We provide this as a service. Have an option for us to convert it over
pretty seamlessly as far as the customer is concerned as well. I think
the pricing is $1 a month per account for 10G box. Shoot me an email if
your interested.
I personally have been hosting email since 1998 and at one time it was
at a very large scale just under 100k users. Back the I would say it was
difficult mainly because of the IO requirements on the servers. We would
run SMTP servers with extra memory for a ramdrive mailque. Same for our
inbound spam filters. Had Proxy servers to direct customers to their
actual server that hosted the mail files. It took a whole rack of
computers to host email for what now could be easily done on a singe 1U
server with NVME drives.
Needles to say for me it can be more difficult using a hosted solution
because when there is a problem I can't fix any of it. Especially
recently there has been a bunch of aggregation in the web hosting
space. Endurance International has gobbled up Hostgator, ipage, blue
host, web.com, domain.com, etc. In the process they have migrated email
servers and in almost every instance forgot to update their DKIM, and
SPF records.
On 1/16/2026 3:35 PM, Steve Jones wrote:
We still provide legacy email. Debating on whether to continue.
Rackspace just bumped our cost from .47 a box to 4 bucks a box and we
still have about 296 boxes. 85 are paid (weird, right) and about 211
are free. Its was pretty hands off, with rackspace. Kind of
irritating, we just went through a family acquisition and ended up
migrating to a new business domain to get into a collaborative email
environment without needing 300 boxes. and now we may dump the email
anyway.
There is zero interest in self hosting, or managing an email server
whatsoever. Email stickiness isnt what it used to be. but I do feel
for some of these folks, elderly, been with us for 20 years.
The following is our current list of contenders, any im missing, any
who are plague, and who are great? These are just set and forget imap
boxes
*PolarisMail*
*
*Pros:* Best fit. Base plan includes 25GB (supports our heavy
users). *Free managed migration services* (saves us ~40 hours).
Dedicated reseller program.
*
*Cons:* Slightly higher cost than OpenSRS (~$1.50/mo), but
significantly lower than Rackspace.
*
*Status:* /Inquiry Sent./
*Tucows / OpenSRS*
*
*Pros:* Lowest cost. Pay-per-tier model ($0.50 for 5GB users). We
only pay extra for the few heavy users.
*
*Cons:* High admin overhead. We must manually monitor and upgrade
user quotas to prevent full mailboxes. DIY Migration.
*
*Status:* /Inquiry Sent./
*DreamHost*
*
*Pros:* Simple flat pricing (~$1.67/mo) with 25GB for everyone. No
quota management needed.
*
*Cons:* Retail-focused support (Chat only), DIY migration, less
"ISP-aware" than Polaris/Tucows.
*
*Status:* /Inquiry Sent./
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*⚠️ THE "PROCEED WITH CAUTION" LIST*
*Sherweb* (Existing Partner)
*
*Pros:* We already have a relationship; reliable infrastructure.
*
*Cons:* Pricing likely too high ($2.00–$3.00/user) to solve our
core cost issue.
*
*Status:* /Reaching out to rep./
*Namecheap*
*
*Pros:* Cheap first-year pricing.
*
*Cons:* *"Trap" pricing.* Basic plan has low storage (5GB) and NO
mobile sync (ActiveSync). Upgrading to Pro for features/storage
makes it expensive ($42/yr).
*
*Status:* /Inquiry Sent (Low priority)./
*Zoho Mail*
*
*Pros:* Great interface, reliable.
*
*Cons:* *Storage Limits.* Strict 5GB/10GB caps on cheap plans.
Migrating our 25GB users will fail unless we buy expensive
enterprise licenses for them.
*
*Status:* /Inquiry Sent (Likely incompatible)./
*Migadu*
*
*Pros:* Flat fee for unlimited users.
*
*Cons:* *Critical Risk.* Uses a "Shared Sending Limit." If one
customer spams, /all/ our customers get blocked. No ActiveSync.
*
*Status:* /Inquiry Sent (Not recommended)./
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