This. I've been looking for a good email solution for personal+freelance work with decent privacy, security, and reliability. I don't need 24/7 support. I am absolutely willing to pay for it. But pricing per mailbox with Google apps adds up really quickly even with just 4-5 boxes. I'd like to be able to make separate mailboxes for my partner and to separate several different classes of email (personal, business, limited access, catch all, etc) for security purposes. These things don't need extra support or space, I can't stomach an extra $50/year for what amounts to aliases with passwords.
Has anyone found a good solution for this? I could host it myself but that is a lot of hassle, free email accounts have ads and rarely let you use your own domain. The best I've found so far is email through a shared hosting provider, but it has limitations of its own (no IPv6, no 2 factor auth, self signed TLS certificates, etc). The cost is similar to a Google Apps account but without the linear price increase per mailbox.
I believe that you can accomplish what you need using domain aliases (which google apps for business makes use of). You can have up to 20 domain aliases that all point to one mailbox: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1...
Have you considered using aliases in GApps? Different than the catch all, but allows you to setup specific email addresses. I use them for accounts, newsletters, etc and then create filters and labels in my one apps email.
Has anyone found a good solution for this? I could host it myself but that is a lot of hassle, free email accounts have ads and rarely let you use your own domain. The best I've found so far is email through a shared hosting provider, but it has limitations of its own (no IPv6, no 2 factor auth, self signed TLS certificates, etc). The cost is similar to a Google Apps account but without the linear price increase per mailbox.