check-if-email-exists VS AnonAddy

The point is not about ideological debates, making money from GPL software is purely a practical business decision. Many people are doing it, see e.g. https://reacher.email/ (written in Rust btw).

I started with open-source.

I initially created https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists, after some years it got to ~50 stars and nice overall feedback, that's when I thought of a SaaS wrapper on top of it.

So a possible path is "idea -> open-source -> monetize". I find the first arrow to be easier to execute than a direct idea to monetization leap.

We forked (this repository)[https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists] and made a few modifications.

I run an open-source [1] email verification API, called Reacher. I managed to hit 10k ARR this year (1st year).

It's written in Rust, self-hostable, and does not use a DB of emails (like some competitors do).

Landing page: https://reacher.email.

[1]: https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists

Check If Email Exists\ (205 comments)

GitHub issues like this one warm my heart:

https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists/issues/91

Identifying something that needs doing, especially when you have no idea how to do it, is a bold skill.

Too often have I seen engineers be reluctant to open an issue because they don’t know how to implement it, technically. I still do it, myself. If you need it then you’ll find a way.

The converse is also true: losing focus by filing tasks and procrastinating on features because you know how to build them, not because you actually need them to move your business / project forward.

With providers like Addy and SimpleLogin it is possible to use your own domain.

> https://addy.io/

This is one of a few reasons I have started to use email forwarders such as AnonAddy.

https://github.com/anonaddy/anonaddy

Not all of my emails have been moved over yet, but over time I plan on depreciating almost if not all of my main emails from logins.

For receive-only e-mails, take a look at addy.io as a free alternative to DDG. It's easier to manage with an account page listing every alias you create, with the option to block if required.

I use https://anonaddy.com/

My only complaint: 90% of the emails coming from AnonAddy, which is the alias service I use for all of my accounts, end up in the spam folder.

AnonAddy - https://github.com/anonaddy/anonaddy/blob/master/SELF-HOSTING.md OR SimpleLogin.io The real issue you are going to face is being able to receive emails on your server. If you are trying to do this at home, most home ISPs block incoming port 25. Even on most cloud providers you will face the same problem.

Anonaddy, basically the exact same product made by different people, can also be selfhosted. https://anonaddy.com/