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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#481

Post by eximius »

sigfubar wrote: post #463
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/

G Suite isn't private because Google isn't in the privacy or productivity business. It's an advertising company that happens to have a product line which looks like a productivity suite. Charging money for it is just a nifty way to defray the costs of collecting data for advertising purposes.

I know hedge funds that use Gsuite. Pretty sure their legal team would eat Google alive if they found out Google was wantonly reading their documents.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#482

Post by bonestamp2 »

lallysingh wrote: post #319
mikejb wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIUC, no judicial order is required for collecting. Only for looking at collected data; but agencies get creative around these processes, so I wouldn't count on legal protection from snooping.

But there's nothing to circumvent if the host isn't in the USA.

Many countries have reciprocal agreements for sharing intelligence. Unless you go to a country that is known for its privacy values at the highest level then you're likely not going to maintain you privacy from the government of your country or most other powerful governments.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#483

Post by eximius »

Surprised Migadu isn't on here. Cheap, use your own domains, IMAP. I can't recall the security/privacy provisions off hand, but my threat model doesn't include nation states or warrants. As long as I keep my domain and I have offline backups of my email, I'm happy.

Oh, and it works! Never had emails get lost due to bad mail server configs.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#484

Post by r0fl »

eximius wrote: post #481
sigfubar wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G Suite isn't private because Google isn't in the privacy or productivity business. It's an advertising company that happens to have a product line which looks like a productivity suite. Charging money for it is just a nifty way to defray the costs of collecting data for advertising purposes.

I know hedge funds that use Gsuite. Pretty sure their legal team would eat Google alive if they found out Google was wantonly reading their documents.

Don’t be so sure, google has a strong legal team and more cash for litigation than any hedge fund

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#485

Post by akulbe »

I generally recommend against setting up your own email server.

Most people just want to use it and not maintain it.

However, in circumstances like this where you want to escape a crappy solution, I have been recommending "Mail In A Box"

https://mailinabox.email

It's as close to a turnkey solution as I've found. I've been using it for one of my domains for a few years now.

You'll need to be comfy with the CLI to set it up. You'll also need a VPS.

EDIT: didn't realize other folks had already recommended it. It's worked great here. :)

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#486

Post by palmeida »

bensonn wrote: post #332
pmorici wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail has a photos/files/website feature so it isn't just email. I use G suite now for my side business and I've never used any of the features besides email since I have Office on my machine.

ZOHO! FREE PLAN - Up to five users. 5GB/User, 25MB attachment limit. This is to have all 5 users in one "organization". ZOHO offers full G-suite replacement, free. They have many more applications too. I used the free plan for a few years, then started paying $24 per year for more storage. What you get for $24 per year is amazing. What you get with the free plan is amazing. Their business model is to impress you with…

We also use zoho but at this moment zoho.com domain is currently blocked https://twitter.com/zoho/status/1044249648993525760 so reliability can be an issue...

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#487

Post by euske »

I don't like how this question is phrased. It should be

"Good alternativeS to Gmail?"

Yeah. Please be it to multiple choices, for availability reasons and monopoly concerns. Sadly there aren't many good competitors in this arena (anymore), which always makes me nervous.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#488

Post by Johnny555 »

charmides wrote: post #139
bamboozled wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

Fastmail is $30/year for 2GB, $50/year for 25GB, and $90/year for 100GB of storage.

https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/

If you have your own domain, you need to use the $50 or $90 plans.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#489

Post by floatboth »

bad_user wrote: post #358
brantam wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Protonmail user. E2E isn't snake oil but it does assume you have an alternative secure channel for password exchange. I like the fact that my mail archive is encrypted even though I don't send encrypted mail to others.

I think this post from FastMail says it better than I do: https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/10/why-we-dont-offer-pgp/ Here are some arguments: 1. if it's encryption in the browser via a web interface, then it's not secure; the moment a web form asks for a password that can be used to decrypt your data, that's the moment your alarms should go off, because in spite of the claimed E2E encryption, their security might actual…

> if it's encryption in the browser via a web interface, then it's not secure

Ehh…

The big difference from native apps is that native apps are often signed by the developer. While with web apps, there's normally only a more "temporary" form of signing, that is, the TLS session.

Assuming the app developers are better at securing their offline signing keys than TLS server keys, native apps with signatures are indeed more trustworthy. (But are they actually better at this??)

However, you can achieve the same kind of signing on the web with a browser extension: https://github.com/tasn/webext-signed-pages (+ SRI and CSP for subresources)

Also, you might be more likely to get malware browser extensions than OS-level malware. Maybe??

On the upside, the web is more auditable by default (of course you can obfuscate JS and WASM just like you can obfuscate anything, but "view source" is still much easier on the web).

> ProtonMail keeps your email encrypted only while it is at rest

IIRC it's also end-to-end between ProtonMail addresses or something?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#490

Post by [deleted] »

simfoo wrote: post #159
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

[deleted]
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