Tommi's Scribbles
Amazon WorkMail - The Quietly Best Email Service for Custom Domains
- Published on 2021-12-04
Not that long ago, I was a somewhat happy ProtonMail (and ProtonVPN) user. I had the free account username email, a couple of custom domain emails, and a few more professional pm.me addresses.
But when I encountered the silly outbursts by the company CEO, I decided it is time to vote with my wallet and take my funding elsewhere.
Requirements For the New Email Service
For those who aren't familiar with ProtonMail, the main selling points are extreme privacy and encrypted emails. Both of these were features I didn't really need. While I prefer my emails private, I don't mind if there is an ability due to some legal reason for a reputable government agency to go snooping around. I also think for regular citizens and most services this risk is highly inflated.
As for encryption, over 99 percent of personal emails I sent and received in the past year have not been encrypted. In fact, I've received emails from organizations with plaintext passwords and sensitive PII during that timespan. Until times change, encryption can be considered a healthy scratch in my requirements.
What did I need then? I wanted integration with standard email applications. One thing I hated about ProtonMail was being forced to use their app or the web portal. I wanted all my email in one place. The second requirement was the ability to use my custom domains. Nothing says "professional" better than a personal domain.
I also had a dev/admin email and domain, which I needed to use too. Thus, while I could have switched to one of the several direct ProtonMail competitors such as CounterMail, I decided to keep it simple and focused on the email services considered "less private". With a custom domain you kind of lose a whole lot of anonymity anyways. I dropped any possible Google services that might exist straight off the bat too. Life without Google is a good life. And I intended to keep it that way.
First Option: ZoHo Mail
When searching online about email and custom domain solutions, ZoHo Mail came up a whole lot. However, I wasn't exactly sure why. While seemingly popular, I don't believe to have ever met anyone who used ZoHo's services. I also kind of recalled hearing something bad about ZoHo several years ago when I started exploring the world that is online hosting. As I definitely didn't need the rest of ZoHo's suite, I opted to move on.
Second Option: Microsoft
Next up was the venerable Microsoft. Most people likely recognize Outlook to some extent. For some, it's the email app they use at work. For others, Outlook means the free gmail alternative. When it comes to Microsoft and email, some might even remember Hotmail, probably the first solid, free, online email platform, which now is also Outlook. I believe the cheapest Microsoft email option with the ability to use a custom domain is the "Microsoft 365 for business" plan. The keyword here being "believe". I was never able to fully corroborate this. I found some discussions online that said custom domains without full blown Microsoft services can't be done. I found some confusing mentions here and there in the Microsoft documentation. Still, the actual Microsoft 365 for business purchase page says using a custom domain for email with the service is possible. The ambiguity might have come from the fact I wanted to use a couple of domains and not just one. Or maybe it's just a Microsoft thing considering the multitude of meanings for Outlook. I would probably know for sure had I not encountered my savior: Amazon WorkMail.
Service of Choice: Amazon WorkMail
Considering how big AWS is in the cloud space, there was relatively little discussion online about Amazon WorkMail. Amazon WorkMail is the email offering on AWS. I noticed Amazon WorkMail by half-accident on my AWS Control Panel. I learned it fit the bill perfectly:
- Exchange server compatible. This meant compatibility with most email clients, including the native Mail (and calendar) app on Apple devices.
- Multiple aliases for a user. This meant I only needed to pay for a single account, but was still able to get multiple domains and addresses mapped. Amazon WorkMail came with a few additional bonuses:
- The price was right at $4.00 per user with no additional costs (US East, might differ a bit between regions).
- If you have a custom domain, the chances are you're using other AWS services too. Amazon WorkMail integrated perfectly to my existing account, billing, and the familiar control panel.
- Amazon WorkMail lived in the great AWS infrastructure. No crappy web hotels with outages and poor performance to be expected.
- No need to setup servers, spin up instances, or whatnot.
Overall the change was quick and easy. The custom domain setup was straightforward for someone who has set up DNS records for an email service in the past. AWS has really good documentation to help in case it is your first rodeo. In addition, if you purchased your domains through or migrate the domains to Route 53, the setup will be a breeze as DKIM records and such can be added automatically. After the DNS records were set and the email account and aliases were configured, it was simply a matter of connecting to the email server using the Exchange setup option on the email client. And that was it. Now I enjoy a great cost-efficient email solution with custom domains. Using a service nobody seems to talk about.