Free email service? (What an ongoing headache!) :dizzy_face:

[winnielinnie]

Long story short: What free provider does everyone here use for email with TrueNAS? What results have you experienced? Any issues?

• I don't want to use my existing personal or work email
• Attempting to create a new anonymous Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo account requires a phone number
• ProtonMail, for some reason, will occasionally "time out" and I won't receive alerts
• Yandex will sometimes prevent new outgoing mail, triggered by some sort of spam protection

Even though I have some luck using ProtonMail and Yandex, exclusively for use with TrueNAS alerts, they're nothing close to 100% reliable in my experience. (Outside of TrueNAS? ProtonMail works great. Yet for some reason it's been iffy for me with TrueNAS, thus I have missed a good number of alerts and notifications.)


I confess. I am not human... *beep borp*

 

[victort]

Long story short: What free provider does everyone here use for email with TrueNAS? What results have you experienced? Any issues?

• I don't want to use my existing personal or work email
• Attempting to create a new anonymous Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo account requires a phone number
• ProtonMail, for some reason, will occasionally "time out" and I won't receive alerts
• Yandex will sometimes prevent new outgoing mail, triggered by some sort of spam protection

Even though I have some luck using ProtonMail and Yandex, exclusively for use with TrueNAS alerts, they're nothing close to 100% reliable in my experience. (Outside of TrueNAS? ProtonMail works great. Yet for some reason it's been iffy for me with TrueNAS, thus I have missed a good number of alerts and notifications.)

When did Gmail start requiring that? I have a Gmail I use for things like this.

 

[winnielinnie]

When did Gmail start requiring that? I have a Gmail I use for things like this.

My original Gmail was from way back when, so I dodged the "phone number needed" requirement. I think the major email providers have started implementing this years ago.

 

[dak180]

@winnielinnie This requires that you have your own domain & control over the dns: https://www.smtp2go.com/ but it will let you send up to 1000 emails per month for free.

 

[danb35]

mailgun.com and mailjet.com also have free tiers, but likewise require you have your own domain. My answer has long been to run my own mail server, but I recognize that's not for everyone.

 

[winnielinnie]

This requires that you have your own domain

but likewise require you have your own domain.

Appreciate the suggestions, but only feasible if this isn't a requirement.

I guess an alternative title would be: "Free email service? (Without requiring your own domain.)"

The likes of Gmail, Outlook, Zoho, and Yahoo would work, if they didn't require a phone number for registration.

 

[Davvo]

I use gmail and haven't given any number for my TrueNas account. My main one has it, and it's only used for security reasons

 

[winnielinnie]

I use gmail and haven't given any number

Try creating a new Gmail account now. Does it allow you to continue without providing and confirming your phone number?

 

[dak180]

@winnielinnie Last I checked you can still make an outlook.com address without a phone number. That said, why not get your own domain? Cloudflare can get you a .com for around $10 per year and is really easy to manage (and having one is very useful).

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

I wonder if an internal-only email setup would suffice? (LAN, not internet)

 

[kiler129]

@winnielinnie This requires that you have your own domain & control over the dns: https://www.smtp2go.com/ but it will let you send up to 1000 emails per month for free.

Seconding Smtp2Go. OP check their pricing page: https://www.smtp2go.com/pricing/ - there's a button on the top for a free account without CC. You will get normal SMTP with emails not being blacklisted by gmail and others. 1000 emails per month should be more than enough for sysadmin purposes ;) While different people have different needs, I sent just over 2000 status/report emails since the beginning of this year while used on 8 different servers.

If you don't have a domain, you can take a look at https://tld-list.com and filter by 3-year-value. Some of them are like $5-7/year. You can manage the DNS of it on like CloudFlare with virtually no limits.

 

[allanonmage]

Free emails have required your phone number for years. Like, 10+ years. Especially if you try to sign up with a VPN IP address. Even Proton Mail requires your phone number. To be honest, I don't understand how it's paraded around like some bastion of private email when it wants all the same privacy invading things that the major email providers do.

The only one I've found that gives 2 way emails that don't automatically get blocked, for use for like forums and shopping sites and stuff, is Tutanota. It's a half email system though, because it's only webmail, no IMAP or SMTP. But it does do encrypted messaging within its domain. I think it's a direct competitor to Proton Mail.

You didn't give a use-case for what you're using email, hinting that there are some system notifications from your NAS, so I'm not sure what you're looking to do. Sending SMTP emails? Yeah, prolly time to roll your own SMTP server.

Depending on your skills, an arduino that sends you a text message could also be a thing. Not sure how to get the events off TrueNAS though.

 

[RadolBR]

Here on Brazil we still can make gmail without phone number.

I remember years ago, is required, now it's possible to skip again. Maybe is a cicle thing ?

 

[allanonmage]

In the US, if you load a fresh copy of android and sign up in-app, you don't usually need to provide a phone number. Presumably they just grab your IMEI though, which is more identifying than your phone number, since the phone number can change but the IMEI stays the same.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

mailbox.org - personal email from 1€ per user per month. I don't get why you all expect to be able to get a completely free and anonymous email account? And why would you need an anonymous one for monitoring services? I'd rather have a contract for a small affordable fee, a provider in Europe bound by GDPR, and reliable service. Again, we are talking monitoring of systems, right? That's even when private in some way "business critical", right? You don't send anything fishy from these accounts - only alerts, right?

What is the problem with the phone number? Of course my bank, my insurance company, about any company I have a contract with ... has got my phone number. An email service is a contract as is my DSL line ...

Edit:

Here's another one - free: https://web.de/email/

German, GDPR, contract, not using your data for anything they don't tell you beforehand. Probably will require a complete address and phone number, too, because "contract".

 

[winnielinnie]

Appreciate the replies and different avenues.

Won't get into it, but not going to use my real number to register any email account, unless it's work-related.

This is only for my personal server, just as a convenient way to receive email alerts. (Hence, I don't care if it's a lesser-known provider with storage limits, lack of features, etc.)

I could use an existing email address (Gmail), but I want to keep my personal TrueNAS notifications and alerts separated entirely.

As it stands now, it looks like one of the following two options might work:

• Use a VPN to mimic another country when registering, as apparently not everyone requires a phone number (e.g, @RadolBR's post)
• Use something like a Google Voice number that is capable of receiving SMS to verify the registration code