup with that? Their pricing page doesn't mention that
https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html
Other than that, I must say that Zoho is probably the cheapest option out there.
I am using it right now (for free) but I can only setup one custom domain.
This whole conversation have gotten me quite excited to see how good my ISP is so I have just ordered a RPi to try setup a email server at home (for fun).
Service : Zoho Workplace
Plan : Mail Lite
User : 1
Payment Duration : Yearly
Start 11 June 2023 End 10 June 2024
Last year they charged me $1/month plus VAT. Not something I notice
I have two domains pointing there. Not sure how many I can have, but the domain renewal costs more than the mail.
I would rather spend $10 with a small(ish) internet company than $1 with a leviathan like apple or amazon. In reality I spend far more with the behemoths, but as far as I'm concerned every dollar I spend with a small company is a dollar invested in not making email the sole remit of microsoft and google.
For resilience I keep some third-party accounts open, including an ancient Hotmail account from before it was Microsoft (!), and now a university account. Either would do in an emergency to some extent (like when my upstream ISP years and years ago held me hostage by blocking my email traffic with Network Solutions so that I could not move DNS!)...
Comments
I in general like to self host, but more importantly I don't want to be locked in.
I pay zoho £10 a year to host my email. I could do it via my ISP, I have a good one which doesn't have port blocks, offers as many IPs as I can imagine I need, and is shibboleet compatible, but even setting aside my own time and maintenance, I'd want two MX entries that were geographically resilient, so I'd need to rope in a friend or family member. For £10 a year it's not worth it.
However if zoho stops working, or bumps their price up, I can shift my domains to someone else with a change of MX/spf/etc records.
Only concern is that all 3 zoho entries are on the same AS (zoho), so that's a single point of failure. Not a major concern for personal email.
€0,90/month at Zoho for Mail Lite right? How many domains can you setup with that? Their pricing page doesn't mention that https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html Other than that, I must say that Zoho is probably the cheapest option out there. I am using it right now (for free) but I can only setup one custom domain. This whole conversation have gotten me quite excited to see how good my ISP is so I have just ordered a RPi to try setup a email server at home (for fun).
Service : Zoho Workplace Plan : Mail Lite User : 1 Payment Duration : Yearly Start 11 June 2023 End 10 June 2024
Last year they charged me $1/month plus VAT. Not something I notice
I have two domains pointing there. Not sure how many I can have, but the domain renewal costs more than the mail.
I would rather spend $10 with a small(ish) internet company than $1 with a leviathan like apple or amazon. In reality I spend far more with the behemoths, but as far as I'm concerned every dollar I spend with a small company is a dollar invested in not making email the sole remit of microsoft and google.
For resilience I keep some third-party accounts open, including an ancient Hotmail account from before it was Microsoft (!), and now a university account. Either would do in an emergency to some extent (like when my upstream ISP years and years ago held me hostage by blocking my email traffic with Network Solutions so that I could not move DNS!)...