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Mail Server: using shared hosting OR mail hosting. Cheapest solution
teochristian
Member
Hello!
I am building websites for my clients and I usually administer the server, too. I host them on VPSs, without a known control panel (own control panel), being self-configured. I am experienced only in administering dns and web servers, but not (really not) in administering mail servers. Some of my clients requested me to offer mail services.
I don't have much time to learn, at this time (I don't want to misconfigure the mail server, I want to know it well before starting to administer my own mail server).
So I think about buying a cheap shared hosting and pointing the domains to the mail server (then trying to find a way to automatically create accounts from my external panel) OR buying mail hosting.
I can't charge my clients for this service. So I am looking for the cheapest solution.
Should I get a cheap shared hosting to host the email there?
Does anyone know some cheap solutions to this?
Thank you very much!
PS: I really don't want to use a web panel for my servers. I'm working with own configurations and applications.
Also they don't need to send thousands of emails per hour. I will limit that number to 50-100 per hour, if this will be an available option.
Comments
@jar MXroute. Done. You're welcome.
Most shared hosting servers are not set up to perform a really good mail platform. It wouldn't serve you good.
Either invest you time and money and learn about doing or your self, or go directly buy your services from a mail hosting provider.
Please check our shared hosting plans or reseller plans . We use mailchannels.com for inbound and outbound emails. We will also help you with complete migration if you like.
Go with MXroute and you won't regret ;-)
Thank you all!
Remember support is limited with MXRoute, take that in mind when you use it for business.
Check mailcheap.co I have been using them and i'm very satisfied
https://mailinabox.email/
Second this ... although for OP's purpose the lack of a control panel that users can access to add/delete accounts and aliases on a per domain basis makes it difficult to recommend ... however, there are third party tools available to manage mailboxes in such an environment.
Remember- shared hosting accounts may go up in cost if you are on a month to month contract and Cpanel or other vendors increase a hosts costs. if hosts costs go up too much- they may fail. So be leary of using ultra cheap shared hosting for business clients (especially the ones you like and value)
Agree. Nearly non-existent at this stage. Wish @jar brought the ticket system back soon
@jar can I get the $5/year plan? Currently out of stock
An option would be to use a panel that can do mail only (froxlor comes to mind, but there are even simpler alternatives) for email, and let your setup as it is for webhosting. You can host this in another VPS if you want some isolation, or on a different LXC container or BSD jail on the same machine as your sites. The going point being that it would be really easy to modify your own scripts to automatically add an account, you might want to take into consideration that cheap shared hosting will likely be crappy, and will probably not come with an API.
Not sure if you saw the cPanel saga, but that's on purpose while the licensing is sorted out. Worst case scenario, I'm preparing to self-host https://mailinabox.email -- hope that @jar can sort it out before it comes to that
Well there is their Slack channel. It seems to work fairly well but I can understand people being stuck in the old days of tickets and phone calls, I suppose ...
It would be awesome if @jar could open up their outbound relay as a MailChannels alternative. I've had really good deliverablility from their relays (even better than MailChannels themsekves).
Have a feeling this might be slightly delayed due to cPanel drama though.
I just run my own mail servers on cheap OVH public cloud VPS ($2 / month). There's a great guide getting it run on Debian 9:
https://scaron.info/blog/debian-mail-postfix-dovecot.html
https://scaron.info/blog/debian-mail-spf-dkim.html
That mail-in-a-box looks really nice as well, thing is though that if you built it yourself you understand better how everything works. That's why I don't like these all in one solutions although it might just work for others. Another thing is that they might just quit supporting / developing it at one point.
Could you point out the OVH public cloud VPS for $2/month?
Depends what you want.
If you just wanna to have it cheap => mxroute they offer deals from 5$/y
If you want pay a bit more and get stuff like an encrypted mailbox =>https://posteo.de/en + a lot more of these thats about 14$/y
Or just get a cheap KVM setup the stuff by yourself, keep in mind, that snake oil puts the memory requirements higher as without snake oil checks on your emails => https://mailcow.email/
Just create an account at OVH, go to the control panel and go to public cloud, there you can create a S1-2 shared vps instance $2 a month with antiddos pro and ipv6. It's limited to 100 mbit connection though but that's more than enough for email.
I've settled on the current support system as the superior option to tickets. People get more personal service, contact us less begging for promotions or packages that don't exist (we don't do pre-sales or custom packaging), and we're able to resolve matters in a much more timely manner by first directing everyone to the answers to questions that we're asked repeatedly, with a fallback of Slack for personal outreach.
https://mxroute.com/help.html
In my view this is a major step forward in which we shave off that which unnecessarily increases overhead cost and keeps our costs low, while improving service. Revolutionizing the support system for maximum efficiency rather than relying on the old "the way it was always done" method has been my goal for several years, and I'm excited to have landed on something that seems to be working well.
Next will be the chat bot that asks "Are your MX records correct?" Then, when you say yes, it checks them anyway and tells you if you're wrong. I estimate that cuts out another 30-40% of support contacts. I hate the idea that our prices should rise over the years because people don't double check things that they don't need our hands-on help to know. We don't mind helping but the more people asking the same questions, the more humans needed, the more it costs to run the business, the less great deals people see.
It's their sandbox line. Performamce not as stable as their other offerings according to them:
"These instances are adapted to suit your tests, recipes and development environments. Their performance may vary slightly over time."
Any .hu provider will do. Spamming is absolutely ok there. You don't need to throttle. As long as you don't send the mails to .hu addresses. Outside is fine.
IP addresses are about $3/IP/month, and just because the provider won't give a damn you will still burn them. Spamhaus is your problem not the providers.
Shared won't do it you need a VPS/postfix for spamming, how else would you rotate IPs.
Edit: I'm not selling but know exactly how it works. The cheapest one happens to have an english version of the website so you can find it yourself.
Idk I'm a little annoyed that it was marketed as mail channels relay previously and now no longer is without notice.
Yup it's amazing individuals could hang around here grab offers and have such little understanding of basic web infrastructure (name servers, DNS records(MX), etc.)
In any case when will we get an update on what's going to happen to all existing customers on cpanel jar?
afaik they use their own relay, but if it fails it will fall back to MailChannels. @jar please confirm.
Personally though, I had better delivery with MXroute than any other email relays such as SES and MailChannels, with Postmark being the only exception (having around the same deliverability). But YMMV
Correct. The current setup is superior to MC direct in every way and no one's price went up. The number of complaints about delivery have dropped dramatically since we stopped sending everything straight to MC only. Their filters created more delivery failures than we ever had before them.
I've had one email provider that bounced on Mxroute relay and it didn't fail over to mail channels. Just bounced back with a failed send and noted the mxrelay. Ended up using gmail with send as and that worked.
I'd submit a ticket and forward the failed email info but on ya i have no way of sending a legitimate support ticket and I don't want to share such info on a public format.
Feel free to ask me for a refund since you'd rather post publicly here to complain about not wanting to talk to me in a public venue (where you can private message me all the same).
Of course, you'd have to get past the refusal to reach out to me to ask for it but that can't be helped.
It's also possible to cleanse data for public posting, like removing senders and recipients while leaving bounce errors. That way when you post it and I answer, the next person who receives that bounce error can read what I said to you and determine whether or not it answers their question.
But honestly it sounds to me like you would be happier with a refund and purchasing from here instead: https://www.mailchannels.com/pricing/