maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
If you want to use an email client other then their provided client, yes you need the bridge app. I use their client app on my Mac, and Iphone its fine, though I understand our position and frustration.
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Email hosting service for personal use? (not iCloud or Google)
- Thread starter OldGuyInTheClub
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I do get that their end-to-end encryption, a very attractive feature, requires an intermediate service. They are definitely a good outfit.
People are complaining about those Rackspace price hikes: https://arstechnica.com/information...ail-hosting-prices-by-as-much-as-706-percent/
Mr. Heckles
macrumors 68000
Yes, 6 separate accounts, with 6 separate users names and passwords.
I think the article hits it: They want out of mail hosting. I checked their main website and see AI splattered everywhere. I pressed their notional tech support and they just copy/paste the "...To continue delivering the service levels our customers expect, effective March 2026, Rackspace Technology is increasing the price of Rackspace Email...." blurb.
They used to be good and had good tech support. Now it is all offshored with no tech talent backing up the service.
Novae Bentos
macrumors newbie
I went from iCloud+ (custom domain) to Migadu. My usage falls into the lowest tier so not a vastly different expenditure. The bonus is unlimited aliases, however I think I may add a second (cheap) random domain to create my own hide my email (when the 12 month cheap domain price expires, I’ll take some other domain)
Additionally, I took a free (random name) Proton account as a fallback/2FA (really dislike iCloud, still have my @Mac & @me, soon to be deleted)
Additionally, I took a free (random name) Proton account as a fallback/2FA (really dislike iCloud, still have my @Mac & @me, soon to be deleted)
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thebellnd
macrumors member
If you're serious about email, use hotmail. It has almost unlimited storage, activesync and powerful features like address books and calendars.
Mr. Heckles
macrumors 68000
Hotmail offers 15GB of storage (not unlimited). It has an address book and calendar if you use the Outlook email client (you can use that email client for any email address and get these features also. I prefer to use the default contacts and calendar that’s on my device).
The only good thing about Hotmail/Outlook you can create 9 additional email aliases with it.
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thebellnd
macrumors member
Hotmail calendars and address book can easily sync with iOS and macOS default experiences if you set them up correctly. You are not locked into the Outlook email client. You can't use email aliases outside of the Outlook app, though.
Mr. Heckles
macrumors 68000
Correct, just like most email services out there.
I’m not sayin it’s bad, and they are probably the best free option out there. They aren’t special except having aliases going to one inbox.
I went from Outlook for Fastmail and Fastmail is better and does more IMO.
Yes you can, but it’s pain to set up. I did it when I was using Outloom/Hotmail.
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
Not a fan of hotmail, my wife's account is constantly under attack, and support has consistently been unhelpful.
BrianBaughn
macrumors G4
Mr. Heckles
macrumors 68000
I might have an idea to help you, I’ll see if I can type it out and send it to you.
Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I am trying the Fastmail family plan for one month and if it works well, I'll get a longer term with the price break. US$14/month-month for up to 6 distinct accounts (not aliases). Drops to $11/mo with 12 month commitment. Rackspace is currently $15/month-to-month for 5 accounts going up to $50/mo soon(!)
tl;dr on the experience so far:
Even mix of the easy, not-so-easy, and difficult. About 6-7 hours to get everything set up, migrated, and clients (MBP and Android) configured. Good to very good documentation. Responsive tech support. Need to keep an eye on hotmail/Outlook.com to see that they don't throttle mail from Fastmail's SMTP server.
Details below for the interested.
---------------------------
Choice: Seriously looked at MXRoute but felt that it was for a more sophisticated user than me. Liked their documentation and snarky/no-BS approach. Felt that I might need more one-on-one than they're set up to provide. Fastmail had presales support and answered my questions without a problem. Their documentation is also very thorough although I had some things take longer than hoped. No one can cover all cases...
Setup: Very easy. I created a migration@mydomain.com admin address on Fastmail. From there I paid for a month by credit card and got access to the Admin panel. Brought over my domain (email only) and got a complete easy-to-understand page with all the DNS info: MX records, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, entries, etc. Plugged them into my DNS and within 5 minutes, the Fastmail check showed all was configured and propagating.
Replicated my 5 existing accounts on Fastmail's web interface and waited about 30 minutes before sending test emails. All accounts worked well - I could send and receive within my domain and to my Protonmail and GMail accounts. The web interface in mostly intuitive but between PEBCAK and migrating in the wee hours to minimize disruptions gave me some headaches.
Migration of existing IMAP accounts: Took me a few tries before I realized which Settings icon to press from each account to get the migration tool going. I had mistakenly tried to migrate from the Admin panel which brought each account over to the migration@mydomain.com account. Each account required minimal info to get going: Old server location, username, and password. My main account with ~12GB of data took about 45 mins to an hour to get over with all folders. The other four smaller accounts came over much faster and I was able to migrate in parallel.
Once migrated, I deleted the migration@mydomain.com email so I have one available address left in my plan.
Thunderbird/IMAP: Fastmail requires generating app-specific passwords for non-Fastmail clients. This took a lot of getting used to. Normally I just configured Thunderbird with server names, userids, and passwords. Now I had to generate an app-specific password for each address using the web interface and enter it into Thunderbird. Thunderbird is clunky in its configuration editing ability so I just deleted and recreated all my accounts. Once I got the hang, it went well.
Apple Mail/IMAP: I generated and downloaded a custom config file for each account through the web interface. Double-clicking and then verifying through the Settings app on the MBP got Apple Mail configured and downloading. No manual app-specific passwords needed here. Fastmail's documentation was on point.
Android/BlueMail: I've gotten used to BlueMail despite its quirks. But, it is not one of the popular Fastmail third party clients and required a lot of experimentation to get it to work. Briefly, generate the app-specific password selecting only the Mail (IMAP/POP/SMTP) option. Do not use the one for Mail+CalDAV+Contacts. Also, enter the email address into BOTH the Email Address and Username fields; case seems to matter so ensure identicality. Enter the app-specific password manually vs. copy/paste. This took me multiple hours to figure out. Might have been in the docs but at 4am, I wasn't following all best practices.
To watch: I have friends and family with Hotmail/Outlook accounts. The first several messages to them were getting held up. Fastmail's server sent emails that they would be retried every hour and that re-sending wasn't necessary. Outlook.com said a specific Fastmail IP address was being rate-limited. I plugged that into MXToolbox and a couple of similar sites. The IP address was clean as far as I could tell.
I filed a ticket on this and it got escalated to the developers. A few hours later I was able to get at least some messages through with confirming replies. I found an MS site to delist a blocked IP address but after I went through the process, it said the IP address was clean(!) Either the devs took some action or Microsoft unblocked/unthrottled something. This has happened before when I have changed email hosts. Microsoft and Google are capricious.
I also got a couple of Spam emails into the Inbox that I think Rackspace would have caught.
Fastmail desktop and Android clients: Tried both but as far as I can tell, Thunderbird desktop, Apple Mail, and BlueMail allow selection among multiple accounts through a left-panel. The Fastmail apps both required logging in as a different account. More "friction" than necessary for my uses. When the Android app badge shows multiple messages, how to know which accounts to check? Easy on the non-Fastmail apps.
The native Mac client is quite well laid out and does not require going through the app-specific password route. Provide the userid and password and it configures automatically. AFAIK, the native Mac app does not show the number of new mails as a badge on the dock icon. The Android client worked well for a little while then the UI overflowed into the top and bottom of the screen where alerts, home buttons, etc. live requiring restarting the app.
I also tried GMail and K-9 (supported in the docs) while doinking with BlueMail but didn't like either. I think K-9 has been borged by Thunderbird and while I like Thunderbird desktop, I had loads of problems with Thunderbird Android.
tl;dr on the experience so far:
Even mix of the easy, not-so-easy, and difficult. About 6-7 hours to get everything set up, migrated, and clients (MBP and Android) configured. Good to very good documentation. Responsive tech support. Need to keep an eye on hotmail/Outlook.com to see that they don't throttle mail from Fastmail's SMTP server.
Details below for the interested.
---------------------------
Choice: Seriously looked at MXRoute but felt that it was for a more sophisticated user than me. Liked their documentation and snarky/no-BS approach. Felt that I might need more one-on-one than they're set up to provide. Fastmail had presales support and answered my questions without a problem. Their documentation is also very thorough although I had some things take longer than hoped. No one can cover all cases...
Setup: Very easy. I created a migration@mydomain.com admin address on Fastmail. From there I paid for a month by credit card and got access to the Admin panel. Brought over my domain (email only) and got a complete easy-to-understand page with all the DNS info: MX records, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, entries, etc. Plugged them into my DNS and within 5 minutes, the Fastmail check showed all was configured and propagating.
Replicated my 5 existing accounts on Fastmail's web interface and waited about 30 minutes before sending test emails. All accounts worked well - I could send and receive within my domain and to my Protonmail and GMail accounts. The web interface in mostly intuitive but between PEBCAK and migrating in the wee hours to minimize disruptions gave me some headaches.
Migration of existing IMAP accounts: Took me a few tries before I realized which Settings icon to press from each account to get the migration tool going. I had mistakenly tried to migrate from the Admin panel which brought each account over to the migration@mydomain.com account. Each account required minimal info to get going: Old server location, username, and password. My main account with ~12GB of data took about 45 mins to an hour to get over with all folders. The other four smaller accounts came over much faster and I was able to migrate in parallel.
Once migrated, I deleted the migration@mydomain.com email so I have one available address left in my plan.
Thunderbird/IMAP: Fastmail requires generating app-specific passwords for non-Fastmail clients. This took a lot of getting used to. Normally I just configured Thunderbird with server names, userids, and passwords. Now I had to generate an app-specific password for each address using the web interface and enter it into Thunderbird. Thunderbird is clunky in its configuration editing ability so I just deleted and recreated all my accounts. Once I got the hang, it went well.
Apple Mail/IMAP: I generated and downloaded a custom config file for each account through the web interface. Double-clicking and then verifying through the Settings app on the MBP got Apple Mail configured and downloading. No manual app-specific passwords needed here. Fastmail's documentation was on point.
Android/BlueMail: I've gotten used to BlueMail despite its quirks. But, it is not one of the popular Fastmail third party clients and required a lot of experimentation to get it to work. Briefly, generate the app-specific password selecting only the Mail (IMAP/POP/SMTP) option. Do not use the one for Mail+CalDAV+Contacts. Also, enter the email address into BOTH the Email Address and Username fields; case seems to matter so ensure identicality. Enter the app-specific password manually vs. copy/paste. This took me multiple hours to figure out. Might have been in the docs but at 4am, I wasn't following all best practices.
To watch: I have friends and family with Hotmail/Outlook accounts. The first several messages to them were getting held up. Fastmail's server sent emails that they would be retried every hour and that re-sending wasn't necessary. Outlook.com said a specific Fastmail IP address was being rate-limited. I plugged that into MXToolbox and a couple of similar sites. The IP address was clean as far as I could tell.
I filed a ticket on this and it got escalated to the developers. A few hours later I was able to get at least some messages through with confirming replies. I found an MS site to delist a blocked IP address but after I went through the process, it said the IP address was clean(!) Either the devs took some action or Microsoft unblocked/unthrottled something. This has happened before when I have changed email hosts. Microsoft and Google are capricious.
I also got a couple of Spam emails into the Inbox that I think Rackspace would have caught.
Fastmail desktop and Android clients: Tried both but as far as I can tell, Thunderbird desktop, Apple Mail, and BlueMail allow selection among multiple accounts through a left-panel. The Fastmail apps both required logging in as a different account. More "friction" than necessary for my uses. When the Android app badge shows multiple messages, how to know which accounts to check? Easy on the non-Fastmail apps.
The native Mac client is quite well laid out and does not require going through the app-specific password route. Provide the userid and password and it configures automatically. AFAIK, the native Mac app does not show the number of new mails as a badge on the dock icon. The Android client worked well for a little while then the UI overflowed into the top and bottom of the screen where alerts, home buttons, etc. live requiring restarting the app.
I also tried GMail and K-9 (supported in the docs) while doinking with BlueMail but didn't like either. I think K-9 has been borged by Thunderbird and while I like Thunderbird desktop, I had loads of problems with Thunderbird Android.
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BigMcGuire
macrumors G4
My mother has had a Hotmail primary account for a very long time. She does have a quota though. A couple of years ago, they changed how they handled attachments. She eventually had to buy OneDrive storage because they began to count attachments against the relatively small OneDrive allocation.
I have not heard of Hotmail offering hosting of other domains, though.
Late to this, but I want to put in another vote for Fastmail--I’ve used them for just under 12 years now (with domains I own), after deciding that I didn’t want to be a product of Google or beholden to any provider for my address.
I have literally never once, in that over a decade of use, had an issue with their service, which is frankly a kind of shocking level of reliability. The price is reasonable for a family account with two inboxes, and the support for multiple addresses, even at multiple separate self-owned domains, pointed at the same inbox is very good--you basically pay per user, not per address, which is really useful if you have (for example) a business domain and personal domain, and a couple of email addresses at each, but don’t mind if they’re all pointed at the same inbox.
I have only ever used the service through IMAP (Mail.app on Mac, Mail app on iPhone), so can’t speak for the web client, but for IMAP use it’s solid. I do really like that they’re not trying to sell you some huge suite of features that you don’t need, or jack up the price because they’re now offering some new dingus that you don’t want--it’s email at a reasonable price that rarely increases.
The company is Australian with servers in the US, which at this point may be a liability or even a double-liability, but it’s hard to find any service without the same problems.
I have literally never once, in that over a decade of use, had an issue with their service, which is frankly a kind of shocking level of reliability. The price is reasonable for a family account with two inboxes, and the support for multiple addresses, even at multiple separate self-owned domains, pointed at the same inbox is very good--you basically pay per user, not per address, which is really useful if you have (for example) a business domain and personal domain, and a couple of email addresses at each, but don’t mind if they’re all pointed at the same inbox.
I have only ever used the service through IMAP (Mail.app on Mac, Mail app on iPhone), so can’t speak for the web client, but for IMAP use it’s solid. I do really like that they’re not trying to sell you some huge suite of features that you don’t need, or jack up the price because they’re now offering some new dingus that you don’t want--it’s email at a reasonable price that rarely increases.
The company is Australian with servers in the US, which at this point may be a liability or even a double-liability, but it’s hard to find any service without the same problems.
Protonmail may be useful if hosting location is a concern. They are more expensive per account but their end-to-end encryption and Swiss base may be worth it to some.
IvyKing
macrumors 6502
The app-specific passwords has some security advantages in that you can revoke the password for a specific device, e.g. if a computer gets stolen.
I was looking at Rackspace back in late 2018, after GTT gave me two months warning of closing the Speakeasy account that I had since 2004. I picked Fastmail as it had a better fit to my needs than Rackspace and have been reasonably satisfied with their service.
That does make some sense. OTOH, a couple of accounts I had configured on Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and BlueMail (Android) stopped connecting to the IMAP and/or the SMTP server(s) and prompted for a password again. Had to go back to the website, generate new passwords, and enter them again into all three. Don't know why it happened. Hope they stay configured.
Rackspace are fully committed to no information. I filed a ticket asking what we were getting for the tripled price:
First and second level answers:
"Thank you for reaching out. I have received your feedback regarding the recent price increase for your email service, and I want to sincerely acknowledge your frustration.
We understand that any change in pricing impacts your business, and we do not take these adjustments lightly. The decision to update our rates was made to ensure we can continue to provide the security, reliability, and support infrastructure that your service requires.
Our goal is to maintain the high standard of service you expect from us, and these adjustments, while high, allow us to keep pace with the increasing costs of managing professional email environments.
We truly value your business and appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective with us."
I asked for further escalation: "This is management speak. Why are you tripling prices with no benefit to customers? Escalate to someone who can answer."
General Manager:
"Hey there,
Management here, and what [Agents Names] responded is the reality. If you have any specific questions please do let us know. We do hope to continue serving you and your business. "
At least none of respondents had "Fanatical" in the signatures. I guess "Fanatical Support" is dead.
"Hey there" is a strange way to address a customer.
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fatdickie
macrumors newbie
Fanatical Support is incompatible with our new AI age. 🙂
Rackspace Email used to be an amazing product. I think it was like $1 a mailbox for a long time, then the pricing doubled, and then they start putting minimum monthly commits on services something like $12 a month. I jumped off at that point. Support really was great, they'd help and walk you through anything you needed pretty much 24x7.
Email is such a hassle these days; having to maintain feedback loops with all the big email providers, cleanup mess left behind by spammy customers who have probably already initiated a chargeback, etc. And then you've got all the regulations that require different levels of email retention in different jurisdictions, dealing with government information requests, and so on. I'm not surprised service charges are going way up in this environment.
Unfortunately, my sending to Hotmail problem is back. Emails to family rejected because IP is on a blocklist. But, MXToolbox shows the IP address as ok on all checked lists. I have an active ticket with Fastmail since Monday; waiting for devs to respond. Wondering in parallel if others here using Fastmail have had this problem and if there's any solution. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are configured on my end. Can send to GMail ok and they're also very particular about IP reputation...
smithrh
macrumors 68030
Another ex-Rackspace email customer here....
They used to be awesome. Great pricing, decent support, push, Outlook/push (needed that for the business), all that jazz.
Then the incident came and it went to hell instantly.
Absolute radio silence, vast chunks of email missing, service up and down, support unreachable. I heard about the incident not from Rackspace but from the news.
Got out immediately. It wasn't even a choice, staying just wasn't tenable.
Settled (and that's the right word) with MS365 for small business - which includes email hosting. Honestly? Another cluster.
Next to nonexistent support. This is yet another product that's being offered where the company is dearly hoping that you pay but ask zero questions and barely touch the services.
But the kicker came when I needed to send a very small number of emails to clients. I used their published procedures for a customized mass email (not spam in any way), and MS froze everything. Locked out. No recourse. Had to wait some amount of time (24 hours?) to even contact support.*
So I get the rationale behind avoiding companies that can ruin your efforts on a whim.
But as the poster above mentions, the email hosting space is not a great one. Too many people doing too many sketchy things has led to an absolutely amazing amount of technology hell bent on smoking them out. Unless you're completely up to speed on this tech, getting your email reliably delivered from any of these hosting services is a crapshoot. Note, I'm not talking about mass emails either. Regular email would often get silently discarded between it being sent and it getting to the recipient. Troubleshooting that is an art that I've been thankfully done with for a couple of years now.
In the end, I went with Apple not really as a hosting service but as email relay. I have several private domains, and they all wind up in the same place, which is what I wanted.
Apple has its own issues, of course. One of which is silently failing all incoming and outgoing email if you've hit your iCloud space limit. It's really not for business use but will do in a pinch.
I have contacted Apple for support with email, and once past the first support tier, support is actually top-notch.
* I suspect lots of spammers sign up with MS and this is MS's way of dealing with them and slowing them down but to trap a legitimate customer this way was inexcusable.
They used to be awesome. Great pricing, decent support, push, Outlook/push (needed that for the business), all that jazz.
Then the incident came and it went to hell instantly.
Absolute radio silence, vast chunks of email missing, service up and down, support unreachable. I heard about the incident not from Rackspace but from the news.
Got out immediately. It wasn't even a choice, staying just wasn't tenable.
Settled (and that's the right word) with MS365 for small business - which includes email hosting. Honestly? Another cluster.
Next to nonexistent support. This is yet another product that's being offered where the company is dearly hoping that you pay but ask zero questions and barely touch the services.
But the kicker came when I needed to send a very small number of emails to clients. I used their published procedures for a customized mass email (not spam in any way), and MS froze everything. Locked out. No recourse. Had to wait some amount of time (24 hours?) to even contact support.*
So I get the rationale behind avoiding companies that can ruin your efforts on a whim.
But as the poster above mentions, the email hosting space is not a great one. Too many people doing too many sketchy things has led to an absolutely amazing amount of technology hell bent on smoking them out. Unless you're completely up to speed on this tech, getting your email reliably delivered from any of these hosting services is a crapshoot. Note, I'm not talking about mass emails either. Regular email would often get silently discarded between it being sent and it getting to the recipient. Troubleshooting that is an art that I've been thankfully done with for a couple of years now.
In the end, I went with Apple not really as a hosting service but as email relay. I have several private domains, and they all wind up in the same place, which is what I wanted.
Apple has its own issues, of course. One of which is silently failing all incoming and outgoing email if you've hit your iCloud space limit. It's really not for business use but will do in a pinch.
I have contacted Apple for support with email, and once past the first support tier, support is actually top-notch.
* I suspect lots of spammers sign up with MS and this is MS's way of dealing with them and slowing them down but to trap a legitimate customer this way was inexcusable.
smithrh
macrumors 68030
IP reputation, domain reputation, sender reputation, AI reading of email content, DKIM/DMARC and as I understand it there's been yet another layer of tech put in place since I was dealing with all of this a couple years ago.
It's a massive pain. Troubleshooting is an art.
And the worst thing is, spam somehow still leaks through.
IvyKing
macrumors 6502
My wife has said that she often gets an "invalid email address" error when entering her Fastmail address on several different websites requiring an email address to access the features of the website.
I've wondered if some of the major email providers, such as Hotmail, go out of their way to deny access from smaller email providers. Had that problem on occasion with Speakeasy.