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

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#121

Post by Annatar » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:31 AM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #112

Annatar wrote: post #60

Which service is best? The one you roll out on your own, in your rack, on your own servers in the basement. Unfortunately, configuring a complete end-to-end e-mail solution in 2018 is an incredibly complex affair. The hardest part is the SPAM filtering. On the command line, I use pine with the maildir patch; in the browser, I recommend the open source version of "eGroupware", a complete replacement for Microsoft Outl…

Is there a good turnkey solution for this, and other services? I mean not with my own physical servers, but I'd pay to have an image with mail all set up and other services, like remote storage, etc, all ready to go and plop it on ec2 or something.

No idea about Amazon or Azure ready images.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#122

Post by Schnouki » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:32 AM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #41

BlindRabbit wrote: post #22

https://www.migadu.com/

Since yours is a new account here, I have to ask. Are you part of the team there or are you just a user? How’s the support? Whenever I, as a non-customer, contacted Migadu, it seemed like nobody read the emails. I also find the pricing logic a bit like it’s too good to be true, and am wary of providers who cannot sustain themselves.

I'm just a user and I'm pretty happy with Migadu as well. I only contacted them once, and got a reply within a few hours. And a real reply, with technical details, written by someone who obviously understood the question very well.

The webmail is really basic though: it's basically Rainloop (https://www.rainloop.net/) without any plugin.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#123

Post by nopacience » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:33 AM UTC

Nowadays i recommend runbox.com.

The services are good and when needed support is also good. Clients have given good feedback.

In the past i have recommended protonmail and fastmail.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#124

Post by spondyl » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:34 AM UTC

FuckOffNeemo wrote: post #88

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.

It's surprisingly responsive for large email accounts too. I had ~100K emails imported and marking all as read would take about 10 seconds. I can't complain with that all things considered.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#125

Post by ngrilly » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:34 AM UTC

jayalpha wrote: post #66

Get your own domain at Gandi. Free Email included. Or buy a domain and Email as a service here: http://infomaniak.com/ If you are disappointed about the search capabilities of Thunderbird, install recoll for search

I love Gandi, but their email service is still unable to sign outgoing emails with DKIM, which is almost mandatory nowadays to avoid being flagged as spam.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#126

Post by psergeant » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:36 AM UTC

ezhik_ wrote: post #120

intothemild wrote: post #109

What is with everyone here recommending Yandex? It's not secure and its not private https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13274443 Don't use Yandex!

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.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#127

Post by fuzzy2 » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:37 AM UTC

bambataa wrote: post #103

I use mailbox.org. It’s sligtly cheaper than FastMail but there’s probably not much in it. It’s been a good service so far. I have no complaints.

Tried that. However, because they refuse to let their spam filter look at mail contents, it’s worthless. Other than that, it’s acceptable and custom domains are possible, too.

Many of my mail addresses have been around for decades and receive substantial amounts of spam. Google correctly deals with that. Mailbox.org does not. In fact, during the week I experimented with it, their filter didn’t clear away a single spam mail.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#128

Post by spondyl » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:37 AM UTC

BlindRabbit wrote: post #39

rgovostes wrote: post #23

I'd like to switch to Fastmail, but I have a handful of seldom-used secondary accounts (e.g., for family members), and it doesn't make sense to pay $5/mo/each when they're free on G Suite. Their pricing structure is designed for organizations or single users, but somehow my use case falls in between. It seems a bit off that my household can stream as many movies as we want for $11/mo, or have unlimited access to an e…

I had the exact same problem. Then I found https://www.migadu.com/ "Have as many email addresses on as many domains you need, anytime. No extra costs. All your projects, ideas, employees, family members and IoT devices are welcome. Pets too. Migadu is a radically different, independent email hosting from Switzerland. We do not count your domains, mailboxes, gigabytes or teeth."

As an ex-customer (with Migadu for about a year), I have nothing but good things to say. Customer support was always very quick and knowledgable. It's not a huge team so it has that "I'm a regular" kinda vibe when you chat with them. Obviously I left but it was to try out Fastmail's JMAP (?) format because I had a lot of emails that web UIs struggle to handle. That's maybe the only improvement I could suggest?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#129

Post by crispinb » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:37 AM UTC

earenndil wrote: post #119

crispinb wrote: post #50

I've just gone the other way. Having recently moved from macOS to Windows, I couldn't find a single mail client that I am willing to use daily. I'm now forwarding my hosted IMAP to a gmail account, simply in order to use the gmail web client. I do admit this is kind of sad.

Claws mail? Thunderbird? Outlook? Mailinabox? None of those work?

Never heard of Mailinabox, and I don't want to buy or subscribe to Office (AFAIK the only way to get Outlook). I've tried the others you mention, as well as a bunch of alternatives. Windows software in general is much poorer than that available for macOS, and this seems particularly true of mail clients. The built-in UWP one is particularly hilarious (does Microsoft really think anyone will use it?)

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#130

Post by lloeki » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 7:38 AM UTC

minxomat wrote: post #73

fvargas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can funnel mail with Gmail, too using extensions. Although some online forms incorrectly reject this. Looks like this: notmyaddress+github@gmail.com

This is called subadressing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Subaddressing