Watch the video review below
Who is inbox.eu suitable for?
Is there anything wrong with free email service providers?
Free email services are a good starting point for : a. Individuals take up freelance gig b. Offer professional services c. Startups who are just beginning their journey. Accounts from the major ‘free’ or freemium providers such as Gmail or Outlook or even Yahoo offer quite a few benefits, but they fall short on features.The biggest disadvantage is that it does not provide a professional appearance to your email service. In the very early stages of your business, it is perfectly okay to use one of these free providers. But as your business starts growing, issues such as data privacy etc. being to take a priority. It probably makes sense to opt for an email hosting solution, particularly when the cost of such services has reduced considerably in recent years.Background: inbox.eu email hosting service from Europe
A few months ago, I had written a post on which email service provider to choose. In that post, I had listed about eight or ten, different email hosting services, including inbox.eu. A few weeks ago, Nataly from inbox reached out to me and wanted to know if I would be interested in doing a review of their service.
In the past, i.e. since 2018 till mid-2020, I have used their service. Back then, inbox.eu were a free email service provider. Since August 2019, they are a paid service, and they offer two plans: a Personal plan at 3 Euros per month. For Businesses, it is 3 Euros per user per month. Both options include a massive 100 gigabytes of storage. In the business plan, you can create aliases. Both options include additional space for file storage.Setting up email account with inbox.eu
Inbox.eu has pretty easy to follow menu and documentation for setting up your domain with their email service. You first have to create an admin account, and configure the DNS entries. Next, you can start creating user level accounts.
This company has been around for a while. Previously, the users could access the email through a web based interface or a control panel. Now they offer pop and imap, or apps for mobile phones. They are a European company, and the data is stored in Europe both for regular use and for backup. One can consider GDPR compliance and other privacy issues to be addressed in this service.Testing Business Email Service by inbox.eu
I had previously used a service from inbox.eu, and for the testing purposes here, I have used a business account. This service offers free email aliases. Once the configuration is done, you can log into your main account, and that is where the real magic begins. There are two accounts like I said before. One is for the admin and the other for regular users. Advanced Features for account management include two factor authentication. When you log into your account, you receive an email with a link to confirm the login. When you click on that link, you are able to access your email account. There is also an option for login using other service providers.Side Note: Desirable features offered by email hosting providers
Some of the desirable features of email hosting service should have:-
- You should be able to use your custom domain.
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- The service should be secure and reliable, both in terms of email delivery and email security.
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- Storage space for files and large attachments is desirable though not mandatory.
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- Users should be able to create multiple email accounts. For example, if you use `yourdomain.in`, the email addresses could be `[email protected]` ; `[email protected]`, and so on.
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- Alternately, they should allow email aliases.
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- Pop and map access is required, android and iOS apps are optional.
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- The features or interface should be easy to use.
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- Ability to create folders, create and export archives, importing emails from other accounts, email filtering, email forwarding, are all desirable features.
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- Finally, documentation for setting up the email service (including DNS entries) should be detailed.
Overall impressions
I found the service to be pretty stable. Mail delivery is not an issue for services like Outlook, who are notorious for flagging emails from multiple domains as spam. At the same time, there is an option to forward emails from other accounts to your inbox.eu account. Of course, with 100 gigabyte email storage, you can continue doing so for several years. I think three euros a year for personal or professional account is really very generous. For businesses, there is no minimum limit on number of accounts. They offer a per user pricing, for example, the cost for a 10 member team will be around 30 Euros a year. Pricing will start adding up incrementally as the number of users grows.In addition to Zoho and MXRoute, Inbox.eu will continue to be on my top 3 list.
A quick note on file sharing
I have used this feature quite a bit, and it is fast both upload and download. You do have to use the web interface. An API or connectivity using RClone, etc, would be desirable. But inbox.eu are mainly an email provider, and not necessarily a file storage company. We need to keep that in mind.Note: The folks at inbox.eu had provided me with a Business account for 1 year for this review.
FAQ: inbox.eu email hosting service
Q. Where are the servers located and where is the data actually stored? A. More than 300 own servers located in Latvian (Europe) Datacenters. No colocation or shared resources – everything is dedicated only for our services. Only our IT team maintain all servers, we don’t use other outside resource for this work. Q. What about your backup policy for files and emails? A. Premium version has backup version. For example, if account/email has been hacked and deleted, we can restore your mailbox from backup. Free/Trial mailbox – has backup too, but only last 2 week, and backup for trial version will be used only for force majeure cases. Q. Who are your primary customers? Are they typically Small business/ professionals or midsize business? A. Our service can be used for any level of business, but usually professional service want bigger possibilities/option/additional features. So our clients usually are small/medium busines or private users. Till 50 mailboxes for medium and till 20 for small business and till 10 mailbox for private email. Q. I see two languages in the menu for the website- Bangla and Punjabi. Which is interesting and do you have many users from Bangladesh? A. I took data from our Google Analytics stats. Yes, we translated to Bengali, because ~39% our users are from Bangladesh. Also ~8% from India.Update June 2023
Someone asked in a Facebook group if anyone had used inbox.eu. Two years after I wrote the above review, here are my thoughts:Good stable service, little known, but seems to have a niche business. The 50 odd GB file storage is a nice hidden feature to have. For the price ( I think it was under 10 euros/year for 10 GB, personal, higher for business) worth a try for non critical site, before deciding to migrate.p.s: GDPR not an issue for me here in India, till the “IDPR” comes into effect so never evaluated it on those grounds.
Additional Thoughts on inbox.eu email hosting
My review of inbox.edu email hosting for startups businesses and professionals in this post, I will talk about my experience with inbox.edu have which is as the name suggests, a European email service provider who offers plans for professionals, as well as for businesses for email hosting key words. When many professionals, individuals freelancers and startups begin their business, they use the free email service providers email accounts from the major providers such as Gmail or Outlook or even Yahoo. While these services offer tremendous benefits they fall short in features, sometimes, and some requirements that business email hosting may need. I’ll come to that later. But the biggest disadvantage is that it does not provide a professional look up your appearance to your email service. While in the very early stages of your business, it is perfectly okay to use one of these free providers as your business starts growing particularly if you are taking paid consulting gigs in an era of email privacy data privacy etc. I probably make sense to opt for a better solution. Today I will talk about inbox.eu; a european email service provider. A few months ago, I had written a post on which email service provider to choose, in which I had listed about eight or 10, different email hosting services, Natalie from inbox.eu reached out to me and wanted to know if I would be interested in doing a review of inbox.eu. Since August 2019. They are a paid service now, which I will review. (transcribed by otter.ai, July 2021)This post was published in the category Web Hosting and was updated and archived on 4 Sept 2023.
