Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

Hello

I've always relied on the comfort of having Google handle my mails, properly configure a mail server and keep it safe from hackers. OTOH I always felt a little uncomfortable sharing such private information with them, and those news about people who have their accounts banned for no reason and can't get them back gives me nightmares. Recent news made me think about this problem yet again.

I even do have my own domain and an unused mail account for it on a certain popular hosting service (they manage the mail server, I pay shared web hosting), but I'm not sure if trusting them instead of google is actually a win here. The possibility of someone hacking this host is probably higher than hacking gmail. At least I have a human to talk to if they decide to simply ban me.

I also thought about upgrading to a private server instance so I would have my own mail server, but maintaining a mail server seems like a hassle that would eat even more of my free time, and I'd probably forget an update and be hacked anyway or have my domain accidentally registered in the spam lists.

What is your opinion about this? Is there some magical solution where I can just throw some money and feel safe and not worry about having my information being read by third parties or parsed for whatever reason, or getting my account unilaterally banned, or having phone apps reading all my email, etc?

Thanks a lot.

Even if you secure your side of communications you're at the mercy of people who send and receive email to and from you.

If most of the people you communicate with are also on gmail then your conversations are stored in plain text, just on their accounts.

You don't have any privavcy with email and should just treat it as almost public discourse.

A better alternative is to switch to a secure messaging app.

For your privacy concerns, protonmail.com?

You can point your domain to it and use their web interface, or your preferred email app.

I wouldn't like to manage my own mail server either. While some people may be experienced at this, or enjoy the technical learning, email is just too important to me to trust myself with, so I prefer a 3rd party also.

33mail

Virtualmin is a little old-school, and hosting-oriented, but you can easily set up a mail server with SPF, DKIM, SSL w/ LetsEncrypt, etc. out of the box. I've never had any problems in over 5 years with sending or receiving and I just turn on automatic updates for Debian. Only issue is if the IP you get from the hosting provider is blacklisted, so remember to check that before you start setting it up. I use DigitalOcean for hosting.