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ServerPilot

Guide to hosting email

ServerPilot installs and configures Postfix so your scripts can send email from your server. However, ServerPilot does not manage mail servers for hosting your domain’s email.

If you need to receive email at your domain, you can either use a professional mail hosting provider, a mail forwarding service, or run your own mail server.

Professional email hosting providers

An email hosting provider handles all aspects of your domain’s email. You point your domain’s MX records to their mail servers so mail sent to your domain goes directly to their servers. They provide spam filtering and webmail. They also provide POP and IMAP access to your mail as well as SMTP servers that can be configured with local email clients like Outlook.

Google Apps

For most businesses, Google Apps is the best choice for email hosting.

Using Google Apps for your domain, every account at your domain will have access to the same Gmail webmail interface your users are used to with their @gmail.com accounts. However, all email sent and received will be for your domain name, not for @gmail.com.

You can also use Google Groups as mailing lists for your domain.

Office 365

For businesses based on Microsoft products and Outlook, Office 365 can be a good choice for email hosting.

FastMail

FastMail is a reputable email hosting provider for personal projects and organizations with small budgets.

Mail forwarding

If you only need email sent to your domain to be forwarded to another email address, you don’t need full email hosting but instead just an email forwarding service.

Mail forwarding allows you to have mail that is sent to name@YOUR_DOMAIN automatically forwarded to another address, such as an @gmail.com address. You can then configure your Gmail account to send mail from your domain’s email address so people see emails you send from Gmail as coming from name@YOUR_DOMAIN.

There are free email forwarding services, but they sometimes have restrictions. Namecheap offers a free email forwarding service, but it requires you to use Namecheap’s nameservers for your domain’s DNS.

Paid forwarding services are inexpensive and generally don’t have the same restrictions. Hover offers mail forwarding for $5/year (that is, $5 for an entire year) for each forwarded address.

Run your own mail server

It is possible to host email on a separate server of your own by using an open-source mail hosting control panel.

iRedMail

iRedMail is an open source tool for configuring and managing a mail server.

Mailcow

Mailcow is an open source tool for configuring and managing a mail server.