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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#441

Post by [deleted] »

bad_user wrote: post #314
simfoo wrote: 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

I'm an European, but I don't mind. First of all when making such a choice, you have to identify who the enemy is. If you're talking about global enemies, like the NSA, then IMO without end-to-end encryption you're screwed. And if you're targeted directly, you're screwed regardless, given they have the capability to use whatever vulnerabilities they can find in your router, your phone, your OS, your browser, etc. If i…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#442

Post by superkuh »

microtonal wrote: post #382
davemp wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this and make a new alias for everyone I give an address to (such as hn@domain.com). It can be interesting to see who leaks/sell your email address. You can also shut down alias that get out of control.

Fastmail has an even nicer feature: subdomain addressing. If you are dave@mp.com, you can set up Fastmail to accept subdomains dave@hn.mp.com dave@lobsters.mp.com Avoids catchalls ;).

catchalls are great. In addition to allowing the use of arbitrary custom addresses on a whim they make it really easy to identify spam and train spam filters. Anything that arrives on multiple random/unused addresses at your domain is spam.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#443

Post by benhardy »

Using FastMail on my own domains. One account covers all the domains. Having more domains costs the same as one. They support several different kinds of address aliasing/wildcarding (including Gmail style '+' wildcards and multiple recipient). Their DNS is absolutely great with useful defaults.

Never looked back.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#444

Post by bogomipz »

bad_user wrote: post #314
simfoo wrote: 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

I'm an European, but I don't mind. First of all when making such a choice, you have to identify who the enemy is. If you're talking about global enemies, like the NSA, then IMO without end-to-end encryption you're screwed. And if you're targeted directly, you're screwed regardless, given they have the capability to use whatever vulnerabilities they can find in your router, your phone, your OS, your browser, etc. If i…

>"Organizations like EFF have been historically anti-government ..."

Can you provide a citation or examples of this? Being pro-civil liberties does not imply anti-government. Those aren't mutually exclusive.

In the US civil liberties are basic freedoms identified in the Bill or Rights and the Constitution. And the Constitution is what established the government in the first place. How is it possible to be pro-civil liberties and anti-government?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#445

Post by stinos »

microtonal wrote: post #382
davemp wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this and make a new alias for everyone I give an address to (such as hn@domain.com). It can be interesting to see who leaks/sell your email address. You can also shut down alias that get out of control.

Fastmail has an even nicer feature: subdomain addressing. If you are dave@mp.com, you can set up Fastmail to accept subdomains dave@hn.mp.com dave@lobsters.mp.com Avoids catchalls ;).

Is also nicer than plus-notation like dave+hn@mp.com, which from time to time gets rejected by some overly zealous (but wrong) adress checking tool.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#446

Post by xfer »

pmorici wrote: post #230
nadont8 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FastMail is good, but it's very expensive. I'm waiting for more competition in this space. I think, as people turn away from Google (and thus Gmail), more competition will arise and we'll finally see fair prices.

Fastmail is on par or cheaper than Google's equivalent G Suite email service to business.

Depends on where you live, google has country-based pricing. I pay half of what i would be paying fastmail.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#447

Post by Froyoh »

tkim90 wrote: post #435

Can anyone expliain why G Suite (the paid version of Gmail) is not considered safe for data privacy? From the site it says they are encrypted, regularly audited by 3rd parties and not used for ads. https://gsuite.google.com/faq/security/

It is safe, everyone here seems to hate on Google products and Microsoft's Windows 10

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#449

Post by nebulon »

rjzzleep wrote: post #188

For the self-hosted folks there are: https://mailcow.email/ - dockerized, works with multiple domains, sogo for groupware. Compared to mailinabox's single disk, it has 6 docker volumes to keep track of. https://mailu.io/ - dockerized, it has a section on kubernetes deployments, which i find weird, but I guess could make sense for companies https://mailinabox.email/ - no docker, no multiple domains, roundcube, nextclo…

There is also https://cloudron.io/ to self-host, which provides a complete email solution based on dovecot and haraka plus a couple of webmail apps to use, like rainloop and roundcube.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#450

Post by wtetzner »

nadont8 wrote: post #416
wtetzner wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail has employees that have to be paid. You're paying that money instead of the time required to maintain your own email server.

I understand that, but paying 100x what a VPS would cost, that's a rip-off. (100x because a VPS can handle the email of 100 people or even more.)

But what does the price of a VPS have to do with anything? I doubt hosting would be their biggest cost.
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