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Small Church Email Hostnig
DigitalPure
Member
Hello, I am a member of a small church and we are facing some growing pains in both cash flow, and members. We are currently using personal gmail accounts for everything and this is confusing to the external community and we have seen complaints on this.
I am in search of a low cost email hosting (no website or anything else). I am on the East coast so would prefer something close to that. I would need about 5-8 physical addresses and about 30 aliases for misc things.
Currently I use Hostbrrr for some personal stuff and they are amazing, so I may just stick with them on another account. I just hate to use a web hosting service for email only as it just feels like it is a violation of terms.
I have used mxroute in the past and maybe it was just me but never had a good experience, so I am not looking at them right now.
Costs, right now I am open, but again costs are a MAJOR thing, and so I dont want to spend more then $80-100 a year if possible, but that depends on space provided. I expect that we will grow a little over the next 24mo and so 10-12 physical addresses may be needed. So I would expect about 100-150GB of min space would be needed to support that. Webmail is nice, but I am open to using just IMAP/SMTP if needed.
Thanks again,
David
Comments
Google is free for non profits, hit me up we got our church going.
That is fine and expected. The reason most people dont is because of IP rep and if it works for you, no reason to switch.
But https://mxroute.com/ should be good for you if you decide to switch.
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As i commented it, I am not sure anymore. It is expected and fine right? I dont see why web hosts would not like it as long as you don't spam / cause harm to IP rep.
@labze what do you think?
Most people don't? They use MailChannels...
damn i missed that part
I meant for email only on shared hosting in general not just hostbrr but since they use MC, it should be fine right?
Yes
Labze can confirm, but I don't see why not
Should definitely use the non profit resources that Google or others provide!
I will have to check this out. My wife works for a small Christian school and they fought her getting a 50% discount even though they are a 501c since they also educate.
Yeah, I am hyper careful about spamming and such hence why I am sure that I have been fine so far. Just always want to keep everything on the 100% up and up, especially when it comes to non personal stuff.
Just make sure to keep backups if the email data is important to you and your org, especially with lowend providers.
If you want to start out with siteTide, i would suggest just getting the "Large" webhosting package which includes basic E-Mail Service and has 50 GB SSD Storage for 40 Euro (approx. 50 usd) per year.
When you get close to "out-growing" this, just open a ticket - then your account can be seamlessly (no-downtime/interruption) moved to an "Essential" Cloud-Hosting package recurring at 15 Euro Monthly - growing your space to 100 GB. (And later from there to larger packages if required).
I'm happy to help with the initial e-mail accounts/setup (as there wont be a website to migrate).
Just out of interest, what was the confusion/complaint(s) about?
@DigitalPure - here are some solution steps:
Enjoy your church project's email.
Always here if you want to give me another chance 💜
Basically, you will need to apply here for Google verification process and apply for non-profit offers including Google Workspace from Percent:
https://poweredbypercent.com/
Mostly that they email @church.domain and dont get a reply since there is no email currently, or they get a reply from [email protected] and it seems odd. We are a small community with nearly 130 churches in the county, and so anything that causes any confusion can be a pain to overcome
I might need to! I rarely here issues with the services. I suspect it was more me learning things then anything else and it was a few years ago!
It really is free, I just did this a month ago for a not for profit pregnancy clinic, took 1 month but it went through.
You can have your own pastor@domain.church - you can just register your own .church domain as previously advised.
You mean you are a deanery, or a diocese of some sort? A .church domain will work for this too.
Simply use both for a while then you can redirect messages from Google to your own email address as people get used with the changes.
As a side note: I am curious what church or deanery or diocese you represent with 130 churches. Maybe someone here is from your parish and will help you for free. This is just a thought.
Sorry, 130 different churches in a 15mi radius competing for people. We are a small Baptist church. Other churches in the area not associated or affiliated with us.
If only Jesus knew churches would be competing for people in his name. Maybe he still has no idea idea about all these 130 competitors acting within 24 km radius.
Good luck. You are going to need it. The only good thing about Christianity in general is love. We need more love, especially in times when politicians want to profit from hot wars.
Also lots of other free/discount software and services through https://www.techsoup.org/
I’ve done free Google workspaces for several non profits. Once approved, just set you MX records to Google’s mail servers and start creating email accounts through your workspace admin.
You’ll need your 501(c)(3) Determination Letter.
Microsoft 365 is free as well (for "Business Basic", the others are available at a very substantial discount), through techsoup. Highly recommend grabbing techsoup for the church, lots of great products available via donation. We run a 365 + GWorkspace hybrid at my church with SAML federation and all of that good stuff.
If you need help getting set up, funding for a domain, etc etc., feel free to holler.
https://www.dynadot.com/es/email
20$ / year
useless post?
I guess mxroute will be one of the easiest and more affordable options you have.
As others mentioned you can try Google/Microsoft.
I would probably avoid using Cloudflare for incoming to redirect to Gmail or so. This might work for a handful of addresses.
If you are a tech savvy you could partially self host.
Incoming is mostly the easiest part. As you mentioned you already have a domain.
For instance you can get free oracle cloud (or better payg upgrade but not going over free limits)
This will give you huge storage for free in the beginning. Throw some lightweight mail stack on it or full out of the box solutions like mailcow etc.
For sending I would recommend something like aws ses, oracle email delivery, mxroute (relay), mailgun and the likes.
Also don't forget regular backups!
@DigitalPure
As a reseller of MXroute, I can take care of you. Most likely your issues a few years back were support related, but as their reseller I'll have you covered for support.
Though first, I'd suggest going with Google Workspace with your 501(c)3 status. After all, free is best. PM me if you need assistance!