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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#81

Post by nik1aa5 »

I administer all my domains on eurodns.com. They offer a decent service for a good price. Bonus: They use open-xchange as their mail backend, so you profit from a great web client.

An account with 10GB for mail plus 10GB for cloud storage with unlimited aliases costs about 3€ per month.

I mainly use their service for family mail. The only downside is that passwords of mail accounts cannot be changed individually in the web client i.e., I -- who has the account at eurodns -- as administrator have to set the passwords.

I'm not affiliated with them. While the solution is not perfect, pricing is OK and domain service provider plus email hosting is done in the EU, which is the most important point for me.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#82

Post by bamboozled »

dewey wrote: post #57

There are so many threads like this and the answers usually boil down to the self hosting group and the other group who believes that paying someone to do the job is the right thing to do. I’m in the latter group and always recommend Fastmail. I migrated all of my families accounts there with multiple domains and couldn’t be happier. For something I use hours every day it’s well worth paying someone to keep it secure…

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

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#84

Post by bamboozled »

whitepoplar wrote: post #16

I'd love to switch away from Gmail, but its security is so compelling that, afaik, nobody else comes close. How many other companies have Tavis Ormandy's on staff to do security audits for their users, let alone free users? Is there a single other email provider that gets security right to the extent Google does?

What's the point of having great security if you don't own the data?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#85

Post by ezhik_ »

iillexial wrote: post #76
ezhik_ wrote: post #72

If you need strong privacy, then go to ProtonMail. Otherwise, try https://yandex.com . For personal domains you can use https://connect.yandex.com , which is free (with ads) for unlimited users or $3 per user per month (available in several countries) without ads. I've been using Yandex Connect for quite long time (free and paid). They are very good. Yandex Connect goes with Email (fully unlimited), Cloud Storage, Wi…

Yandex is a Russian mail-service. I wouldn't trust them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13274443

Let's be honest: Any company must comply with local authorities in any country they work in.

I'm pretty sure, that we can find such article about any major US based service and FBI/NSA/etc, for example. Same for major services from Europe. Because of this I pointed to ProtonMail before going further.

By the way, this article is about "Yandex's online payment service" (this service can be compared to PayPal), which is owned by Yandex only for 25%, other 75% is being owned by the biggest bank in Russia, which is owned by governance (just to clarify: Yandex is not).

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#86

Post by lvillani »

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

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#87

Post by miles »

brycehamrick wrote: post #40
whitepoplar wrote: post #16

I'd love to switch away from Gmail, but its security is so compelling that, afaik, nobody else comes close. How many other companies have Tavis Ormandy's on staff to do security audits for their users, let alone free users? Is there a single other email provider that gets security right to the extent Google does?

Yeah I completely agree this is something that needs consideration. I do have an email address with my own domain but for security reasons any accounts I create are tied to my gmail address. I've known too many people who have had personal domain email addresses intercepted, particularly through compromised domain/DNS settings. One simple MX record adjustment could mean every single bank account, social media profile…

> I do have an email address with my own domain but for security reasons any accounts I create are tied to my gmail address. I've known too many people who have had personal domain email addresses intercepted, particularly through compromised domain/DNS settings.

If your Gmail account is lost or compromised, good luck getting any help from Google; while G Suite support is decent, free Gmail account users are basically on their own.

Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14452969

Ask HN: What to do about a wrongly shut down GMail account? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2033474

Another account lost in the Google void – how many are there? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745761

Professor who refused to use other genders pronouns, was banned by Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14905384

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#88

Post by FuckOffNeemo »

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

FastMail IMO are one of the best email providers, by far. Their web GUI is fantastic and support teams are responsive and well versed.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#89

Post by kilburn »

fvargas wrote: post #54
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.

Fastmail has worked well for me with custom domains. It's nice being able to create custom aliases for when an address is publicly visible e.g. GitHub so I know through what funnel emails are coming from. Like others have said, the Android app is not worth installing unless you're okay with limited and, in some cases, poor functionality. I suppose you can set it up with the Gmail or Outlook Android apps? I've never t…

> Still searching for a good Android mail app...

K-9 Mail has served me very well over the years!

https://k9mail.github.io/about.html

Edit: Highlights for me:

- IMAP Idle support: e-mails appear instantly, configurable on a by-folder basis.

- Mature and stable: it's been around forever, updates are infrequent, it just works.

- Free software: apache license

- No fanciness: it is very traditional-email oriented. The only "fancy" feature is a unified inbox (showing mails from all your folders), and it can be turned off.

If your e-mail is "complicated" you'll have to spend a bit of time setting everything up. For instance, my server classifies e-mail as it arrives, and I setup different synchronization schedules and notification preferences for different folders. Best time investment of my life.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#90

Post by FuckOffNeemo »

fvargas wrote: post #54
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.

Fastmail has worked well for me with custom domains. It's nice being able to create custom aliases for when an address is publicly visible e.g. GitHub so I know through what funnel emails are coming from. Like others have said, the Android app is not worth installing unless you're okay with limited and, in some cases, poor functionality. I suppose you can set it up with the Gmail or Outlook Android apps? I've never t…

BlueMail is a pretty decent Android email client. :)
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