US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ...

flatbield@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 36 points –

I need to change ISPs and need to find a new email provider. This time I want to move to my own domain which I purchased through Namecheap and I do not want to use another ISP's email system nor do I want to use Google, or Microsoft since I am Linux (and Android too) based. I would like this to be US based or at least have a strong US presence so obvious choices like Proton Mail, Mailfence, and Mailbox.org are out. I would prefer it interoperate well with FOSS software too, I use Thunderbird and K-9 Mail for example. Also so want them to be trustworthy, have good security, and have good OpSec with respect to their their servers and service.

After looking I find three I am considering and they are quite different:

  • Fastmail. Long history. No PGP support but they do have their own domains one can use also.
  • Namecheap Private Email. Uses Ox App Suite, may support PGP, and quite new. I think you have to have your own domain (not sure).
  • Forward Email (forwardemail.net). A forwarder with IMAP support. You supply the webmail if you want webmail, but otherwise it should work fine with IMAP and normal clients.

So questions:

  • Any thoughts and experience, pros and cons with the above 3.
  • Other better ideas.

So thoughts? Thanks.

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I'm a recent fastmail user:

Pros: First off, they put me on a 30 day trial, so had a full 30 days to try out; I would suggest trying their trial as one of your first things.

I do love that I can make so many aliases for different email things.

I do love I can add an API key to my bitwarden account to auto-generate email masks for things: https://bitwarden.com/blog/use-bitwarden-to-generate-email-aliases-with-fastmail/

Offer's a reasonably priced family plan for up to 6 users (50 GB per user - after using Gmail from day one, including non-email storage, my Gmail is only up to 35 GB), and they have annual plan options which give you a discount over monthly for a better deal.

Has a calendar feature, and notes, for which I am putting stuff I used to text to myself, or message to my wife on discord.

Use multiple of my own domains (purchases elsewhere), and just set the nameservers to FastMail, and they handle setting up everything for modern email like DKIM, DMARC, and stuff. Though you are not obligated to purchase a domain, they have many you can choose from. They allow you to use a ton of custom domains (where as some other providers allow like 3, 10, or 30, depending on your plan).

They have an import feature from your old mail accounts. I did not try it, as I decided to start fresh. I'm trying to move away from gmail incase they lock me out someday, but my account is in good standing, and I have access to everything there as storage; just proactively moving all my important accounts over to my own domains.

I'll put this at the end as it is a pro or con depending on your outlook: I trust FastMail to not use my data like google, and am okay with our business relationship. Because of this, I am okay with my data not being so hard locked down that FastMail is able to restore access/help users getting locked out of their accounts. For a true End-to-End encrypted option, I question if that recovery would be possible (which can be a good thing, if your purpose is protecting your data, even from warrants/court orders/subpoenas); they may have recovery keys, but what if you lost those?

Con: Found out after my trial ended, that when I email my work, my emails go to Quarantine. Our work uses Microsoft Outlook, and they have a quarantine feature that keeps stuff from hitting even the spam folder; my work has phishing set to 'aggressive', which is what is quarantining my emails. Once i passed one email through quarantine, i'm recieiving them fine now. Also if the user adds the email to their contacts list.

After looking around, this appears to be an ongoing issue with microsoft from fastmail emails. You cant email email the recipient to inform them of the quarantined email, because all emails are quarantined. Not a deal breaker, as it's microsoft's doing, not FastMail, but still annoying, especially if you have to tell them to add you as a contact first. May get better after your domain builds some reputation with their servers, I don't really know yet. More of a reason for me to avoid recommending Microsoft as an email provider; quarantine is great for protecting users, but unless you have an IT person regularly checking and approving quarantined emails, it is so easy to miss legitimate emails from clients. I've also seen an email from my gmail account in the quarantine system, so it can catch up even big email providers.

A lot of people recommend https://tuta.com/ as a more privacy conscious option, and if I did decide to leave FastMail, they are probably what I would switch to. They do have a free email. Tuta also has family options, which can be more generous storage wise depending on your plan, but their family option appears to just be pay the full price of your plan for each user to add them to your family plan, and Tuta (at least from their pricing page), only has monthly as an option, no discounts for commitments.

For fastmail, I pay $132/year ($11/month equivalent - actually $14/month if on a monthly plan) for 50 GB for 6 users (300 GB total), For Tuta it appears to be €3/user/month for 20GB, or €8/user/month for 500 GB (so for 2 users, you are either paying €6 or €16). Ultimately I found FastMail to be a better choice for me. If you switch to business, they do have a €6/user/month option for 50 GB /user, which would be €12/month, so comparable to FastMail's family plan if you only have 2 users, but less comparable if you need more than 2 users. Due to tuta's pricing structure, you could just get each user the plan they need (not sure if that requires separate accounts, or if can be done on a family plan, which does have domain sharing implications, but maybe everyone wants their own domains).

My recommendation would be to make a FastMail trial, make a free tuta account, and try both for a month, then make your decision.

Yes... email filtering is a huge problem. Do you know if the issue was with your domain or whether it happens with Fastmail's standard domains also?

Regarding Tuta... not IMAP/SMTP and not US, so no for me. Otherwise I agree.

I only learned about quarantine the other day. Specifically I think it was me sending short messages that make sense when emailing yourself, like a photo with no body text, or just "test".

Going through there, found my Gmail, my personal domain, and my @fastmail domain all going there until I approved one of them.

I had my personal domain on a lifetime mxroute account before this, but wasn't using it. Made the move to fastmail to seriously move away from Google. I have my purchase ebooks backed up there, and they could close my account someday because of it, even if it's a personal backup of purchased items and not sharing with others.

Also making a wasabi account and using rclone to sync my library, so can move away on that front too. though Wasabi has a perfectly usable web interface. i have my reasons for choosing them over backblaze.

You mentioned mxroute. Someone else mentioned. Do you have any thoughts about them. You mentioned your moving to Fastmail instead.

I specifically found their lifetime plan reasonable to park a more professional sounding email address long-term to attach to resumes and the like, but not enough storage on that plan as my primary email.

I honestly don't have much experience with it, I just set it up to have to use with my domains, without having to pay a monthly fee.

Unfortunately, I have no input on their other plans

I didn't know about the tuta IMAP thing. Makes sense, unless they open it up for development from third party providers, but that is unlikely to ever happen. I can definitely see that as being a deal-breaker, and why I'll probably stick with fastmail

Thing about IMAP and other open protocols is that it probably lowers security and it certainly increases attack surface. So there are downsides. On the other hand ultimate security is not my biggest need. More interested in compatibility. I like the Proton, Mailfence, and Mailbox.org direction to be compatible and also support PGP with WKD so they can interoperate.

Two tips having worked in the corporate world (strict controls):

  • Create a basic non-spam web page for it that has something that doesn't look like SEO garbage or whatever. Nothing more than "hey this is a personal domain of the flatbield family" is fine, maybe a link to something (links enhance rep - put a picture of your dog up or link to a wikipedia article or something) and let it rest for at least 30 days. The 3rd party filtering services used by corporate players severely limit, block or distrust a domain newer than 30 days (or longer, depending). Set up a SSL cert on it for another +1 to it's rep value, HTTPS is looked at by these services and ensure the CA record is in your DNS for that SSL issuer.

  • Ensure you use the Providers' setup for DKIM, SPF and so forth (many like Fastmail have a DNS-check wizard to get you all set up) as many modern providers will instantly downvote you if anything is missing or wrong with these controls (I've heard GMail and O365 particularly). In 2024 these are a must-have, not a nice-to-have, for getting your email received by anyone and everyone.

If you chose a domain at a TLD which has/had been used by the bad buys (dot-xyz, info, zip, etc.) you may wish to reconsider - there are TLDs which are wholescale blocked or downvoted in rep based on this (by the same services used above). Ensure someone working at a bank (strict egress controls for their employees) can visit your domain as a good litmus test as to it's validity for use in email reputation.

A company such as Fastmail spends a lot of time ensuring their IP address space for sending and receiving mail is clean - getting spammers off their service, getting IP rep cleaned off blacklists and so forth. So your task is to focus on the same thing for your domain - if someone had previously owned the name they could have gotten it on blacklists long ago, a handy way to check old history is looking it up at web.archive.org for captured snapshots (and I've walked away from domain names because of this once I discovered previous content I didn't like).

Thanks. Great ideas. Had not considered the web issue. I actually have a VPS for other things at Linode. I could just add my new ".net" domain to that and setup something. Let rest is fine. We are transitioning over the next 6 months and hope to not change for a long time after that. So we have time to get this correct.

I also have mail setup in my VPS for other reasons so I do understand mail basics. Including SPF etc. Never really had any delivery issues but I do not use it generally. I think my old domain which I have had for 5 years has a fine reputation. Good point about the one I just purchased. Just do not want to move my general mail there or commit to setting it up and worse maintaining the multiple VPS systems needed to really do mail correctly. That is, I would want to have at least two incoming SMTP servers in two different data centers then maybe separate IMAP server too that they route to. Then there is the webmail client and locking it all down. Cost and worse yet effort and time mount up and it's not a one time deal. Not something my wife could do and not me 20 years from now.

To your multiple IMAP concept, I have been using isync / mbsync (name change, package isync in Debian) for years running via cron script to pull email from one domain at one provider and push it to a subfolder of another domain at another provider. You have to be aware of one specific gotcha but it's otherwise been working all by itself forever without issues. Take note of the PipeLineDepth 1 for IMAP service providers which throttle your speed, I have to use it on the destination side provider config.

Thanks. Interesting.

Just FYI, I was talking multiple SMTP servers not IMAP servers. If I did it, I would have 2 public facing SMTP servers which would then route to an internal SMTP server probably with a single IMAP server. The routing would probably be over a private link not a public one and the final server would present only IMAP publically. Really reduces attack surface.