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Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

infomaniak.com

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Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#101

Post by lxgr »

davexxx wrote: post #68
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

Swiss guy here, surprised to see Infomaniak on the front page of HN! I wouldn't say companies like this come and go: Infomaniak was my first (dial-up!) internet provider in 1995 and I still have my email there. Back then they used to be a small computer shop ran by passionate hackers in Geneva, organising demo scene competitions and such, and now and they grew up and are one of the biggest and most interesting intern…

> I wouldn't say companies like this come and go

How about this then: Free services come and go?

Most recent example: Google Photos. Google isn't going anywhere, and neither is Photos. But free unlimited storage forever is definitely going away, even though it was _the_ distinguishing feature back when it launched.

The more you get for free, the lower the chances the provider will be able to cross-subsidize the free tier from the paid ones (and/or make enough money from ads/selling your data) in a sustainable manner.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#102

Post by philihp »

lxgr wrote: post #101
davexxx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swiss guy here, surprised to see Infomaniak on the front page of HN! I wouldn't say companies like this come and go: Infomaniak was my first (dial-up!) internet provider in 1995 and I still have my email there. Back then they used to be a small computer shop ran by passionate hackers in Geneva, organising demo scene competitions and such, and now and they grew up and are one of the biggest and most interesting intern…

> I wouldn't say companies like this come and go How about this then: Free services come and go? Most recent example: Google Photos. Google isn't going anywhere, and neither is Photos. But free unlimited storage forever is definitely going away, even though it was _the_ distinguishing feature back when it launched. The more you get for free, the lower the chances the provider will be able to cross-subsidize the free…

The point here is valid: a “free email address for life” is equivalent to a statement like “You can sleep on my couch as long as you need to”. It’s true until it isn’t.

Unlike crashing on someone’s couch, for an actually very insignificant amount (and a nonzero quantity of technical skill), you can own actually own the domain and the email server and not depend on the charity of another, and not be even possibly inconvenienced someday by the service ending when someone turns out the lights on their way out.

The cost of maintaining such a service is also minimal, but nonzero and can be an intimidating feat to attempt. The alpha nerds will beat their chest and state that they are so technically inclined that this approaches zero for them.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#103

Post by djeiasbsbo »

keraf wrote: post #99
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

Swiss here. > That said, I think Swiss laws are great and immune to a lot of bullshit. In 2016, people voted in favour (65.5%) for giving mass surveillance power to our intelligence service [0]. And we also did it before it was cool (and legal), so trust us, we are good at that [1]. [0] https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/20120872/... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal

In 2012, the swiss people also rejected a referendum about longer holidays. Another weird one is the Federal Gambling Act, a referendum of 2018 that made it legal to DNS block unlicensed gambling websites (for tax reasons). The swiss people basically voted to approve censorship with that one.

[0]https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voters-say-no-to-longer-holiday...

[1]https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/votes/201806...

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#104

Post by Rochus »

systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

> You know how you know a company is Swiss?

Here is the official commercial register entry of the Canton of Geneva. The company was founded in 1996: https://ge.ch/hrcintapp/externalCompanyReport.action?company...

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#105

Post by 1_player »

Rochus wrote: post #104
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

> You know how you know a company is Swiss? Here is the official commercial register entry of the Canton of Geneva. The company was founded in 1996: https://ge.ch/hrcintapp/externalCompanyReport.action?company...

It was a rhetorical question, because 'they'll tell you', just like being vegan, on keto, or doing CrossFit.

And having family in Switzerland, I agree with OP: first you see the flag, then you see the company or product name.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#106

Post by rusticpenn »

archerx wrote: post #53
rusticpenn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its apparently a 20 year old company, which is pretty old by internet standards.

old != not shady.

My parent comment was talking about "him" selling the company in 5 years. Your argument does not work against that specific point.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#107

Post by 1_player »

systemvoltage wrote: post #66
ylee wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no such thing as free. I agree, which is why I've been paying for Pobox.com since 1996. $20 a year for three forwarding aliases of your choice. Fastmail purchased the company a few years ago but I've noticed no changes.

FastMail is an amazing company. Their UI is old school and packs a punch. Their mobile app is fantastic . They also invented some new JSON based email standard: https://jmap.io/

Mobile app is serviceable, not fantastic. On iOS if you tap on an email notification it'll just open the app showing some old email, not the one I just clicked. Why?

That said, I'm a very happy paying customer.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#109

Post by dingaling »

dylz wrote: post #10
mettamage wrote: post #6

Is "ik" referring to the Dutch "I"? Regardless of the reason, I'm biased to like the name already ;-)

my assumption was the first and last letters of their brand

Which is a poor choice of name because it requires some knowledge of the parent company in order to know whether the first letter is an 'i' or an 'l'

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#110

Post by nix23 »

djeiasbsbo wrote: post #103
keraf wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swiss here. > That said, I think Swiss laws are great and immune to a lot of bullshit. In 2016, people voted in favour (65.5%) for giving mass surveillance power to our intelligence service [0]. And we also did it before it was cool (and legal), so trust us, we are good at that [1]. [0] https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/20120872/... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal

In 2012, the swiss people also rejected a referendum about longer holidays. Another weird one is the Federal Gambling Act, a referendum of 2018 that made it legal to DNS block unlicensed gambling websites (for tax reasons). The swiss people basically voted to approve censorship with that one. [0] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/voters-say-no-to-longer-holiday... [1] https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/votes/…

>The swiss people basically voted to approve censorship with that one.

Absolutely!! And the politicians said: But to all the young peoples..don't fear that's the only thing we do, it's to prevent excessive/addicted gaming.

And funny enough, now we have 10x more advertisements for online-casinos but Swiss based (probably we should talking about that addictive thing again? And maybe micro-transactions in Games too?)

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