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Email Hosting Providers Comparison
In terms of features, deliverability, spam, reliability, uptime, ease of use, administration, support, pricing and any other criteria you deem important or relevant, in a head-to-head comparison between the following Email hosting providers, as well as any other such providers (to the exclusion of Google and Microsoft) that I missed or you are aware of or experienced with that you wish to add to this comparative review, how would you rate the following providers, compared to the others here?
Please add your detailed comments explaining why and how you rated each provider. And which features or other aspects, in particular, you are rating and comparing to their competition that you like or dislike.
- IceWarp Cloud
- Zoho
- Fastmail
- MXRoute
- PurelyMail
- Migadu
- Mango Mail
- Polaris Mail
- Zimbra
- Amazon Workmail
[Add any other providers]
Comments
Simple: MXRoute - done.
Debian
MXRoute best, numba 1, 10/10.
Smallest jsg comment ever! Still as purposeful.
Only MXRoute can evoke such emotions.
I wish mango mail offered web clients.
mailbox.org for 30eur/y with plenty of addons like cloud space, etherpad, e-mail aliases, disposable addresses, encrypted sending, videoconferencing, etc ...
I did not pick it by coincidence.
After doing my homework I tried at least a dozen mail providers. After that, my short list consisted four providers (Runbox from .NO, Protonmail from .CH, Tutanota from .DE and Mailbox.org from .DE).
I picked mailbox.org because although in the same quality group as protonmail I prefer all extra functionalities, jingles and bells mailbox.org offers + every potential upgrade in the future cost here much less than protonmail upgrades.
My second choice would be Tutanota.
I am willing to compromise with budget vpses, but not with my main mail provider. A stable, security oriented long-term solution here is important to me. I don't want to tinker, to migrate, to do anything mail related long-term.
Also, there's https://skiff.com
Has anyone tried the Swiss Infomaniak mail provider? Their offer seems fine, but I can't remember what turned me away.
@JosephF
E-mail is actually pretty nasty to maintain, so if you want something to work out of the box, go with MXRoute. Those guys know their shit, I will say nice bang for the $ spent with them.
Self Host:
If you want to get old, and pull your hair, go Zimbra ( we did for ~8 years ) + an e-mail anti spam in front of it, free stuff will work like, well, free stuff.
Mailcow might be a nicer approach than zimbra, but still, you will have to nudge it a little each month.
And honestly best in class, Microsoft ( oh boy, will I get the pitchforks for this ).
Be aware, that if you enter the dark-side ( MSFT ) it will be extremely hard to get off. We have a few customers that learned this the hard way, but again, best in email I ever saw, used, and deployed, anti-spam is A++, but will get you a minimum of ~5-7 USD / account, depending on what features you want.
Cheers
iCloud with custom domains
$0.99/mo
Add policies, privacy, security, encryption, and jurisdiction, among others.
It's impossible to do a really good head to head comparison BTW, unless you include what YOU truly need and want, which will be different than what someone else needs and wants. There are too many flavors of email, too many features, too many needs and preferences, too many perspectives to be truly helpful in a general thread like this IMO. A comprehensive matrix of all features is also not effective IMO.
If you really want to get a good answer for your unique situation, the way you should ask the question is:
"I need the following specific X, Y, and Z features, can you please compare the following A, B, and C email providers?"
OR
"What are the top 3 email providers that have the best implementation for the following specific X, Y, and Z features?"
And before that question, you might want to spend some time figuring out what you really truly want/need and what your priorities are. Otherwise you'll just get random recommendations of providers that have little to no specific relevant context to your situation. No offense intended to anyone, especially well-meaning people here in this forum (and there are many helpful people here).
Having said that, there will be an email provider that is right up your alley, you just have to be very specific about what you want.
If you truly just want to attempt another general comparison of all email providers, have at it, carry on, and ignore my post!
Good luck either way!
Their Free plan is pretty generous. Is it a good provider?
Good in what way? If you mean "good in general," then yes, so far Skiff seems to be "good overall" -- but again, your "good" is different than someone else's "good." If you get more specific with what you mean by good, they may or may not be a "good" match for you. They are in the secure/privacy/encrypted area of the market, so if that is important to you, then you should at least look at them.
They are still relatively new as far as email providers go, but they've made continuous upgrades to their service, which includes a bunch of interesting privacy-oriented features, some of which are quite nice and usable, including an encrypted file and document system. Much of their codebase appears to be open source, which is a good sign for people who care about that stuff.
As I mentioned, they are in the Proton segment of the market, but they are US-based (not a good jurisdiction for privacy), but so far they've been consistent, generous in resources, stable, have decent support, and growing rapidly. You may want to spend some time researching their encryption to see if satisfies you, if that matters.
They are backed by venture capital, and they've been investing heavily in their product. At some point they will need to make a profit, so who knows what might happen if they use up all their venture money too quickly. They are still at the beginning of their story, and it does look pretty good so far (notwithstanding the jurisdiction issue, which you should research if you care about that), but in all honesty, there's a long way ahead to see if they have real staying power. But so far so good.
If that sounds "good" to you, then give them a shot.
Their primary competitor is currently Proton, so check out Proton as well, which also offers a free tier. Tuta (formerly Tutanota) is also in that market segment, so check out their free tier too.
Good luck.
Hi yes, I am asking for the good in general. The reason why it is such a general question is because I am specifically looking into other people's experiences and to get insight on what they think is 'good' and if not then why is it 'bad'. I have never heard of this provider before so I am specifically looking for a general answer. Thanks for your feedback, it was very valuable.
Understood, good luck. "Good in general" is a fair assessment of Skiff. It's worth a look then for you.
As I mentioned, and for those that are interested, they are still a relatively new provider, but unlike a lot of other new or small providers, they have actual, real money behind them. They already surpassed 1 million users last year. That's a good sign their approach is working.
But venture money is a two-edged sword. Venture capital has a few business models that are common, one of which is where they throw a lot of money at a product to try to gain market share rapidly and then expect a return on their investment within a certain period of time. I don't know the details of their model, but they sure are adding features quickly.
The good side of that is obviously that you get enormous feature development quickly, and Skiff is indeed adding features all the time, which is nice, even their smartphone apps are decent, etc., and the model also means they give a lot of stuff away -- in other words, that explains their generosity at the freebie level, because they are going for rapid market growth.
The downside of that model is that if they don't show profitability within a certain period of time, some venture-funded services end up making profit grabs later on, change their policies for the worse, or the service can suffer in other ways, and/or they get sold off to the highest bidder. Silicon Valley is littered with stories like that. I'm not saying that will happen with Skiff. But they can't burn through money indefinitely.
All just something to keep in mind, if that matters to you. Some of their competitors are already profitable, though, so the Skiff investors are certainly hoping for a similar success story. If they keep expanding at this rate, though, over the next few years, they might become one of the dominant providers in their market category.
Again, good luck.
mxroute @jar
gmail with gmailify
inbox.eu
please try it and and switch from your current provider to infomaniak
as far as mailbox.0rg is concerned, i have to disagree with you for once. on the one hand, they have a strange pricing policy. they have abolished the old 1 euro / month tariff with flimsy arguments and introduced a "new better" and of course more expensive tariff with fewer features. otherwise, from a scientific point of view, the company behind mailb0x can rather be described as dodgy.
What are people using to resell white label email solutions to clients? I know of Mxroute which is popular and low cost, any others?
skiff.com is best
I know that you don't like them although always because of some other reason. Previous was allegedly leftish personal political views of the company owner or something like that if I remember correctly. Pricing is the new one. :P
Well, they evolve all the time adding new and new features. Old mailbox.org was just a shade of what it is now. Some old packages were discontinued, and some new introduced - a few years ago.
I don't think 2,5€ monthly (with yearly payment, otherwise it would be 3 €/m) is unreasonable for what I get.
Direct competition in that segment I checked and also considered (proton, tuta, runbox...) don't offer half of those features which I find useful for the same or more money and potential upgrades in the future cost more.
Their feature-rich stuff is stable, they run it from two different DC locations they own with a decent middle-sized team of 30 people and reasonably priced.
I am sorry, but I have no reason to switch :P
i don't always like them for a different reason, but for various points that add up. for one thing, it is correct that they are dodgy political fellow travellers. whether they are left or right or stalinists or fascists is irrelevant and doesn't matter to me.
"[...] don't even offer half the features I find useful for the same or more money, and potential upgrades in the future cost more." - possible. but then you and your data are usually the product. and i don't even want to imagine what political providers do with the data.
"I am sorry, but I have no reason to switch :P"
don't be sorry... i hope that everything continues to go well for you with this provider.
everyone can make up their own mind about the massive price increase and the allegedly better service the "mail" tariff is being replaced by "light" (no more own domain possible, no external pop3, annual contract, no online office, video conference etc.):
Discontinuation of their smallest package few years ago is a legit concern for some, I am not denying that, but:
I asked you before, but you didn't provide any proof, facts or anything. How, in what way, they are "political provider" - I would like to know more.
Please help me, not with an opinion because you don't like them for this or that personal reason, etc ... but with something more tangible.
I am not attacking you or anything, but the last time when we discussed this you didn't provide anything except claims and now isn't much different.
What makes them "political" provider?
Is this about the whole team? About the company? About some personal statement of an owner in public? Or what?
If anything they are very detailed regarding data protection https://mailbox.org/en/data-protection which is far from standard legal yada, yada - or we're conspiracy theorists now?
Also as example I rarely see a company to expose themself so much publicly and provide as much transparency details as them:
https://mailbox.org/en/company
We support an Internet that is secure and free of surveillance. We neither like permanent surveillance by national states or intelligence services, nor being spied out by companies and corporations with commercial interests. As a secure e-mail provider, we are contributing our share to maintaining a free society by facilitating surveillance-free communication for private and business users. We deliberately use Linux and other OpenSource software, further develop these technologies as part of our work, and give financial support to events that promote our purpose, such as the "Chemnitzer Linux-Tage", organisations like the working group on data retention, Digitalcourage e.V. (a charitable organisation), the Tor network, as well as the "Freiheit statt Angst" ("Freedom not Fear") protest.
Seems like a real people with clear political agenda ;-)
@emgh - I had absolutely no idea that you could do this with iCloud - thank you!
Np, really really good for the price. You also get unlimited disposable emails that aren’t blocked anywhere (@icloud.com), and 50 GB of storage.
Some limit in domains, that’s it really I think.
The only thing that might suck for some, but that I find great, is that it’ll all be the same inbox. You can probably map incoming emails to specific folders to that it behaves like a seperated inbox, but you can’t give email to other people, they’ll need your iCloud login and they’ll see all your emails.
For personal and hobby stuff, that’s perfect though.
They’ve also partnered with Cloudflare, I was suprised to see that adding all email records was just authorizing @ Cloudflare and it was all done (if you use CF that is).
Re: Mailbox.org, I don't want to get in between @Mumbly and @hyperblast but IMO Mailbox.org is worth looking at. They have a good track record for fighting for privacy, have a ton of features, are stable, have good transparency, and have decent customer service. As for their personal politics, I have not seen any evidence of red flags. On the contrary, they've been fighting for privacy rights in the EU, so whether you're on the left or right, they happen to be on the "right" side of the privacy issue. And I have no problem with their price increase in this case - periodically every company has to look at their revenue streams and tweak their business model. Tuta also recently did this, I can list several other providers too. That's better than going out of business and pulling the rug out from everyone. Their current pricing is still affordable for what they offer, and one could argue the prior model was potentially unsustainable. If you want good email, pay for it.
quite well worked out... so far.
this is the usual blah blah blah that you read on the website. there are other companies behind the email service that make me come to my - you are right - always implied assessment.
i will send you a private message in confidence with further details. please use this information only for yourself.
I'd be curious about whatever concerns you have, please post publicly.
no. please respect that.
mumbly, i send my knowledge in trust because i like and trust him.
list of emailproviders:
https://dismail.de/serverlist.html