AFAIK they’re the only decent email provider that offers a free account that allows a custom domain.
I use the $1/month mail lite plan. It’s nice to have an option that doesn’t cost as much as Microsoft and Google for people that want email on a custom domain, but don’t need all the cruft (drive, apps, etc).
Migadu is another awesome email solution. For my family and myself, we're on the "Micro" plan which works out to be 1.5 USD per month (but paid yearly). For smaller organizations and projects, we're on the "Mini" plan which is 9 USD per month.
Super cheap, very reliable and easy to setup. Never had any issues in the years I've been using it. I'm not associated with them, just a happy user that wishes them all the best.
last i checked (about half a year ago), they didn’t support IPv6. a tired meme, but it actually has economic impacts on my self-hoster friends. almost all ISPs block the SMTP port, and it’s way cheaper (free, even) to get an unblocked IPv6 address than an IPv4 one just because of address exhaustion. so if i used Zoho i’d kinda be forcing them to pay more if they want to be able to reach me :/
I just use domain forwarding to have my inbound emails to my custom domain address land in my plain old Gmail account, and outbound ones to forward to my domain. All the benefits of Gmail at no cost.
You can use it for free if you are ok with sending max 3 emails per day. You need to verify mobile phone or verify account via Telegram for free acounts. Also 9.99 EUR per year for premium account is one of the lowest prices available in the market from professional email providers :)
Google workspaces in India costs 125 rupees a month. That's around $1.5. Use a VPN + an international debit card (or wise.com) to pay Google in rupees? Is there a real downside to this?
Until recently I liked ZOHO. For the charity that I worked for, we built our website around ZOHO. They made us buy 7 licenses at the regular price, and that was a pretty tough arrangement for us. We only had one actual user. The rest were because a bunch of volunteers using one particular product. Zoho would not accept that fact. So we are a bigger part of that $1B than we like.
It sounds like you are using Zoho One. You get 40 apps for that price of $37/month paid annually. But the situation is that to get that great price, and it is fantastic, you have to put Zoho One on every computer. It's stated right in the purchase price. "Must purchase license for ALL employees*" "*Your business will have to commit to purchase Zoho One licenses for ALL employees on payroll."
If the volunteers are true volunteers and not on payroll, you should be able to have only one copy.
I see that they do have the Flexible-User Pricing for $90/month paid annually.
I want to provide details of our early history because they are not well-known. There were two bootstrapped entities, one in the US and one in India back in 1995. In the suburb of East Tambaram in Chennai, India, my brothers Kumar Vembu (now founder and CEO of GoFrugal and also active in Zoho Corp) and Sekar Vembu (now founder and CEO of Vembu Technologies) and Shailesh Kumar (who heads our Engineering and Zoho Labs today) started a bootstrapped operation at home. Kumar returned from the US after a very brief 1-year stint, and found some contract software development work in the field of telecom software and that was how he paid the bills.
In the US, our co-founder Tony Thomas, who I talk to almost daily to seek his wisdom, my personal daily Buddha, started a bedroom operation in New Jersey in 1995, and he brought in our co-founder Sreenivas Kanumuru (CEO of vTiger). Tony’s elder brother Joy Thomas, who recently passed away (RIP, Joy) and one of the all-time great students from IIT Chennai, helped Tony with a personal loan. Tony had started to work on a library for the SNMP API protocol in Java.
As of late 1995, I was not in the picture, other than advising my brothers. A common friend from IIT introduced me to Tony (who was 3 years ahead of me in IIT and I did not know him during my student days). I then introduced Tony to my brothers in India. They started working together in mid to late 1996.
Last I read, Zoho was working on solving some Japanese village's issue. Forgot exactly what it was about. Interesting guy and company who are solving problems.
Kudos to them.
I moved to Zoho mail when Gmail threatened to kick us all off or pay money.
Honestly, I couldn't be happier. The spam filtering works as well or better, the email app is intuitive, and I no longer have to keep switching Google accounts. Previously it seemed every Google property just picked an account at random.
I almost moved to Zoho for the same reason but then didn’t when big G changed their minds. Probably just delaying the inevitable but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of moving my whole family if I didn’t have to.
I did try out Zoho for months on one of my domains and was quite impressed. Zoho may be my go-to spot for future business services.
I've been using Zoho's email for a few years now (only because they used to provide free custom domain email - brilliant growth tactic!). The service itself works perfectly and integrates well with Apple Mail (albeit they changed the server configurations over the years two times if I recall correctly). Though their web client leaves some to be desired, it made very good progress and I believe it would be comparable to Gmail in the foreseeable future. As for their other services, I have not tried them but I would guess that copying Google Workspace is the general theme of development. Bigger picture I think it's great Google Workspace and Office 365 will have real competition, especially on the pricing front, that is outside the US (which means it is influenced by different interests and less likely to join the monopoly) and it will benefit everyone involved.
> I believe it would be comparable to Gmail in the foreseeable future
Story of every email provider ever: Soon to look like Gmail. At one point you have to admit that Gmail is the best (meanwhile designers at Gmail are trying to remove features from the UI).
Looking like Gmail doesn’t even guarantee success: Marissa Mayer made an exact copy of Gmail in Yahoo Mail in 2014. It didn’t take off.
I have not had good integration experiences with Apple Mail. Their service doesn't support mail push last time I checked, so you end up waiting 15 minutes or so for messages whenever Apple Mail decides to poll IMAP
Haha, and you can trust the Indian government? No offense, but India any cop can walk into Zoho's offices and ask for whatever they want. It doesn't have to go through any agency. Given the corruption of that country, you're absolutely dreaming if you think your data is safer.
These guys seem to do it all and for a fraction of the price. They’re playing a completely different game than the popular Enterprise SaaS players. Surprised they don’t get more press. Probably because they don’t have investors.
I switched to Zoho when Gmail threatened to kill our legacy Gsuite account I was using for my family. So far I'm pretty happy although not everything is perfect.
- pricing is pretty good. I use the Mail Lite plan for my kids which provided 5GB and upgraded myself to the 10GB plan, all for just a few bucks a month.
- importing mailboxes went very smoothly
- solid mobile and desktop apps, even for Linux (although it uses Electron which I know triggers some people)
- calendaring is frustrating but I don't think that's really Zoho's fault.
- a few small bugs but amazingly a human will reply to you if you file a bug report and eventually it will get fixed!
I feel better knowing that they pay attention to their customers. I'm happy to pay for good service.
Software products. IIT -> Princton PhD in Electrical engineering -> Qualcomm -> Services Company in that space -> CRM product. And then moves his dev center to the lowest income rural village he can find.. "In 2004, he set up Zoho Schools to provide vocational software development education to rural students as an alternative to formal university education. A statement from the company states that 15 to 20 percent of its engineers have no college degree, but have received vocational education from Zoho Schools".
I think he means software product company. Anyhow, regardless of that his statement is inaccurate because Zoho IS NOT an Indian company. Majority of its employees are in India (and the founder is Indian) but that's true for a lot of other international companies as well, that doesn't make them Indian.
[+] [-] donmcronald|3 years ago|reply
I use the $1/month mail lite plan. It’s nice to have an option that doesn’t cost as much as Microsoft and Google for people that want email on a custom domain, but don’t need all the cruft (drive, apps, etc).
[+] [-] capableweb|3 years ago|reply
Super cheap, very reliable and easy to setup. Never had any issues in the years I've been using it. I'm not associated with them, just a happy user that wishes them all the best.
https://www.migadu.com/pricing/
[+] [-] colinsane|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damiante|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itake|3 years ago|reply
I need unified inbox otherwise I will forget to check it.
[+] [-] kybernetikos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] synergy20|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malinens|3 years ago|reply
You can use it for free if you are ok with sending max 3 emails per day. You need to verify mobile phone or verify account via Telegram for free acounts. Also 9.99 EUR per year for premium account is one of the lowest prices available in the market from professional email providers :)
[+] [-] lonesword|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] la64710|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nells|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a1371|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tylersmith|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mandatum|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FrontierPsych|3 years ago|reply
If the volunteers are true volunteers and not on payroll, you should be able to have only one copy.
I see that they do have the Flexible-User Pricing for $90/month paid annually.
[+] [-] propogandist|3 years ago|reply
they have relationships with many software providers to get discounted non-profit pricing.
MSFT offers Office 365 @ $3/mo/user for their nonprofit tier
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/nonprofit/plan...
[+] [-] tinuviel|3 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sridharvembu
[+] [-] ignoramous|3 years ago|reply
I want to provide details of our early history because they are not well-known. There were two bootstrapped entities, one in the US and one in India back in 1995. In the suburb of East Tambaram in Chennai, India, my brothers Kumar Vembu (now founder and CEO of GoFrugal and also active in Zoho Corp) and Sekar Vembu (now founder and CEO of Vembu Technologies) and Shailesh Kumar (who heads our Engineering and Zoho Labs today) started a bootstrapped operation at home. Kumar returned from the US after a very brief 1-year stint, and found some contract software development work in the field of telecom software and that was how he paid the bills.
In the US, our co-founder Tony Thomas, who I talk to almost daily to seek his wisdom, my personal daily Buddha, started a bedroom operation in New Jersey in 1995, and he brought in our co-founder Sreenivas Kanumuru (CEO of vTiger). Tony’s elder brother Joy Thomas, who recently passed away (RIP, Joy) and one of the all-time great students from IIT Chennai, helped Tony with a personal loan. Tony had started to work on a library for the SNMP API protocol in Java.
As of late 1995, I was not in the picture, other than advising my brothers. A common friend from IIT introduced me to Tony (who was 3 years ahead of me in IIT and I did not know him during my student days). I then introduced Tony to my brothers in India. They started working together in mid to late 1996.
- Sridhar Vembu, 25 years of Zoho (2021), https://archive.is/bpfUC
[+] [-] baristaGeek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gentil|3 years ago|reply
Last I read, Zoho was working on solving some Japanese village's issue. Forgot exactly what it was about. Interesting guy and company who are solving problems. Kudos to them.
[+] [-] slim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silisili|3 years ago|reply
Honestly, I couldn't be happier. The spam filtering works as well or better, the email app is intuitive, and I no longer have to keep switching Google accounts. Previously it seemed every Google property just picked an account at random.
[+] [-] e-clinton|3 years ago|reply
I did try out Zoho for months on one of my domains and was quite impressed. Zoho may be my go-to spot for future business services.
[+] [-] iddan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eastbound|3 years ago|reply
Story of every email provider ever: Soon to look like Gmail. At one point you have to admit that Gmail is the best (meanwhile designers at Gmail are trying to remove features from the UI).
Looking like Gmail doesn’t even guarantee success: Marissa Mayer made an exact copy of Gmail in Yahoo Mail in 2014. It didn’t take off.
[+] [-] cobertos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidcool|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnywalks|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Reticulate|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mandatum|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RefTempleton12|3 years ago|reply
These guys seem to do it all and for a fraction of the price. They’re playing a completely different game than the popular Enterprise SaaS players. Surprised they don’t get more press. Probably because they don’t have investors.
[+] [-] fraXis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j3dj3d|3 years ago|reply
I wrote up my experience here: https://jedfonner.com/2022/07/30/switching-to-zoho
TL;DR:
- pricing is pretty good. I use the Mail Lite plan for my kids which provided 5GB and upgraded myself to the 10GB plan, all for just a few bucks a month.
- importing mailboxes went very smoothly
- solid mobile and desktop apps, even for Linux (although it uses Electron which I know triggers some people)
- calendaring is frustrating but I don't think that's really Zoho's fault.
- a few small bugs but amazingly a human will reply to you if you file a bug report and eventually it will get fixed!
I feel better knowing that they pay attention to their customers. I'm happy to pay for good service.
[+] [-] samirm20|3 years ago|reply
Also they spinned off another brand for Families - https://www.zillum.com
[+] [-] acchow|3 years ago|reply
India has no other billion dollar product companies? Doesn’t Tata sell cars?
[+] [-] carlsborg|3 years ago|reply
Legend.
[+] [-] r_singh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keewee7|3 years ago|reply
Most other billion dollar Indian tech companies are in the IT outsourcing business.
[+] [-] rhuru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voxadam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] checkagainz|3 years ago|reply
https://entrackr.com/2022/11/exclusive-indian-isps-we-alread...
[+] [-] ignoramous|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabaraz|3 years ago|reply