IMAP Mail Hosting for my own domain?

wanted to see what recommendations are currently for decent, reliable, and affordable IMAP mail hosting for my own domain. Currently I'm using Google apps IMAP to do this, and it's okay, but the "label" vs "folder" thing is confusing and I've got the standard concerns over security and privacy.

My situation is that this is for family email. I'm using Mail on Leopard. I want to be able to have [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

I know enough about this to be dangerous. Some of the services I've read about (e.g., fastmail) seem to indicate you can't have multiple accounts under one domain without paying the $165 per year "family" plan -- that seems absurd.

Thanks for any current thoughts on good IMAP services.

If you have a mac (which I assume you do, seeing as you are a member of this forum), you can just use Apple's "Mail" application.

He's talking about hosting solutions, not client ones.


Now onto the topic, what level of administration are you looking to have to do?

I know it doesnt help but I am also using google apps

I use it for my business as well. The flexibility is great. And although I agree with privacy questions, the folders and labels dont bother me since I use the search feature of Mail.app

Google Apps

Google Apps

Buy your domain with godaddy or whoever, then configure your cname and mx records to point to google. Works amazingly well for me and is very fast to set up

It appears that is what he is doing right now

but wants a new system.

It appears I may have also missed part of your first post though.

I host with hostgator, others use theplanet (i think hostgator might be a reseller of them, not sure though) and you can have all of your [email protected] [email protected] and [email protected]

it is reliable and it is free in the monthly/annual hosting service.

who is your "mydomain" currently hosted with for a website?

If you go with hostgator please let me know because i think i can get a referral fee or credit if you sign up for their service and i refer you. you would probably be fine with a babycroc account and its 4.95 a month hosting. unlimited email addresses, very reliable, and it can utilize IMAP with mail.app

good luck

I'm not really looking for anything fancy -- just the ability to have each user account with my domain, some better security than Google, and typical "folder" structures so mail can be easily sorted with rules -- oh, and I'm not interested in paying a ton for it.

It's surprising how few individual plans there are out there -- I would have thought by now that IMAP services would be plentiful given how used to this everyone is because of work IMAP systems.

I started out with Go Daddy (my registrar) but their IMAP implementation is rather lame.