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Zoho Mail
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I’m planning on moving my email host to a new host called Zoho. This company is based out of India, and have been around since 1996. Their focus is offering their web-based Zoho Office Suite, for business, rivaling Google Workspace and MicroSoft 365. Comparing prices, Zoho is a much cheaper alternative. Breaking down their office pricing, Zoho charges $72 a year, while Google and Microsoft charges $150 a year.
Before I go into more details about W♥M move to Zoho, I wanted to give you a little backstory.
Google used to offer free custom email, as long as you register or domain-map to Google. That’s pretty cool, I took advantage of the free Google emails for 15 years. Unfortunately, in 2022, Google announced that they were going to start charging for email. By 2023, Google started charging $10 (now $12) a month. While $10 won’t break the bank, that’s per user. I had at least four other users (it now costs $50 a month). That’s $600 a year!
In 2023, I purchased an iBrave domain host, and as part of the purchase, they had a free custom email service. I switched over to the iBrave email host in Feb 2024. While that process didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped, and the email interface is god-awful, I didn’t complain because it was FREE. I’m saving $50 a month, I tell myself.
iBrave uses Stackmail as an interface and retrieval and sending email. I’ve had many problems with Stackmail, mostly complaining that it was slow. Sometime it wouldn’t send email. Sometime it would flag legitimate emails as spam… it’s a mess. Still, for the price of FREE, I couldn’t really complain.
Of course, as you know, in June 2024, iBrave announced their closure. They gave us a five-month notice, so in that time, I’ve been looking for a new web host. Based on pricing (they’re all so expensive), I probably won’t seek out to re-build my thegeorgeperez.com website. Instead, I will just forward the URL to the facebook page (which has 10k followers).
As for emails, remember how I was talking about Zoho earlier? The beauty of Zoho is that they offer a standalone custom email service. You don’t have to bundle the rest of their Office Suite software. It’s just email, that’s all.
If you only need five custom emails (for one domain name), it’s actually free. However, since I need IMAP and POP service, I will have to pay. Pricing isn’t bad either, it’s $12 a year for their most basic email service. My only complaint is that they restrict attachments to 250MB. You can pay more to send 1GB files, and perhaps in the future, if I like the service enough that I will upgrade, but for now, just try out their service, I think $12 a year, per user, is reasonable.
Also, I don’t know how it will work, but if I just use POP to download a copy on my Gmail account and send emails through Gmail, then the attachment restrictions are lifted (since I’m using Gmail to send emails). I think this might only work as POP, since IMAP is a one-to-one synchronization, so it may not work as IMAP. Who knows, I won’t know until I do some testing.
Anyway, I’m planning on making the email migration to Zoho tomorrow (September 10), so hopefully it will go smoothly.
Update 09/10/2024: Everything is working, for the most part. I had to find out why emails were being rejected (I had to update the SPF file). I also found out that if you have two-factor turned on your email, then you can’t use IMAP/POP (which you also had to manually turn on - it is off by default). A lot of learning experience. I am sure this is not the last of it, but I am just happy that it is working for me, for now.
Before I go into more details about W♥M move to Zoho, I wanted to give you a little backstory.
Google used to offer free custom email, as long as you register or domain-map to Google. That’s pretty cool, I took advantage of the free Google emails for 15 years. Unfortunately, in 2022, Google announced that they were going to start charging for email. By 2023, Google started charging $10 (now $12) a month. While $10 won’t break the bank, that’s per user. I had at least four other users (it now costs $50 a month). That’s $600 a year!
In 2023, I purchased an iBrave domain host, and as part of the purchase, they had a free custom email service. I switched over to the iBrave email host in Feb 2024. While that process didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped, and the email interface is god-awful, I didn’t complain because it was FREE. I’m saving $50 a month, I tell myself.
iBrave uses Stackmail as an interface and retrieval and sending email. I’ve had many problems with Stackmail, mostly complaining that it was slow. Sometime it wouldn’t send email. Sometime it would flag legitimate emails as spam… it’s a mess. Still, for the price of FREE, I couldn’t really complain.
Of course, as you know, in June 2024, iBrave announced their closure. They gave us a five-month notice, so in that time, I’ve been looking for a new web host. Based on pricing (they’re all so expensive), I probably won’t seek out to re-build my thegeorgeperez.com website. Instead, I will just forward the URL to the facebook page (which has 10k followers).
As for emails, remember how I was talking about Zoho earlier? The beauty of Zoho is that they offer a standalone custom email service. You don’t have to bundle the rest of their Office Suite software. It’s just email, that’s all.
If you only need five custom emails (for one domain name), it’s actually free. However, since I need IMAP and POP service, I will have to pay. Pricing isn’t bad either, it’s $12 a year for their most basic email service. My only complaint is that they restrict attachments to 250MB. You can pay more to send 1GB files, and perhaps in the future, if I like the service enough that I will upgrade, but for now, just try out their service, I think $12 a year, per user, is reasonable.
Also, I don’t know how it will work, but if I just use POP to download a copy on my Gmail account and send emails through Gmail, then the attachment restrictions are lifted (since I’m using Gmail to send emails). I think this might only work as POP, since IMAP is a one-to-one synchronization, so it may not work as IMAP. Who knows, I won’t know until I do some testing.
Anyway, I’m planning on making the email migration to Zoho tomorrow (September 10), so hopefully it will go smoothly.
Update 09/10/2024: Everything is working, for the most part. I had to find out why emails were being rejected (I had to update the SPF file). I also found out that if you have two-factor turned on your email, then you can’t use IMAP/POP (which you also had to manually turn on - it is off by default). A lot of learning experience. I am sure this is not the last of it, but I am just happy that it is working for me, for now.
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