Do you know the most cost-effective way to host multiple e-mail addresses?

Hello!

I’ve started to experiment with hosting my sites on Digital Ocean. At the moment I’m trying to find out what the best way is to setup and host e-mail for all my websites.

I own about 15 small websites which are currently all on a shared hosting package using cPanel.

Note: All websites are owned by me

My current setup is as follows (using cPanel):

To send, receive and organize e-mail for each site, I make use of Gmail (free). I setup an email account for every website domain on cPanel and then forward all mail to my primary Gmail account.

In Gmail, incoming mails are automatically organized using labels depending on which domain it was sent to. This way, I can manage e-mail of all of my domains/websites from one location.

It is neccesary for me to use the SMTP of the domain (hosting provider) when setting up and sending e-mails from Gmail. So for example; domaina.com would use smtp.domaina.com, domainb.com would use smtp.domainb.com.

If I would use the SMTP of Gmail, the recipient will see a “sent on behalf from [main gmail address]” line next to the sender’s email address. So this is not an option for me.

Using DigitalOcean, I don’t have the SMTP anymore that cPanel sets up for each domain I add.

Do you know any cost-effective option how I could manage e-mails of all my domains, preferably from one location/interface?

I’ve looked into Google Apps, but I would have to pay about $5 for each domain, which would become expensive for me.

I’ve also looked into hosting a mailserver myself, but I’m not too technical and from what I’ve read this is not a easy and reliable option.

Thank you very much!

Dolo