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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#151

Post by Accacin »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #127
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 sp…

I'd like to add I've been using Mailbox.org for about two years now and haven't personally had a problem with spam, although I actually didn't know they had a policy to not look at the content of the email.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#152

Post by non-nil »

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.

Another happy user here, but I think they deserve much more credit than simply being a cheap offer.

They're big on both security and privacy (you can even sign up anonymously and send them cash through the mail), have some pretty cool PGP features, they strip the IP address from outgoing mail (underrated feature) AND they run a fairly updated XMPP server along with a Tor exit.

For €1 a month you get 2GB of storage, 3 aliases (includes catch-all for custom domains), CalDAV/CardDAV sync, along with 100MB WebDAV storage for their office suite (which I've admittedly never used.)

Good service, great price, pretty cool company. More people should check them out.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#153

Post by darekkay »

glogla wrote: post #138
darekkay wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do another thing: calendar. And I find it at least as good as Sunrise Calendar was before Microsoft shut it down.

How do you use their calendar? Do they have a special app or are you talking about the calendar integrated in mail app?

Yes, I use their calendar web app on Desktop (the one next to Mail). For mobile, I sync individual calendars into my Android Calendar ("CalDAV-Sync").

My biggest issue with the Google Calendar was the syncing rate of 24 hours for iCal feeds. On Fastmail, new events appear quite fast (and I can force the update manually, if I need to).

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#154

Post by vbezhenar »

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

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#159

Post by simfoo »

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

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#160

Post by charmides »

onion2k wrote: post #147
charmides wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Pricing 101: Price has nothing to do with the cost of providing the service, and everything to do with the value the customer puts on what they're buying. The value you put on email is $10/year, so Fastmail doesn't represent good value. Other people obviously think its worth more. Fastmail are providing their service to those people.

I need to respectfully disagree with you here. In a free market, pricing does have something to do with the cost of providing a service because companies that overcharge would quickly lose market share to competitors, especially in a wildly competitive space like email.

Also, ten bucks a year has nothing to do with how much I'd personally be willing to pay for email. It is just my estimation of the amount you could charge people while still keeping healthy profit margins in this industry, however I don't have much domain knowledge regarding email and that figure could be very wrong. I'd love to hear from an expert.

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