Published on November 23rd, 2020 | by Manish Gehlot

Letter – Modern, Private and Ad-free Email Hosting Provider with Business Features

No matter how fast the world gets with AI and Instant Messaging, good old physical mail and electronic email are part and parcel of personal or commercial/business every day conversation. Also, email is one of the biggest federated network of servers based on common standards and protocols. I reckon email is the most reliable mode of electronic communication on mobile and desktop platforms. For one unlike instant messaging, there is a higher degree of reliance as standard emails once sent cannot be changed or deleted. Recipient of an email, will have copies of your email as long as he/she/it desires.

The question arises what email provider to pick or what to look for in an email provider or service? I know it is too late to discuss this in 2020, as most of us already hold a couple of email providers from a bunch of different providers over the years. Albeit, whenever you get a good opportunity, full of potential, you do not miss a chance if it matters, if it is for security and privacy of your private/personal communications. When things get dated, you basically upgrade. Getting own domain solves a lot of issues related to moving from one provider to another. You just change the provider and host your email with whoever you like.

One such budget-friendly provider is Letter.is with amazing business features and support for own domain [even for personal accounts]. Essentially, Letter is a business friendly mailserver suite with advanced administrative control and features like spam aliases, outgoing/incoming TLS enforcement, filter rules, two factor authentication, time-based OTP, anti-virus scanning and not forgetting basic email monitoring. Further Letter offer SoGo Groupware, a complete web-based solution with integrated Calender and Address book other than mails. For Roundcube fans, yes it is also made available too. Any further improvements in webmail technology, would be promptly hosted upon initial internal tests.

It is custom tailored email hosting or service with better administrative UI than the competition meant to handle even the most minute tasks in email administration.

Secure, Private Hosting and Audit-able Email Stack

All the core email infrastructure is completely hosted in EU viz. France with relays planned in secure non-EU jurisdictions like like Switzerland, Iceland etc. Privacy and security of your data is of utmost value in email hosting, hence Letter deploys its core infrastructure in an array of dedicated servers from Online in France. Any server used is setup with full disk encryption enabled to protect your data while it sits on the server and during transport with State-of-the-art connection encryption support (TLS 1.3 & minimum of 256-bit key strength) using signed certificates from an European Certificate Authority located in Scandinavia.

Mailserver suite used is fully open and the code is available for any sort of independent audit, if any. Letter uses vanilla code from mailcow’s code repository and deploys it securely for you with stable updates being pushed regularly or on priority basis, whenever required.

Significance of Business customization, Privacy and Secrecy

Letter comes with generous limits that no EU based competition can match. For instance you get ‘Unlimited email accounts and domain aliases’ per mailbox. Features like spam alias or temporary email aliases are a huge mileage for both personal and business users. Moreover most EU based providers deploy a low outgoing mail sending limit, whereas you get a whooping 1000 email per day limit with Letter in the introductory offer. Email attachment limits are high too, I am not sure how it would work with other providers but when sending emails from Letter to Letter, I had no issues sending big files up to 100 megabyte.

As a domain administrator for Business, mailcow’s UI is a blessing. You have plethora of settings and options that you get to configure with a single login.

In Configuration settings, you can change the default language, change your theme, set various attributes of your mailbox. Even as a mailbox user, you have Spam filter tab in the UI, where you can fine tune the spam related settings and even whitelist or blacklist email addresses. Tagging is also an important function of email administration which is also handled out of the box by Letter’s Admin UI itself. You can tag specific kind of incoming emails and put them in their respective sub-folders that have created. Primary branding with business logos etc is available upon request.

With absolutely no kind of scanning or analytics going on, you can carry on your business correspondence or personal conversation with privacy and security in mind. To the very least you can enforce TLS for transport encryption, so emails from your service to your friends service are server-to-server encrypted. You have an option to protect your emails from big tech giants who not only like to take a look into your mailbox for selling ads but also co-operate on large scale with government with or without your specific knowledge.

Letter as a email hosting provider offer you a secure, robust email solution hosted in European Union to protect your in-house and external email conversations for small or big businesses. You are encouraged to bring your own domain even for personal mailboxes. It is the way to go in future. It helps you migrate your email accounts easily to a better option in future.

Affordable and Free Goodies [Limited time offer]

It is one of the most affordable email provider that I have come across with support for own domains. It offers a complete mailbox administration solution to a domain admin and yet do not charge a ton somehow.

For 15 EUR a year, you get 4GB of storage [inclusive of 2X introductory offer for first 500 clients]. You can configure up to 4 own domains for your business. You gain access to priority support channels over WhatsApp, Delta.chat, Telegram, Live Chat, IRC or good old email with a 30 mins or less response time the last time I checked. Even for a new service, it is a steal given the generous limits and quality of infrastructure hosting.

The best part is that first 500 clients get access to Letter’s privately hosted instance of popular password manager called Bitwarden with business features [worth 60 USD/year] for free. So, the admins and managers of service intend to offer more privacy and robust security solution to ever user of their email service.

There is even lifetime account for limited period or slots with absolutely no additional limits but number of domains that you can host for 49 EUR only. With this account you can host a single own personal or business domain for the lifetime of the service. Yes, before you ask, lifetime accounts are tenable too. At times, additional resources are available to offer limited lifetime accounts. Please note that it is only for the lifetime of the service. It is only offered to limited users. It does not automatically make the service a hub for over selling as it is a planned move to attract more users. It is being done by many online services successfully without fooling their clients.

Multiple Payment options, Anonymous Sign ups for Privacy Buffs

Letter accepts Paypal EUR, direct bank transfer, Debit/Credit/prepaid Cards (issued by Visa, MasterCard, American Express and RuPay), cryptocurrencies for International payments. For India, dozens of local wallets including UPI/BHIM is supported.

If you do not have an email or like to sign up without giving a current email address or any personal data. You are welcomed. You just need to contact Letter using one of the available communication methods and pay using one of the supported cryptocurrencies including but not limited to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple.

Conclusion

Yes, I have faith in a service hosted in European Union with robust administrative features. Letter upholds privacy and security of data by hosting your emails in secure infrastructure in EU and other jurisdictions. It does not deploy any sort of analytic or scanning to sell your data to potential advertisers. It is a small business oriented email hosting provider to protect your email conversations. Use of custom or own domain is entertained. Support is readily available over multiple platforms to help you with your queries, if any. Only time will tell how good the lifetime users are served but if you are looking for yearly accounts, Letter is certainly the hosting provider to opt!

Tags: communication, email, email hosting, messaging, work email

About the Author

Manish Gehlot I am a privacy, security, encryption and software freedom enthusiast. I am into VPNs, TLS security. Recently I also got into technical writings. I am working as a VPN support and consultant at some nordic VPN providers.