Purelymail for clients: setup, forwarding, send-as, backup

silenci · 27 May 2023, 04:52 PM

I read many good things in here and on some other forums about Purelymail.

I usually recommend my clients (web design business) to go for the big players (O365, Google Workspace) or to have someone else handling emails. I understood after endless hours of researching how complicated email can be, and don't want to have too much to do with it.

However, there are those few very small clients that need to have everything from one person, like they had it with their cheap shared web hosting. One account and everything included. I could set them up on my cPanel hosting, but I am not that happy to have hosting + emails from client tied. I prefer to have it separated from my hosting.

Those clients don't require much, as long as email deliverability is good, setup is easy, spam protection is good enough. They probably need only 1 to 3 mailboxes each.

1.)
Would you sign up for one account at Purelymail on your own or let each of those clients set up their own account?
I feel the later would be the more appropriate (client owns, client pays) but there is a big overhead (explain it to them, handholding, more complicated setup, sharing of user/pw, etc.)

2.)
Do you have some backup in place? I only read that people download the emails locally to Thunderbird or Outlook. That's not a real backup. And it also lies in the client's hands.

3.)
Will it work or harm deliverability (inbound) if I just forward all emails that go to office@client.com to their private Gmail address client@gmail.com? (keep in mind, it's very small clients, they don't want to mess around with email and basically just use what they have)

4.)
Will it work or harm deliverability (outbound) if I use the send-as feature in Gmail? It's a one time setup with the client, but then they could just go to their Gmail and send-as office@client.com (Gmail alias). But will this work, or will those emails be likely filtered out and never delivered

I hope I can get some input from more experienced users and admins about it. Because the more I read about it, the more complicated it gets it seems.

jeffpan · 3 Jun 2023, 08:24 AM

believe me, write to contact or support@purelymail.com the author would be kindly enough to reply you.

TenFour · 4 Jun 2023, 01:39 AM

I have been using Purelymail for a few years. The answer to #1 I think is that it is up to you to decide how much handholding your clients need. Personally, I think Purelymail is fairly straightforward for those who have set up and used other email services, but not for the average person. 2. My backup is that all mail from Purelymail goes to a personal Gmail account via POP3. 3. I haven't noticed any problems with forwarding, but it is probably better for most people to use Gmail to fetch the mail from Purelymail. Then you can send and receive as whatever your address is for the Purelymail account. 4. Deliverability is always problematic. I haven't had any major problems sending from Gmail via Purelymail's SMTP, but I don't send a lot of mail to a lot of different people. Things like your particular domain reputation, what types of messages you are sending, etc. can hurt or help your deliverability. I am not sure you can use Purelymail for bulk emailing to lots of people.

27 May 2023, 04:52 PM	#1
silenci Junior Member Join Date: May 2023 Posts: 1	Purelymail for clients: setup, forwarding, send-as, backup I read many good things in here and on some other forums about Purelymail. I usually recommend my clients (web design business) to go for the big players (O365, Google Workspace) or to have someone else handling emails. I understood after endless hours of researching how complicated email can be, and don't want to have too much to do with it. However, there are those few very small clients that need to have everything from one person, like they had it with their cheap shared web hosting. One account and everything included. I could set them up on my cPanel hosting, but I am not that happy to have hosting + emails from client tied. I prefer to have it separated from my hosting. Those clients don't require much, as long as email deliverability is good, setup is easy, spam protection is good enough. They probably need only 1 to 3 mailboxes each. 1.) Would you sign up for one account at Purelymail on your own or let each of those clients set up their own account? I feel the later would be the more appropriate (client owns, client pays) but there is a big overhead (explain it to them, handholding, more complicated setup, sharing of user/pw, etc.) 2.) Do you have some backup in place? I only read that people download the emails locally to Thunderbird or Outlook. That's not a real backup. And it also lies in the client's hands. 3.) Will it work or harm deliverability (inbound) if I just forward all emails that go to office@client.com to their private Gmail address client@gmail.com? (keep in mind, it's very small clients, they don't want to mess around with email and basically just use what they have) 4.) Will it work or harm deliverability (outbound) if I use the send-as feature in Gmail? It's a one time setup with the client, but then they could just go to their Gmail and send-as office@client.com (Gmail alias). But will this work, or will those emails be likely filtered out and never delivered I hope I can get some input from more experienced users and admins about it. Because the more I read about it, the more complicated it gets it seems.

3 Jun 2023, 08:24 AM	#2
jeffpan The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Macao Posts: 2,161 Representative of: tls-mail.com	believe me, write to contact or support@purelymail.com the author would be kindly enough to reply you.

4 Jun 2023, 01:39 AM	#3
TenFour Master of the @ Join Date: Feb 2017 Location: USA Posts: 1,749	I have been using Purelymail for a few years. The answer to #1 I think is that it is up to you to decide how much handholding your clients need. Personally, I think Purelymail is fairly straightforward for those who have set up and used other email services, but not for the average person. 2. My backup is that all mail from Purelymail goes to a personal Gmail account via POP3. 3. I haven't noticed any problems with forwarding, but it is probably better for most people to use Gmail to fetch the mail from Purelymail. Then you can send and receive as whatever your address is for the Purelymail account. 4. Deliverability is always problematic. I haven't had any major problems sending from Gmail via Purelymail's SMTP, but I don't send a lot of mail to a lot of different people. Things like your particular domain reputation, what types of messages you are sending, etc. can hurt or help your deliverability. I am not sure you can use Purelymail for bulk emailing to lots of people.