QSO.Email Plan Comparison

I offer hosted email and related services for amateur radio operators.

I like things to be simple, standards compliant, and work with free/libre software.

I also like optional advanced features for power users.

All services include a phone number that will actually reach me if you need help, email services and other hosting, and a 60-day money back guarantee. If after you use the service for two months you don't like it, contact me for a full refund.

When you sign up, please include contact information such as a backup email address (one is required for sending your first receipt anyway) or a cell phone number. Otherwise I will be forced to use the National Traffic System if you need help to reset your password. We don't want that.

There are more details below the signup cards.

Here are the details:

Bacon Bits is simple, clean email, and only that, for one amateur radio operator. This is basic email that will work on all modern devices.

Most modern email clients will auto-discover the correct settings, but when you sign up you'll be given a link to documentation that covers how to get it all set up manually if needed of course, and I will help you set it up if the usual routes and help guides are not cutting it.

There's no AI, ad targeting, or any of that. That all sounds like fun but way too complicated for me. Naturally if you email people in the borg, their email provider will still do these things, but at least you won't get persistent corporate surveillance from this side.

The Whole Pig includes catchall email support on your own subdomain, unlimited aliases, and optional BYOD (Bring You Own Domain) for a single ham. Priority support. Email-based blogging (just email world@qso.email and it will be automatically posted). CalDAV/CardDAV support for calendar and contact synchronization.

This subdomain thing is a killer feature that I feel I need to explain. If you are, say, OP1RTX, your email will be op1rtx@qso.email and that works like any normal email. If you subscribe to The Whole Pig then you also get the subdomain op1rtx.qso.email, and anything sent to any user on that subdomain will be forwarded to your primary email (catchall). (There are exceptions for users like 'postmaster' and 'admin' since those are special cases for the administrator of the domain, and will be forwarded to me. I provide the full list of these when you sign up.)

This means you can be signed up to Netflix with tv@op1rtx.qso.email, give each hotel you stay at a unique email like atomicblue@op1rtx.qso.email, and hand out custom emails to the car dealerships like acton_honda_20231124@op1rtx.qso.email.

When they inevitably spam you, or sell or 'lose' your email, or are compromised by bad guys on the internet, you can make a rule that blocks all email to that specific user on your subdomain. The rest of your account is unaffected, and they never catch on.

The rest of the internet behaves as if each person has one email address, and each domain has many users. This means if you have a different 'email address' for each service you sign up for, you can break a lot of assumptions that companies and attackers use to track you or try to find your other accounts.

Now if Netflix gets hacked, your other accounts are not compromised because you don't sign into that 'email', and it's not signed up for any other services. It literally only exists for your usage of Netflix. You still get that email, this is no harder to use than regular email for you, but it makes it that much harder to automatically connect the dots between your accounts on the internet.

You can also configure as many aliases as you like. This means you can do things like have custom forwarders or small-scale email lists as an alias on your subdomain, among a great many other capabilities.

This doesn't begin to scratch the surface, but maybe you can see some of the power of this capability.

Additionally there are some advanced email features like an automated blog - you just email world@qso.email and it automatically gets posted on your subdomain. This is bare-bones for now but it works very well and can be easily extended.

This plan also includes the ability to all of this same service on your own domain, for example a hypothetical jan@op1rtx.com instead of op1rtx@qso.email.

For additional fees I will happily include additional services such as DNS hosting and dynamic DNS, Mastodon social media, M17 reflectors and other digital mode networking, and much more. Speaking of additional services...

Swineherd is an offer for larger groups like a club. You can use this to buy email and related services, or just as a way to effectively outsource your club IT hosting and maintenance. You might want groupware (calendar, email, file sharing), web hosting, mailing lists, text message distribution lists, single sign on, shared secrets management, blogs and newsletter management, payment or donations collection, or just some help managing what you already have.
This is what I do. I can help.

Miscellaneous

Spam is an issue with any email service, both sending and receiving. I only provide these services to licensed amateur radio operators which should help with the first. For the second, you can forward any spam, phishing or other suspicious or unwanted email you get to security@qso.email to cure your unwanted email woes.

For the time being I can only provide services to US customers - I wouldn't want to get too hambitious- but please get in contact if you're interested and I'll add you to a waitlist which will bump up the priority for handling other countries.

Not a ham but still interested? Contact me for non-ham hosting.