Moving Away from Gmail • Hacker News Board

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#11

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

themodelplumber wrote: post #9

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #3

I am very surprised a "one man show" was the author's final choice here: What if the one man gets hit by a bus? FastMail is probably worth the increased cost to avoid that concern alone. But in general, I am excited to see anyone moving to their own email domain, decentralized is how email was always supposed to be. EDIT: A huge terms issue with PurelyMail is "The Company may, at its sole discretion, terminate servic…

I've used Fastmail for almost five years now, and I think it's been hit by a bus at least twice :) A bit tongue in cheek, but always have a back up strategy and move on whatever seems best to you, not to someone else.

There is definitely still an upside from Gmail: The author can redirect his email address to any other service on a whim and all his inbound email comes with. So as long as his archive is backed up he does have a good strategy to restore access.

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#12

Post by bmarquez » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #3

I am very surprised a "one man show" was the author's final choice here: What if the one man gets hit by a bus? FastMail is probably worth the increased cost to avoid that concern alone. But in general, I am excited to see anyone moving to their own email domain, decentralized is how email was always supposed to be. EDIT: A huge terms issue with PurelyMail is "The Company may, at its sole discretion, terminate servic…

Zoho Mail only costs $2 more per year vs PurelyMail (it's shown on PurelyMail's website along with other competitors) and also avoids the "one man show" problem.

I'm not sure saving $2 a year is worth using a self-proclaimed (according to its website) beta service. Then again Gmail was in beta for many years.

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#13

Post by beagle3 » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

bmarquez wrote: post #12

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #3

I am very surprised a "one man show" was the author's final choice here: What if the one man gets hit by a bus? FastMail is probably worth the increased cost to avoid that concern alone. But in general, I am excited to see anyone moving to their own email domain, decentralized is how email was always supposed to be. EDIT: A huge terms issue with PurelyMail is "The Company may, at its sole discretion, terminate servic…

Zoho Mail only costs $2 more per year vs PurelyMail (it's shown on PurelyMail's website along with other competitors) and also avoids the "one man show" problem. I'm not sure saving $2 a year is worth using a self-proclaimed (according to its website) beta service. Then again Gmail was in beta for many years.

Last I checked, Zoho was per address; This guy specifically looked for domain support (meaning, potentially hundreds of addresses).

PurelyMail seems to charge by storage, not mailbox address; and AFAIK so does Migadu (which, up until reading this post, I thought was unique in that).

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#14

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

bmarquez wrote: post #12

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #3

I am very surprised a "one man show" was the author's final choice here: What if the one man gets hit by a bus? FastMail is probably worth the increased cost to avoid that concern alone. But in general, I am excited to see anyone moving to their own email domain, decentralized is how email was always supposed to be. EDIT: A huge terms issue with PurelyMail is "The Company may, at its sole discretion, terminate servic…

Zoho Mail only costs $2 more per year vs PurelyMail (it's shown on PurelyMail's website along with other competitors) and also avoids the "one man show" problem. I'm not sure saving $2 a year is worth using a self-proclaimed (according to its website) beta service. Then again Gmail was in beta for many years.

Indeed. I honestly would never go cheap on email again. People have traditionally expected it to be free, but it's the most crucial point of my online presence: I need to be able to rely on it and it needs to be good.

In my opinion, the fact that people would pay more for Netflix than their email provider is kinda crazy, when you think about their relative importance.

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#15

Post by beagle3 » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

javagram wrote: post #2

It seems like G Suite meets all the requirements listed on the blog post, but is not discussed. G Suite or Office 365 also work well as personal email providers - they fulfill all the requirements mentioned such as a custom domain, text search, and IMAP access.

G-Suite charges by mailbox address. It is possible to have a catchall, but when you send other emails from it you sometimes get the dreaded "on behalf of ..." tag.

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#16

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #13

bmarquez wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoho Mail only costs $2 more per year vs PurelyMail (it's shown on PurelyMail's website along with other competitors) and also avoids the "one man show" problem. I'm not sure saving $2 a year is worth using a self-proclaimed (according to its website) beta service. Then again Gmail was in beta for many years.

Last I checked, Zoho was per address; This guy specifically looked for domain support (meaning, potentially hundreds of addresses). PurelyMail seems to charge by storage, not mailbox address; and AFAIK so does Migadu (which, up until reading this post, I thought was unique in that).

I will admit it's unfortunate to have to pay per inbox on FastMail. I can't even pay less for my second box to be smaller and more limited, it must be at the same rate as my main box.

They do allow infinite aliases which covers most of my needs, but when I wanted to use a FastMail box for my home automation system's service account it didn't make sense to do so.

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#17

Post by rakoo » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

Unaffiliated, I found migadu (https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html) to be extremely easy to set up and having a nice ui to work with. Gives you only the basics but that's all you need.

As they say, storage space is not an issue in the 21st century, so the only differentiator between plans is the only thing that matters: the number of outgoing emails. You can have as many domains, as many aliases and as many addresses as you want, that's not a technical problem so there's no reason it should be a financial distinction.

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#18

Post by kh_hk » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

The only thing that makes sense is getting your own domain first. There after you can look into email providers, but to avoid lock in, first you need your own address, owned by you. Only by then, you can rent the email service into it if you want, or run your own.

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#19

Post by yokto » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

kh_hk wrote: post #18

The only thing that makes sense is getting your own domain first. There after you can look into email providers, but to avoid lock in, first you need your own address, owned by you. Only by then, you can rent the email service into it if you want, or run your own.

Then again, that's potentially an additional attack surface that you need to be mindful of: https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...

Re: Moving Away from Gmail

#20

Post by yumraj » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #3

I am very surprised a "one man show" was the author's final choice here: What if the one man gets hit by a bus? FastMail is probably worth the increased cost to avoid that concern alone. But in general, I am excited to see anyone moving to their own email domain, decentralized is how email was always supposed to be. EDIT: A huge terms issue with PurelyMail is "The Company may, at its sole discretion, terminate servic…

Fair comment, but all of those concerns are mitigated if you:

1) use your own domain(s)

2) take frequent backups

so, even if the purely mail dies, you have access to historical emails and since you own the domains you can migrate to another provider pretty quickly and again, since you own the domain any accounts that are connected to that email address/domain combo are not impacted.