[AuthAuth]

For me its going from $0 to $15 a month using Proton which feels way to high. Im cutting proton and switching to Proton free tier for email and Backblaze for storage. Getting a little $100 pc to put in my draw to handle hosting all the stuff i need. My budget is around $10 a month to cover all the tech NEEDS. I think its doable but I will need to pay with my time to learn about/setup a foss stack. I'll also need to put some money aside to drop a donation to each project in the stack yearly.

[ahofmann]

If Proton is too expensive, you can use zoho. I switched from Google and I'm missing nothing.

[itake]

I moved from Zoho to Gmail, b/c of their pricing. Google's basic plan is $7/mo [0], whereas the lowest cost plan with zoho is $25/mo [1].

Zoho's free plan stopped offering custom domains and/or limits imap access.

[0] - https://workspace.google.com/lp/business/ [1] - https://www.zoho.com/us/billing/pricing/

[zxjinn]

The zoho link you provided is for the billing product, not the email product. I use zoho with three low usage domains and pay $1 a month.

https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html

[gandalfgreybeer]

Proton’s $4 a month is where I ended up landing a few years ago and it’s cheaper with the 2-year lock in they give every now and then. Sharing just in case it’s buried under unlimited. Although our usage may vary in case there are things in unlimited you need.

[omnimus]

Infomaniak is cheaper and in my experience a lot better swiss provider.

[cinntaile]

I don't think a $10 budget will suffice.

[AuthAuth]

My tech needs arent huge. Email+email alias service, cloud storage for PC backups and syncing data across devices, VPN, server to host internet thangs, domain, mobile data. Yeah now that im laying it out $10 is not going to be enough but i'll try my best to work within the constraints and see what I can do. I'll probably do a need budget for $10 and a wants budget of $20.

[subscribed]

You really don't want to host email yourself. Major PITA, time sink and constant possibility of your emails being just silently discarded after being accepted at the big providers.

[dvdkon]

10 USD seems like it should cover the electricity for a small mini PC server (counting maybe 30 watts idle), and if your electricity isn't expensive, it will cover the purchase cost spread over a few years too.

That of course assumes time is free, so I wouldn't compare it to cloud pricing directly. I'd also personally budget in incremental backups.