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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

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Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#521

Post by jboynyc »

Roelven wrote: post #255

I'd like to add https://soverin.net/features here as well. It's similar to Posteo but offers unlimited aliases and more storage. Servers hosted in the Netherlands.

I was a Soverin customer for a year but recently made the switch to Fastmail. I really wanted to like them, but sadly it seems like Soverin is content with their product being in a (barely) beta state. During the year that I used them, there were no improvements to spam filtering (which is abysmal), single sign on (nonexistent), reliability (poor, particularly for caldav) or filtering rules, to name just a few pain points. Their customer service was super responsive, but usually just to tell me that whatever I was asking about (flagging false positives, filtering mail based on an address pattern) wasn't supported.

Soverin, please look at what Fastmail is doing and try to get at least 80% as good. The world needs more fastmails.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#522

Post by tcbawo »

r0fl wrote: post #484
eximius wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is the threat of a whistleblower witness during such litigation enough to keep them honest?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#524

Post by kitsunesoba »

chrisper wrote: post #470
samlewis wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I tried this, I found a lot of corporate spam filters seemed to (silently) drop my emails, so I went back to using GMail out of frustration. Is there anything you do that helps with this? I was using GApps and I don't think my domain name was too spammy (samlewis.me).

Don't use any of the "unsual" TLDs, like .io, .me, .toys, etc.

Surprisingly difficult for a personal-professional email if you have a somewhat common name. Nearly everything under the main TLDs was bought up ages ago. The issue can be mitigated with some creative branding work, but that’s arguably not any easier.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#525

Post by [deleted] »

TsomArp wrote: post #199
danpalmer wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like FastMail is that expensive for most people. Obviously, compared to free, it's expensive. But in real terms, I pay $70 every 2 years for it - works out about £25 a year for me, which is about the price of a meal out. I think that's worth it for secure and powerful email. I've never found it to be expensive.

I might be wrong, but I also think it is expensive. When I can have a 5 family plan from office365, including, word, excel, powerpoint, outlook, etc, with 1TB per account, 60 minutes of skype calls per account, etc, for 10 per month, 25 per month (for 5 people) only for email seems too expensive to me. The only thing lacking is custom email address.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#526

Post by nift »

alienreborn wrote: post #344
nift wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if fast mail provides it out of the box but I have started to test out spark: https://sparkmailapp.com/ as a replacement for Inbox. While it is a bit from as good as Inbox it can get the job done, and has bundling. I simply set it up to archive when swiping (which is what Inbox seems to be doing). However, it's notifications are far from as good and you can't archive straight from the notification, which…

FYI: They store your credentials on their servers. Its not like outlook/thunderbird where you credentials are stored locally.

Thanks for letting me know! Did not know that.

That is quite scary to be honest and do you know the reason as to why they do this?

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#527

Post by eximius »

r0fl wrote: post #484
eximius wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's a silly argument for a couple of reasons.

For one, it's just a bad business decision, opening yourself up to an incredible legal liability for relatively little benefit.

For another, just because they have more funds and a larger legal team doesn't mean they can devote the same quantity of resources to that specific case. Google is huge and might have resources dedicated to legal ~100x more than any other single entity, but if Google is party to ~1000x more cases than the other party, they'll still have a tough time matching resources.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#528

Post by brycehamrick »

miles wrote: post #87
brycehamrick wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I completely agree this is something that needs consideration. I do have an email address with my own domain but for security reasons any accounts I create are tied to my gmail address. I've known too many people who have had personal domain email addresses intercepted, particularly through compromised domain/DNS settings. One simple MX record adjustment could mean every single bank account, social media profile…

> I do have an email address with my own domain but for security reasons any accounts I create are tied to my gmail address. I've known too many people who have had personal domain email addresses intercepted, particularly through compromised domain/DNS settings. If your Gmail account is lost or compromised, good luck getting any help from Google; while G Suite support is decent, free Gmail account users are basicall…

Is it more likely that your DNS host or domain registrar could be compromised or that Google might shut you out of your account? There's risks with either decision, personally I put more trust that my Google account will be there than in my registrar's security.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#529

Post by brycehamrick »

eikenberry wrote: post #67
brycehamrick wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I completely agree this is something that needs consideration. I do have an email address with my own domain but for security reasons any accounts I create are tied to my gmail address. I've known too many people who have had personal domain email addresses intercepted, particularly through compromised domain/DNS settings. One simple MX record adjustment could mean every single bank account, social media profile…

How does using gmail address compromised DNS? I mean if they compromise your DNS it doesn't matter who is hosting your email, they just point the MX at a different service.

Yeah I'm referring to an @gmail.com address. I'm pretty confident in Google's ability to secure that.

Re: Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

#530

Post by brycehamrick »

chillydawg wrote: post #133
jakecopp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to link to some info on how email could be compromised this way? I'd be interested to learn how to secure my domain.

Whoever hosts your DNS is the weak point. Account and login security with whoever they are is critical.

DNS as well as registrar, which may be two different entities. You can either change the MX with the DNS host, or you can change the nameserver with the registrar.
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