E-mail hosting outside UK and US

NFH

I’m looking for an e-mail hosting provider for multiple domain names that I own. I would prefer a provider in a more privacy-conscious country such as Germany or Sweden, unlike the UK or US, so I would prefer a chargeable provider to a free US provider such as Google Apps.

I need support for ActiveSync (for mobile devices such as iPhones), IMAP, POP3, SMTP and webmail to host around 5 mailboxes per domain with many more alias/forwarding addresses, but I don’t need a huge amount of mailbox storage.

I find that the smaller and cheaper niche providers are very difficult to find on Google, both in the UK and elsewhere, so I’m hoping that someone here could recommend a provider. I’m currently paying £12 per annum per domain, but my current provider doesn’t support ActiveSync, so I’m looking to change to a provider that does so for a similar price. Any suggestions?

steve1980

Why do you want ActiveSync (It's Microsoft, not Apple), that's what IMAP is for.

Go to https://www.hostsphere.co.uk who charge £5.00 per annum for email an only account.

NFH

steve1980 wrote: »

Why do you want ActiveSync (It's Microsoft, not Apple), that's what IMAP is for.

ActiveSync is the only protocol that the iPhone supports for real-time push delivery of e-mails. Although the iPhone supports IMAP, it doesn't support IMAP Idle (push).

steve1980

Yes it does! My 3G had it, and the 4 has it.

NFH

steve1980 wrote: »

Yes it does! My 3G had it, and the 4 has it.

No version of the iPhone or iOS has ever supported IMAP Idle/Push. This is confirmed by an Apple knowledge base article.

RobTang

I doupt its any better hosting it anywhere else, really for your requirements you are best getting a VPS somwhere and hosting your own email server.

steve1980

NFH wrote: »

No version of the iPhone or iOS has ever supported IMAP Idle/Push. This is confirmed by an Apple knowledge base article.

As I said before I had emails on my phone which automatically come through.

NFH

steve1980 wrote: »

As I said before I had emails on my phone which automatically come through.

Yes, they come through automatically, but subject to the "Fetch" interval, which is either 15 minutes, 30 minutes or hourly. Therefore incoming e-mails are delayed by up to 15 minutes at best. If the mail server supports ActiveSync (the delivery procotol also used by MS Exchange), then there is no delay and incoming e-mails are pushed from the server to the iPhone in real time.

NFH

RobTang wrote: »

I doupt its any better hosting it anywhere else, really for your requirements you are best getting a VPS somwhere and hosting your own email server.

No, this would be complete overkill. There are plenty of providers that support ActiveSync, Google Apps being a free one, but I'm willing to pay a little bit for a mail hosting service based in a more privacy-conscious country such as Germany or Sweden.

steve1980

NFH wrote: »

Yes, they come through automatically, but subject to the "Fetch" interval, which is either 15 minutes, 30 minutes or hourly. Therefore incoming e-mails are delayed by up to 15 minutes at best. If the mail server supports ActiveSync (the delivery procotol also used by MS Exchange), then there is no delay and incoming e-mails are pushed from the server to the iPhone in real time.

I know what ActiveSync is thank you.

I can't believe you get that many emails to warrant it. Android phones check every 5 minutes, using an iPhone to do this will drain the battery in a matter of hours.

I run a business and sure my clients can wait the 5 minutes between my emails coming through before I reply to them if I'm not at my PC.

NFH

steve1980 wrote: »

I can't believe you get that many emails to warrant it. Android phones check every 5 minutes, using an iPhone to do this will drain the battery in a matter of hours.

Yes, if an iPhone could poll every 5 minutes, it would indeed drain the battery, and polling every 15 minutes isn't great either. ActiveSync avoids the need to poll and e-mails are pushed only when they are received, reducing bandwidth and battery usage.

steve1980 wrote: »

I run a business and sure my clients can wait the 5 minutes between my emails coming through before I reply to them if I'm not at my PC.

The 15-minute delay is actually very annoying. For example, if an e-mail is sent to multiple recipients, it can be frustrating when replies to all are sent by others before I've even read the first e-mail in a thread, because I have a delay whereas others do not. Similarly, it can be irritating for example if someone sends me an e-mail at 10:50, but my iPhone doesn't poll until 11:02 after I've gone into a long meeting at 11:00. I could have dealt with the e-mail and kept the ball rolling before my meeting, but didn't even know about it because of this annoying delay. So the 15 minutes may seem trivial at first, but it has been annoying on so many occasions already that I want to eliminate it.