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Old 28 Nov 2016, 05:58 AM   #1
paul29
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 166
Migadu (new email host from Switzerland) mini-pre-review

I just saw a thread about this on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13048334) and thought I'd relay the info to here.

The site is Migadu.com. I haven't tried it yet but have looked at it and it's interesting. My quick impressions and comments:
  • They host email for your domain(s), rather than giving you an address with their hostname. You have to set up MX, DKIM, SPF. So it's not like Fastmail, Gmail, etc. More like mxroute. They support IMAP etc. plus webmail and they can host DNS for you like Fastmail.
  • You get unlimited storage, unlimited domains, unlimited mailboxes on all the paid tiers. There is a limit on number of outgoing messages per day you can send. That limit depends on your pricing tier.
  • There is a free tier with (updated) 1GB storage, 20 msg/day sending limit, and 1 email domain that puts a promotional ("sent from Migadu") signature in your outgoing messages. Lowest paid tier is $4/month (annual payment) or $5/month (month to month) and it gets rid of this signature.
  • You can keep using the free tier as long as you want (no expiration). It's nice to be able to have good free mail hosting for your own domain, though I suspect it will get burdensome for Migadu after a while. Fastmail eventually had to stop giving out free plans, though people who already had them got to keep using them. Mxroute has always been paid-only afaik.
  • Their web site is very clean and responsive (based on rainloop), though it still doesn't work without javascript. I know that JS enables some things that are impossible without it, but I don't understand why people don't eliminate the requirement when they can.
  • They don't support 2FA at the moment and when someone asked about it in the HN thread, they asked why you'd want that. Just thought I better mention this.
  • I recently signed up for mxroute.com's black friday special which is an insane deal (don't know if any are left), but Migadu certainly has a nicer looking web site and they say part of their product is highly personalized support, which can be a good thing. The unlimited storage ("we trust you won't abuse it") means they presumably are willing to compete with the larger plans at places like Mxroute. The smallest regular Mxroute plan (5GB storage, $25/year) is cheaper than Migadu's smallest paid plan if your storage requirements are limited. Mxroute is closer to unmanaged hosting though.
  • They are doing their own webmail client. I haven't seen it or tried it but I can understand that the regular FOSS ones (Roundcube and Squirrelmail primarily) aren't very nice. I usually hate the entire concept of web design (I like sites like craigslist / prgmr.com / HN which have almost no design) but these guys are good. (Added: screen shot is at http://imgur.com/a/Xt4CQ via HN).
  • I left a comment on the Migadu comment form and one of their staff responded within about 2 minutes, which was impressive.
  • Their FAQ and sales pages are informative, and refreshingly free of hype and fluff.
Anyway I'd say Migadu is promising enough to be of interest here. I'll probably give their free plan a try just to see what it's like, though will probably stay with fastmail and/or mxroute (I already have paid plans on both).

Disclosures: I have no connection with migadu and hadn't heard of it til this morning. I've been a mostly-satisfied, paying Fastmail user for 2 years or so (Fastmail made recent changes that I don't like though). I've been acquainted online with the founder of Mxroute for a while and I have a paid plan (actually 2) with them that I haven't yet used.

Last edited by paul29 : 28 Nov 2016 at 06:58 AM. Reason: added screen shot and some small fixes/updates
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