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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does say they don't read your email for ad personalisation, but it doesn't say they don't read your email. Reading your email for data gathering is their entire business model so if they don't explicitly say they don't, you should assume they do.

Their business model is reading your email for ad personalization . How else would they make money from reading it?

Marketing research.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#242

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.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#243
post #242

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 should be using your own domain anyways.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I wanted to create a group calendar between myself and my wife. We both use FastMail. Gave up after fighting for a day with weird errors. FastMail sent me an email that said our calendars are not in sync anymore.. way too often.

This seems like a really common use case that ought to work well. I switched to Fastmail a few months ago (I still haven't fully committed to sticking with it.)

Did you contact support?

Did you solve the problem by switching to another calendar provider?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#245

free version of protonmail works for me but it's extremely slow also, it's switzerland and I don't trust switzerland because they have a long history of protecting both corrupt govs and criminals alike with 'anonymoyus banking' That may not exist anymore, but the criminal networks have already won, and that's switzerlands fault also it's where the cia and post-nazis store their money (coincidence? I think not) Eventu…

It appears you need a reality check...

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#246
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

> all their servers are hosted in the US Not true, they have a lot of servers in Europe (Amsterdam). That doesn't make the issue less valid though, since I think they have a full copy of all the data on both sides of the ocean.

We are moving away from Amsterdam - so it will be full copies on both sides of the USA, and nothing in Amsterdam any more.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#247
post #212
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but on the other hand it's also a feature of Gmail. So it's not strictly worse.

Except that gmail is hosted on a much better and secure infrastructure with very good SREs.

Our SREs are pretty good too!

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#248
post #242

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.

Huh I haven't even thought about that. That's really bad, especially since I have a popular fastmail.com address where every other month I get an email asking for the account

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#249
post #243
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 should be using your own domain anyways.

You've never lost a domain name I see.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#250
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

In a free market Bzzt. Notice how everyone recommended fastmail and nobody else? It's not a highly competitive free market. It's "hi, can anyone recommend a MacBook cheaper than the one apple make" time. Free markets reductionism not useful with no serious competitive pressure

Email seems like more of a free market than most things considering the incredibly low barrier to entry. You can even host your own email server, you can't reasonably do that with a lot of the software that you use every day.

Just because a particular provider is good and cheap and has a lot of satisfied customers doesn't make it any less of a free market.

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