It was recently announced that Port87 was out of beta. I had heard about the service previously but had not signed up to test it.
Here's a link to their website, which will explain their service much better than I could:
Today, I signed up for the free service - Basic Mail - which has 500MB of storage. Note that only covers receiving of emails. If you want to send emails, get more storage, or use your own domain(s), it's at an additional cost.
Here's the link to their pricing:
When signing up for the service, I had to provide a recovery email address - I used a Gmail address, their verification email was received and verified.
Now for first test - I created a label 'Social' for - guess what? - social media stuff. Next I logged into my Runbox account and sent a test message to 'myusername-social@port87.com'. Shortly after I received this auto-response from Port87:
This address has email screening enabled. Therefore, Port87 needs you to do a one-time verification that you're a real person. If you can see the blue-gray checkmark below, you're all set. If not, you can enable remote images in your email client or click the link to verify your address. Once verified, your message will be delivered.
Verify Address
Port87 uses this verification process to prevent unwanted mail from getting to our users. Until you complete this verification, your message will be on hold. If you don't complete this verification within 60 days, your message will be deleted. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.
Best,
The Port87 Team
Once I had verified my address, the original email then appeared in my Port87 account. So far so good!
The next test was sending an email to what Port87 calls my 'bare' address - 'myusername@port87.com'. I would prefer to call it my 'default' address, but anyway . . .
This time, sending from the Gmail account that is my recovery email address for my Port87 account. This is where I encountered the first problem. Although I had received the verification email from Port87 when setting up the account, this time I received nothing - nothing in my Gmail inbox or spam folder! That was surprising to me that Gmail did not flag the first email from Port87, and then just silently dropped the second one. Gmail appear to be classing the second email as spam.
So that test failed.
Tried the same thing again, but sending from an email address hosted by MXroute. Again, and the same as Gmail, I got nothing back. It seems that MXroute had dropped the email.
So that test also failed.
One more try, this time sending from a Fastmail account. Luckier, this time, I got a response back from Port87, but it landed in the spam folder. At least I could mark it as 'not-spam' and then it all worked OK from then on. This is the auto-response received from Port87:
It looks like you've emailed my bare Port87 address, myusername@port87.com, which doesn't get through to me. In order to protect against unwanted messages, Port87 requires you to use a special address to email me. Please re-send your email to one of these addresses:
myusername-friends@port87.com
Please use this address if you are a friend or family.
myusername-inquiries@port87.com
Please use this address if you have a question or request for me.
myusername-other@port87.com
Use this address for all other reasons.
myusername-social@port87.com
Please use this address if you are a contact on social media.
The labels for the first three email addresses (Friends/Inquiries/Other) are already in the system, the fourth label (Social) was created by myself, as stated previously.
I've since whitelisted the port87.com domain within my Gmail, MXroute and Fastmail accounts. I've not re-tested those accounts, although that is the logical next step.
Early days, first steps, etc.
