What email provider do you recommend for personal email?

Question

Hi HN!I am trying to reduce my dependency on many cloud providers, and Google is my next focus. To start, I'd like to move my personal email address to my own domain.What is a good provider I can use that will not be too expensive and that I won't need to worry about deliverability? I don't mind being dependent on a cloud platform for this as long as I can easily export my data regularly.It would also be nice if my AI agent is able to help me manage my inbox (EG delete spam emails and similar).. so if the provider has a good api for it, that's a bonus. However, this is not a hard requirement.

dlcarrier · Accepted Answer

Infomaniak or Proton. They're both Swiss security-focused competitors to the Google office ecosystem. I prefer Infomakiak, because their free tier includes IMAP, which is crucial for accessibility tools, but it is also useful for general API access such as automated tools.

emn4tor · Answer

Fastmail natively supports JMAP, is pretty cheap ($3-5). I always like selfhosting either at home, or using a cheap VPS - iRedMail, MailCow etc.

krunck · Answer

ProtonMail. Then you can run ProtonMail Bridge to get a local IMAP and SMTP connection to your ProtonMail account.

toomuchtodo · Answer

Fastmail. They offer an MCP server, but keep the AI features out of the product. Data export is available and trivial.
An MCP Server for Fastmail – National Email Day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870988 - April 2026 (14 comments)
https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060590573-Dow...

thiht · Answer

If you&rsquo;re already invested in the Apple ecosystem you can get iCloud+ for $1/month and get the email provider (bring your own domain) among other things (50GB storage mainly). This is incredible value for the price.As long as you use your own domain you can migrate away at any point so there&rsquo;s that.