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Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

#51

Post by Rjevski »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #45
Rjevski wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's free and ad supported. There's no way they're better than Gmail.

> "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?" You did read the OP. Gmail is __exactly__ what is __not__ needed.

My point was that it was ad supported and so had the exact same drawbacks as Gmail, but in addition being much less advanced.

Re: Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

#54

Post by milani »

laurent123456 wrote: post #19

I use OVH https://www.ovh.com for emails and domain (as well as VPS) and never had any problem with them. They have a built-in spam filter, which is pretty efficient.

I experienced having my account suspended all of a sudden with no notice; the problem livingpunchbag is trying to avoid.

Re: Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

#55

Post by GLjEI4YbnGD27LB »

uncle_d wrote: post #23
zhte415 wrote: post #5

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.

Seconded - I am also very happy with ProtonMail.

Thirded, I too am quite happy enough with protonmail I decided to pay for their service.

Re: Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

#57

Post by laurent123456 »

milani wrote: post #54
laurent123456 wrote: post #19

I use OVH https://www.ovh.com for emails and domain (as well as VPS) and never had any problem with them. They have a built-in spam filter, which is pretty efficient.

I experienced having my account suspended all of a sudden with no notice; the problem livingpunchbag is trying to avoid.

I've been with them for nearly 10 years for shared web hosting, domains, emails and VPS, and never had such problem. Customer support is not as good as it used to, but still ok. Did they say why your account was suspended?

Re: Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

#58

Post by maltalex »

pmlnr wrote: post #32
maltalex wrote: post #27

Self-hosting is tricky to get right and the cost of getting something wrong is high. One more provider I haven't seen mentioned here is Zoho.com/Zoho.eu They're more business-oriented, and they offer a whole suite of collaboration tools. They're one of the only providers I've seen that support custom domains in their free tier offering ( https://www.zoho.eu/workplace/pricing.html )

It's not tricky, it's tedious. There's nothing tricky about it. You need a static IP, reverse DNS set to system hostname, "regular" DNS for the system hostname, DNS SPF entry, DKIM, DMARC, and authentication - it can get complex but it's quite straightforward. On the other hand, things like iRedMail[^1] or Mail-in-a-Box[^2] will do most of the magic part for you. [^1]: https://www.iredmail.org/ [^2]: https://mailinab…

> It's not tricky, it's tedious. There's nothing tricky about it. You need a static IP, reverse DNS set to system hostname, "regular" DNS for the system hostname, DNS SPF entry, DKIM, DMARC, and authentication - it can get complex but it's quite straightforward.

Plus you need to know a thing or two about linux administration, security, high availability (kinda, since short outages are tolerated by smtp), backups, spam, dealing with having your IP blacklisted and probably a few other things. Oh, and then there are the periodic updates, hacking attempts, vm reboots...

None of this is rocket science and it's probably fairly easy to get started, but it'll be hard to beat the security and reliability of a professionally managed service.

Re: Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

#59

Post by carlos22 »

th0br0 wrote: post #10

How about https://kolabnow.com/ ? You can also self-host Kolab.

Kolabnow is rather expensive and we had a lot of problems with it. The up-time was also very upsetting. Experience was 2 years ago.

Self-hosting of Kolab is not very flexible and a lot of work. We use self-hosted SoGO now and are very happy.

Re: Ask HN: Low-maintenance alternatives to Gmail?

#60

Post by csomar »

eeutb wrote: post #42
greenyoda wrote: post #2

You might want to look at Fastmail.com, a paid e-mail service with actual customer support. They provide a web-based interface, mobile apps and also IMAP access, and you can use your own domain with it if you like. (I've been happily using it for a few years now, and first heard about it here on HN.)

Fastmail is too expensive. They have no competition. I wish someone would come around and disrupt those prices.

They offers lots of configuration and customization with that price. Maybe you mean somebody offer a simple, straightforward product with no customization at a lower price?
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