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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#211

Post by wackro »

devmunchies wrote: post #135
csdreamer7 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don't know that. MS built Win10 to spy on you and build a business from data mining. Why would they not do that for email? (Or, more likely, change Outlook's ToS to allow it once you are hooked.) You could say that of any email provider, but ProtonMail is under GDPR so it makes it a safer alternative.

> but ProtonMail is under GDPR I thought GDPR was European union? Protonmail is in Switzerland.

I haven't read this yet so can't summarise, but here it is: https://protonmail.com/blog/gdpr-email-compliance/

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#212

Post by mda »

SSLy wrote: post #204
simfoo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind about Fastmail is that all their servers are hosted in the US and they have no plan about changing this (I asked). Post-Snowden this means you can be quite sure that all mails will end up being analysed by the US authorities

Yeah, but on the other hand it's also a feature of Gmail. So it's not strictly worse.

Except that gmail is hosted on a much better and secure infrastructure with very good SREs.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#213

Post by mda »

TwelveNights wrote: post #161
vbezhenar wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail is paid and very costly while Gmail is free, not very good alternative for me.

For the privacy, quality, and features it offers at the reasonable price of $50/year, I would say that it's a fantastic alternative. It'd be hard-pressed to find anything free that is on par.

How is it better for privacy and quality?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#214

Post by glandium »

nadont8 wrote: post #191
danpalmer wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like FastMail is that expensive for most people. Obviously, compared to free, it's expensive. But in real terms, I pay $70 every 2 years for it - works out about £25 a year for me, which is about the price of a meal out. I think that's worth it for secure and powerful email. I've never found it to be expensive.

It's expensive if you think of what it costs to keep a mail server online. They have a price that clearly shows to me that they have no competition.

What do you get for less than $35 per year? A cheap VPS? Are there plans for less than $3 per month these days?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#215

Post by InternetOfStuff »

rjzzleep wrote: post #188

For the self-hosted folks there are: https://mailcow.email/ - dockerized, works with multiple domains, sogo for groupware. Compared to mailinabox's single disk, it has 6 docker volumes to keep track of. https://mailu.io/ - dockerized, it has a section on kubernetes deployments, which i find weird, but I guess could make sense for companies https://mailinabox.email/ - no docker, no multiple domains, roundcube, nextclo…

> And then this is the more hands on version, which I guess would be sovereign as ansible deployment.

I used to run a Sovereign box.

It served me well for 2-3 years, but it got too cumbersome to maintain: they changed their approach to various configuation things (for the better, I'm sure), and threatened to break my setup in the process.

All told, it felt like it had missed the sweet spot between pre-configuration and flexibility, in the end not quite giving you either.

> IMHO sovereign puts too many attack vectors on a single machine.

I turned off most of the attack vectors (I didn't need all the bells and whistles). But yes, they tried too hard, and over-complicated the setup as a result.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#216

Post by throwaway9d0291 »

psergeant wrote: post #126
ezhik_ wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055514

Your comment says — essentially — “every email company shares with their host country”. If I take that at face value, I would take the USs and Australia’s rule of law and due process and concern for my privacy many many times over Russia’s current government’s.

As a non-American:

> I would take the USs [...] rule of law and due process and concern for my privacy many many times over Russia’s current government’s.

I find this somewhat laughable given that we already have solid proof (Snowden) that not only does the US slurp up emails en-masse but it considers non-citizens to have zero privacy rights (this fun EO: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/new_rules_on_...).

The reason Russia is less of a problem is that even if I give Russia all my email, it has an order of magnitude less data because it doesn't have access to data from Facebook, Google, Twitter and the like like the US does. It also has less power over my life. I have investments in US securities that could theoretically be taken from me if the US government wished. Russia has no power over me.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#217

Post by barrongineer »

TsomArp wrote: post #199
danpalmer wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like FastMail is that expensive for most people. Obviously, compared to free, it's expensive. But in real terms, I pay $70 every 2 years for it - works out about £25 a year for me, which is about the price of a meal out. I think that's worth it for secure and powerful email. I've never found it to be expensive.

I might be wrong, but I also think it is expensive. When I can have a 5 family plan from office365, including, word, excel, powerpoint, outlook, etc, with 1TB per account, 60 minutes of skype calls per account, etc, for 10 per month, 25 per month (for 5 people) only for email seems too expensive to me. The only thing lacking is custom email address.

Premium outlook allows you to use a custom domain now. So long as it's registered with GoDaddy.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#218

Post by thraxil »

I use AWS WorkMail and I'm moderately happy with it. It's pretty barebones, but works and hasn't given me any problems. I went with it because I use Route53 for my domains, and host most of my stuff on AWS anyway, so it was one less account/service to manage. The web interface is really basic, but I mostly access it through emacs/gnus or the android email client. My only complaint is that some of the documentation is wrong. It tells you to use an exchange setup for android, but that breaks. The plain IMAP setup works fine though.

I can't really speak to privacy aspects, but I'm assuming that since I'm actually paying for the service, it's a little better than if I were using a free service like gmail.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#219

Post by jsmeaton »

simfoo wrote: post #159
lvillani wrote: post #86

FastMail. It's one of the few third party hosts to support push email on iOS with the native Mail app (it's a custom protocol based on APNS), since Mail doesn't implement IMAP IDLE [1]. They are also the main sponsors behind the JMAP protocol [2] and some open source projects such as the Cyrus IMAP server. [1]: https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when-we-... [2]: https://jmap.io

One thing to keep in mind about Fastmail is that all their servers are hosted in the US and they have no plan about changing this (I asked). Post-Snowden this means you can be quite sure that all mails will end up being analysed by the US authorities

I dont think this is true. I don’t believe there is any evidence that the US government is analysing all emails hosted by all US companies.

Rather, if the US government asks for a particular individuals emails the provider must grant the request provided there is a valid (possibly secret) warrant.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#220

Post by icebraining »

apatters wrote: post #193

Is there an open source email client which supports a conversation view similar to Gmail's? I find that to be an amazingly useful feature. The other thing Gmail does which has a lot of potential is message labeling (e.g., newsletters automatically go into a separate tab/folder).

Filters for putting emails in folders are pretty common. I use sieve[1] since I run my own server, but many clients and hosted services have their own mechanisms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language...

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