Kitz Forum

Internet => Web Browsing & Email => Topic started by: z1ts on February 16, 2017, 01:27:47 PM

Title: Email Hosting
Post by: z1ts on February 16, 2017, 01:27:47 PM
Hi Kitizens!

I currently host my personal mail account(s) on my business M$ Exchange server and have a separate domain with a few extra accounts on (think for kids/wife/brothers/dad/mum etc!)

I'm looking to move away from the hassle of hosting my own mail & find something online that can help me!  Any suggestions??

We have (un)fortunately fallen in love with the various things that Exchange offers us, specifically Contacts & Calendar sync.

I have looked at a few providers who provide very good free services, one I like particularly is Zoho's mail offering.  Its limitations for me are that it will only do IMAP/POP on a PC (so no Calendar/Contact sync)

Does anyone know of a free (or cheap) service that I can persue?  I could always go down the route of Hosted M$ Exchange which will do exactly what I want, but at £3/user it'll run me up a bill of nearly £300 p/a which is a tad steep if I can get it free!!!

Thanks in advance for your help :)

Regards

zts
Title: Re: Email Hosting
Post by: broadstairs on February 16, 2017, 02:24:19 PM
Do you have a website hosted anywhere as many people will do email alongside hosting? That's what I use for my email rather than my ISP.

Stuart
Title: Re: Email Hosting
Post by: NEXUS2345 on February 16, 2017, 06:03:06 PM
The Outlook.com offering from Microsoft is very good, and is of course linked to its Calendar and contacts services. The Outlook app for smartphones is extremely powerful for an email client, as it integrates email, with calendar, contacts and even OneDrive file sharing. In my opinion, that is probably the best solution available if you are looking to migrate away from M$ Exchange. And of course, it is free, although they do offer an "Ad-free" version for something like £15 a year. There is also Office365 if you want to add more storage to the email account and OneDrive and get access to the latest Office applications.
Title: Re: Email Hosting
Post by: z1ts on February 16, 2017, 08:42:29 PM
Thank you, kind gentlefolk!

@broadstairs - my domain host does include some kind of email service, but it is fairly limited to a webmail login and a rather crippled IMAP offering (which is why I haven't pursued that option much!)

@nexus2345 - thanks, I will take a look at that. I wasn't aware that the outlook.com product could be used with your own domain.  Will definitely be top of the list if you are able as I have used it for my mother-in-law's mail account & to be honest I was very impressed!!  (it used the outlook.com domain as the email address though - i.e. username@outlook.com)

Thanks both

If anyone else has any suggestions - let me have them!

Regards

z1ts
Title: Re: Email Hosting
Post by: NEXUS2345 on February 16, 2017, 09:27:52 PM
In terms of using your own domain, I believe that is a more premium feature. I appear to have glazed over that in your original post so I apologise for that. It appears that there is currently a US only Outlook.com Premium which gives you 5 email addresses associated to a single account for $20/yr, plus removes ads. That is as far as I can find on this without you having to look towards the business packages of Office365, so I apologise again for not realising this from your original post.
Title: Re: Email Hosting
Post by: Weaver on February 17, 2017, 05:01:58 AM
If you don't need Microsoft-specific capabilities then I thoroughly recommend UK Servers Ltd for mail hosting - virtualnames.co.uk. A very small company in Somerset, I have used them for around fifteen years and they have always been absolutely superb, real humans to talk to. They have a  complete set of features including full control over dns, plenty of mailboxes, encrypted connections, powerful customizeable anti-virus and anti-spam and custom filtering rules are extremely cost-effective. See
    http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/email_services.php
and
    https://www.vnhelp.co.uk/email/mb/using/settings/
but do ask if you get lost.
Title: Re: Email Hosting
Post by: z1ts on February 17, 2017, 07:55:48 AM
Thanks again :)

I've been pursuing Zoho's mail offering in more detail and have actually set up a free account to do some testing!  It appears that in addition to the standard POP & IMAP access offered, there is something (touted as being mobile only) called EAS (Exchange ActiveSync).

Having tinkered a bit here and there, I have realised that I can set up my Zoho account as an EAS account in my M$ Outlook 2013 (on laptop)!!  So bingo!  Problem solved ;)

So in conclusion, Zoho's mail offering with your own domain (free with up to 5GB per user) is a jolly good solution for me/us.

Cheers for all your input

Regards

z1ts
Title: Re: Email Hosting
Post by: Chunkers on February 17, 2017, 08:32:36 AM
I have been using Zoho's free service as my primary webmail address for a while now after getting fed up with Yahoo and GoogleMail.  It has been great, tbh.

Chunks
Title: Re: Email Hosting
Post by: z1ts on February 17, 2017, 09:31:08 AM
Thanks @chunkers - webmail isn't a huge deal for me these days as with a laptop & smartphone I'm never far from something that's got it just 'there' without the need to login via browser ;)

Nice to hear you've got along OK with it.

If anyone else has comments/experience regarding Zoho's mail then I'd love to hear!

Regs

z1ts