This proposal documents migrating the Carpenter Tutoring domain name and email forwarding structure away from Google Domains to a dual Porkbun and self-hosted structure.
Google is selling off Google Domains to Squarespace at an undisclosed date. This was announced 2023-06-05 and is documented here. Google Domains provided the following key features for Carpenter Tutoring:
These services are critical to the operation of Carpenter Tutoring and therefore must be replaced with the next best substitute as soon as possible. Their replacement must continue to be resilient and protected against change to minimise rework. This is especially important given the growing number of independent contractors joining Carpenter Tutoring in the past three months.
All Google Domains services are available for $12.00 per year for Carpenter Tutoring. The homepage and Nextcloud are self-hosted for the cost of electricity and maintenance by Carpenter Tutoring itself. For the purposes of this document, those costs are negligible.
If no action is taken, the carpentertutoring.com domain will be transferred to Squarespace. Google promises no interruption of service as a result of the migration. Squarespace assures users that their existing registrations will be financially covered for the remainder of their registration period. Since carpentertutoring.com renews in January each year, the business would pay nothing to be migrated to Squarespace until January.
Ironically, Squarespace provides email forwarding features for small businesses by reselling Google Workspace. The cost of Google Workspace mail accounts for all tutors is prohibitive for Carpenter Tutoring and will not be considered. This means Squarespace does not offer a low-cost or free mail delivery service for independent contractors.
Squarespace, being more than a domain registrar, offers bundle plans with website builders, custom domains, product inventory and checkout carts, and SEO tools. The majority of these tools offer no immediate or near future value to Carpenter Tutoring, and would therefore be an upsell on the essential services Carpenter Tutoring needs today.
For these reasons, Squarespace cannot be considered a viable alternative to Google Domains. A third-party replacement is required to maintain existing operability and costs.
Porkbun also offers one-way email forwarding for $3.00 per address per year. For ten tutors this would be $30.00 billed annually and does not account for domain registration costs. While much more affordable, it is critical for tutors to be able to send mail to clients as well as receive it. Therefore this is not an option.
To quickly get set up and running again with little operational overhead, Porkbun offers mail hosting for $2.00 per month per inbox. For ten tutors this would be $240.00 billed annually and does not take into account the domain registration costs. Every tutor would receive a dedicated webmail interface and be able to configure two-way forwarding just like they had previously. As the number of tutors grows, this starts to become less cost-effective compared to other options.
The optimal solution that provides the lowest cost and the highest comparable functionality is transferring domains only to Porkbun and implementing self-hosted email on the Carpenter Tutoring web server. This will provide a virtually unlimited number of tutors with a virtual unlimited capacity mailbox each. It also provides Carpenter Tutoring with greater control over company data and communications. Additional forwarding addresses can be constructed for information "blurb"s or mailing lists.
The cost of this solution is the accounted for domain registration fee ($9.73 renewal, $11.48 one-time transfer). The operating cost of the mail server is the electricity powering the existing homepage and Nextcloud instance.
Here is a rough architectural overview. Porkbun registers the domain name and DNS configuration pointing MX records to MTA mail.53hor.net. At mail.53hor.net are an SMTP server and an IMAP server. Every tutor gets a virtual user and mailbox and the appropriate configuration to use any mail client of their choice.
Spam filters prevent unwarranted and unwanted messages from arriving on all tutors' inboxes. Common rules can be set up to redirect known spam away from inboxes and into junk for all tutors. Additionally, DKIM is configured to make sure mail is delivered to major tech mail providers (Google, Microsoft, Apple) who require it.
OpenSMTPD is used as an MTA, sending mail and running the necessary actions on incoming and outgoing mail requests. Dovecot exists as an IMAP virtual mailbox for tutors to authenticate with and check mail. Rspamd is a spam filter integrating with Dovecot.
Useful starting information here.