[the_jeremy]

I also use this. Pros: super cheap. <$2/mo for all my custom email addresses and routing rules. Nothing else came close - everything else I found would make me pay per email address even if that address receives an average of 0 emails per month. The wildcard suffixes are really nice as well - they use _ instead of gmail's + (I've had issues with gmail's version as it sometimes is transparently removed, or sometimes the form doesn't consider + a valid character).

Cons: UI is bad, so you'll want to access through a client. 1 person shop. Not audited AFAIK.

[em-bee]

+ is not gmail.

+ is industry standard, supported by almost all mail servers (if configured) since long before gmail existed.

[bsder]

The problem with "+" isn't the email side.

The problem with "+" is dumbass Javascript developers who use broken regexes to "validate" an email address.

[em-bee]

right. that's very frustrating. just a few days ago i had to create another email alias because of it.

+ was always a legal character, right from the first SMTP RFC 822

[hHdG5BVhm31Nev]

My email for one of my CC accounts is like [e-mail] because it allows plus-addressing, but doesn't like my domain.

In other words, don't worry, they'll find a way to block your email one way or another. :P

[MatekCopatek]

It's gmail in the sense that they deliver you+[whatever]@gmail.com to [e-mail]

By default it's just a valid character.

[em-bee]

nope, exactly this feature you describe is what i am referring to. it's not a gmail invention. not by a long shot.

[sethammons]

Not a gmail invention perhaps, but also not per RFC. That some use it to mean something special is not in the RFC. Actually, a significant number of SMTP servers don't even implement the required parts of the related RFCs, let alone fancy things like plus handling.

[em-bee]

it is not in the SMTP RFC because it is a purely local matter that does not affect email routing.

there are a number of servers that support it. wikipedia lists some if them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Sub-addressing

[Sami_Lehtinen]

Agreed, most of email servers and services are broken per RFC. I've blogged about this over and over again.

[wiml]

I think it originated with CMU's email system (the use of the "+" sign specifically).

[technothrasher]

You're right. Originally the + sign in an email address was an indicator to the Andrew Message System's delivery agent to process the email in an extensible way. The syntax was +<keyword>+<args>. As an example. you could use "user+dir-insert+misc" to route the message to the "misc" directory in the user's mailbox structure. An unknown keyword would just get ignored and the mail delivered as usual, giving the behavior as used today.

[MatekCopatek]

TIL! Thanks, was not aware of that.

[sigio]

As stated by others, + addressing is not gmail specific. One thing that gmail does however is allowing you to add (or remove) arbitrary dots in your mail-address, and these are stripped out / all end up in the same mailbox.

[dejan]

hmm, at that price you could try https://migadu.com

[akvadrako]

https://mailbox.org comes pretty close.

[crossroadsguy]

I know online services or any service depends a lot on personal interaction experiences and personal expectations from those services and people involved in those services, but I can't leave mailbox.org sooner.

I have tried/explored couple of them like Mailbox.org (of course, current user), Fastmail, Proton, and Runbox etc. Given everything http://runbox.com seems to be the best among them - much better than Mailbox. In fact for Mailbox their less than 'less than ideal' support is enough for me to move elsewhere once my balance runs out (which I foolishly pumped in more than I should have had)

Runbox isn't w/o its challenges but they do certain things really nice and they are: prompt, not into disregard a request in its entirety, not un-kind, not-jerk, not-flippant, not-entitled, not-costly, not into offering unusable shit that you don't need in an email suite to begin with, and basically open and engaging.

So while I am not a customer right now, once the mailbox.org balance is close to running out and I will leave mailbox (and leave them I will) Runbox is the first contender to replace them right now.

[akvadrako]

I tried runbox before mailbox.org but it didn't work for me.

They didn't support a server-side filter that copied emails from the inbox to another folder. And something was wrong with their DKIM support, but my notes don't say what.

mailbox.org has it's problems though and I'd be happy to find something better.

[crossroadsguy]

> didn't support a server-side filter that copied emails from the inbox to another folder

You mean a rule where you can say [mail:received-from="domain:xyz.com" > move to > "Saved" folder] - and it happens, something like this? Honestly I did not check it but I guess they might handle it.

During my trials I didn't find any issue with their DKIM support. https://help.runbox.com/dkim-signing/ seems fine to me. You might want to ask if you are interested, unlike mailbox.org they do reply, and they reply promptly, and they reply as if they mean it.

> I'd be happy to find something better

Please do share here on HN if you happen to find something better. Cheers.

[LaSombra]

Yup. Have been with them for a couple years now and it has been really stable.

[xigoi]

That seems to have a limited number of addresses.

[riezebos]

As far as I can tell Fastmail comes pretty close, I have as many email addresses as I want on multiple domains and a bunch of routing rules for €4/mo.

[rstuart4133]

How do you do that on Fastmail? I only see per email address pricing with each email address cost close to what you pay.

[riezebos]

Oh, maybe I didn't mean the same as you. I can create as many email addresses as I want, but they all go to the same inbox. Multiple inboxes would cost more.

In the pricing page it is listed in the "Individual" plan as "+ Extra email addresses for personal and work".

Edit: It is possible to create an extra email address and set it up so that all emails it receives are sent to a different external email address

[indigodaddy]

Various shared hosting likely will always beat this price. Caveat is that many shared hosters don't know how to properly run mail servers within their shared hosting infra. Many do, however.

[kanodiaashu]

did you compare with Zoho mail?

[eps]

Zoho produces a lot of spam and regularly ends up on blocklists.

[zelphirkalt]

posteo has been great for me and also allows you to define aliases, thou each alias costs 10c per month. If you stay below 10 aliases, it is <2€ per month as well.

[noja]

Doesn’t support custom domains