Techie: Backup MX server for self-hosted email

[BigMoneyJim]

I use my own domain name and self-managed server for email.

This works great, but it's conceivable that I could experience an outage of a day or more leaving me without email. And with more and more e-bills and paperless banking I need reliable email.

Does anyone have experience with a paid backup MX server service? Something that will receive and hold my emails until I restore my server?

Thanks!

[twaddle]

No. Most delivery systems will retry for a while before they bounce. If you use multiple MX records, you'd have to check multiple email servers everyday, wouldn't you? If your primary is unreachable for even a few seconds, the sender would use your secondary, right?

Edit: good discussion here: Debian Administration :: Weblog for dkg - Pros and Cons of secondary MX records

[Webzter]

Jim,

You should be more than fine. Email servers will attempt to relay until you're back.

However, personally, I just use Google Apps (Google Apps). You can get a free (ad-supported) or pay-based ($50/year/account) account. The pay-based has an uptime SLA and no ads.

When you sign up, they'll give you a list of several hosts for your MX records and the priority for each one.

[twaddle]

Cool -- I hadn't looked into google apps before. I just switched one of my domains over to their email service so I can try them out....

[BigMoneyJim]

You're probably right; email delivery is pretty fault tolerant.

Google Apps does look appealing, though. However it says $50 per account per year, so I'm assuming an account is one email address and not one domain? I have a real address, a spam address, and then of course webmaster, postmaster, root, etc.. My first impression is that I would have to pay $50 per email "user" or lose the other addresses. Is that right?

[Webzter]

Originally Posted by BigMoneyJim

You're probably right; email delivery is pretty fault tolerant.

Google Apps does look appealing, though. However it says $50 per account per year, so I'm assuming an account is one email address and not one domain? I have a real address, a spam address, and then of course webmaster, postmaster, root, etc.. My first impression is that I would have to pay $50 per email "user" or lose the other addresses. Is that right?

You can have unlimited aliases and you can tag incoming messages based on who they were addressed to. Depending on your needs, the free version may be great as well. I have a pay account for my business but use their free version for our personal site.

Plus, their spam filtering has been stellar.

[twaddle]

I signed up for the free version. It doesn't appear to be limited to one email address, or even one account with multiple aliases. I'm able to create multiple independent accounts and the switch from my own server to google's servers was pretty quick -- it was working within the few hours between sign up and when I just checked.

In fact, I already have two messages of incoming spam.

[BigMoneyJim]

Originally Posted by twaddle

In fact, I already have two messages of incoming spam.

Which reminds me of the question I forgot to ask: does the service include spam filtering like gmail? My bayesian filtering has been vastly less effective lately, and I'm tiring of continually retraining it.

[Webzter]

Originally Posted by BigMoneyJim

Which reminds me of the question I forgot to ask: does the service include spam filtering like gmail? My bayesian filtering has been vastly less effective lately, and I'm tiring of continually retraining it.

Yes, gmail-like filtering. Plus, Google just bought Postini so, theoretically, things could get even better.

Essentially, while they say 'this isn't gmail', it looks, functions, and smells like gmail.

[twaddle]

Yes, it seems to be basic gmail. The spam went into my spam folder.

On my own server, I probably add a few domains per day to my spam blacklist. I'm ready to retire from my admin duties....