Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#431

Post by ahje » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

your-nanny wrote: post #429

brongondwana wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, as a self-hoster your email is much more prone to metadata analysis than anybody who is hosted at one of the big providers and has most of their email transferred to other big providers down TLS-protected port 25 streams.

would you expand on this please?

Quite simple: If someone were to sniff the encrypted traffic between Hotmail and Gmail then they wouldn't have any idea who was talking to whom.

If someone sniffs the traffic between Hotmail and my server, it's trivial to see that a Hotmail user talked to me or one of the few others using my email server.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#432

Post by simfoo » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #314

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

I'm an European, but I don't mind. First of all when making such a choice, you have to identify who the enemy is. If you're talking about global enemies, like the NSA, then IMO without end-to-end encryption you're screwed. And if you're targeted directly, you're screwed regardless, given they have the capability to use whatever vulnerabilities they can find in your router, your phone, your OS, your browser, etc. If i…

Thanks for you comment.

I agree that the NSA is not _my_ enemy and I am probably not being targeted. However, as more people start thinking like that, those that _are_ targeted (journalists, lawyers, activists etc.) will have less options to hide among users of more privacy-aware service providers.

In a way, by using these providers you shield those who need their services the most

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#433

Post by mda » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

Riverheart wrote: post #288

mda wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it better for privacy and quality?

Privacy wise, you're paying for the service so there's a reasonable expectation that they're not mining your emails to build a profile of you. Unlike Google they have no ads to serve you.

How are they mining your emails to build a profile of you?

Besides when you use such a service all your personal emails are stored in servers. One rubber stamp away from total ownage.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#434

Post by m_st » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

I'm on Exchange online (~5$ per user/month) and rather happy. The Outlook Web App online interface is regularly updated, I can use a custom domain, have plenty of storage and adding my wife as well as alternate domains was rather easy. Add to that support for shared calendars and great support for push features (using Exchange Active Sync) on almost all systems.

The main problem is that it is Microsoft and thus rather complicated: I now have a private Microsoft 'work' account for Exchange Online + a private Microsoft 'home' account for Office 365 Home Edition. So when I want to log into the online services (Mail, OneDrive, etc) I always have to think twice about which login to use :-(

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#435

Post by tkim90 » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

Can anyone expliain why G Suite (the paid version of Gmail) is not considered safe for data privacy? From the site it says they are encrypted, regularly audited by 3rd parties and not used for ads.

https://gsuite.google.com/faq/security/

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#436

Post by adley » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #337

samlewis wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I tried this, I found a lot of corporate spam filters seemed to (silently) drop my emails, so I went back to using GMail out of frustration. Is there anything you do that helps with this? I was using GApps and I don't think my domain name was too spammy (samlewis.me).

Huh, I haven't had that problem in about 7 years of using a custom domain name. Maybe the distinction is that mine is a .com? I feel like enough businesses themselves use custom domain names that dropping unknown .coms would break a ton of legitimate B2B traffic, but perhaps .me less so. How did you notice this?

I use a .me domain myself but I haven't had any spam problems. Although I share it very very sparingly and have a catchall on another domain that I use for signing up with any service / sharing with non-trusted contacts. Even there, the spam problem isn't bothersome.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#437

Post by JoeyTawadrous » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

vivan wrote: post #242

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

My problem with FastMail is that if you stop paying for your email address, they recycle it. This means that someone else could potentially buy your old email address (if you migrate away) and use it for nefarious purposes.

You would not have that problem with Inbox Zero. A privacy-first minimalist Google Inbox, located at https://inboxzeroemail.com

Sign in with your Gmail account & get the same functionality as Google Inbox.

It's hosted on Linode and our servers are load balanced across the world.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#438

Post by rb666 » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

billysielu wrote: post #394

microtonal wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail has an even nicer feature: subdomain addressing. If you are dave@mp.com, you can set up Fastmail to accept subdomains dave@hn.mp.com dave@lobsters.mp.com Avoids catchalls ;).

Tyvm! That looks epic. Link: https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/addressing.html Might be tricky if the time came to migrate away from FastMail though.

Indeed! This is why I stopped using it. I love Fastmail, but who knows if I feel that way in 5 years. The entire point of Fastmail + own domain is never being locked in again. Using subdomain addressing locks you in once again.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#439

Post by sergiosgc » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

charmides wrote: post #139

bamboozled wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail has been also flawless for me since signing up. Highly recommended.

I think paid email services are a great idea, but $50 a year and 2 GB of storage for Fastmail seems expensive to me. Why not something closer to five or ten bucks a year? Can someone explain to me why this type of pricing makes sense?

Five or ten bucks a year is impossible to attain. The monthly cost of a hosted GB is about a cent. At 25GB, in a service with fast search and, I imagine, regular snapshots and backups, you'll be using up to 200% overhead. Assume that most accounts are not at 100% usage and, in the spirit of a Fermi estimate, set a typical usage of 50GB. You get to an yearly cost of $6.

At $6 cost of hardware per account, now you have to factor in other costs and your profit margin. Support alone will bring you above $10. Marketing will also bring you above $10 on its own. At a decent scale, you can keep the marginal cost of engineering low (as it does not scale linearly), but on a mid-sized operation expect it to bring you above $10 on its own.

All in all, $50/year is high but not stratospheric.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#440

Post by MistahKoala » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

peatmoss wrote: post #9

Most important thing is to buy a domain so you can port your email address from provider to provider. I’ve had the same email address and several hosts over the years. I’m currently on Fastmail and find the service good.

Although I like the control and portability of having my own domain, as a less technologically-proficient user on a shoestring budget, I've found it more challenging to set up and configure on shared hosting services. There's a need to get your head around things like DNS records, reverse DNS, DKIM, SPF, SpamAssassin, cPanel etc. to stand a reasonable chance of successful delivery and low-maintenance inboxes. I've been through a few hosts and fortunately seem to have settled with a reliable provider now (Squidix), but it's not always been so easy.