Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gmail having issues

google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 460 posts

Re: Gmail having issues

#361

Post by oakfr »

gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

Good luck getting the same quality of service as gmail with your own mail server. The fact that gmail fails every so often (extremely rarely actually) is a good sign: zero failure would mean that they are over-investing in quality and losing flexibility. Gmail only needs to be as good as the best web service out there.

Re: Gmail having issues

#362

Post by deadalus »

gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

I have been doing this. I bought a domain and am using zoho.com to send and receive emails for free. Storage is only 5GB but I can always pay if I want more.

Re: Gmail having issues

#363

Post by mehrdadn »

shaan7 wrote: post #357
mehrdadn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is exactly the thought process that leads to non-standard mess that we see numerous examples of. I didn't suggest people should apply this thought process in arbitrary cases. I said it should be applied in this case. You can take any thought process that gives a good outcome in one situation and obtain a bad outcome by applying it to the wrong situation. That's not an indictment of the thought process. It's ju…

Ah I think I did not describe the repercussions of making exceptions (even if they are in highly specialized cases like this). If you allow yourself to make such exceptions, you diminish the motivation for you (or someone else) to fix the problem at the right place. Most workarounds tend to live forever.

There's no clear-cut rule here. Some workarounds stay workarounds and never get standardized. Some become so well-accepted and adopted that people then put them into standards. It's great to put things into standards, so by all means, do try to improve standards. But that shouldn't block you from everything. At the end of the day, standardization is just a means to an end, and the end is what matters here. Nobody cares if their mailman's knocks follows an RFC or not. They just want their mailman to deliver packages with reasonably minimal disruption.

Re: Gmail having issues

#364

Post by mouldysammich »

gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

yep, i've found it to be extremely worthwhile having your own domain. Its more effort but once its setup its way easier to avoid lock in to a company.

I also run my own and its been easier than expected, especially with maddy: https://github.com/foxcpp/maddy

Re: Gmail having issues

#365

Post by NicoJuicy »

gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

In most cases, this also makes you more vulnerable to a dns hijacking attempt.

I'd still suggest to put "secrets" in a free global trusted email provider with 2fa

Re: Gmail having issues

#366

Post by gpmcadam »

oakfr wrote: post #361
gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

Good luck getting the same quality of service as gmail with your own mail server. The fact that gmail fails every so often (extremely rarely actually) is a good sign: zero failure would mean that they are over-investing in quality and losing flexibility. Gmail only needs to be as good as the best web service out there.

But you can pay for email from other providers like Fastmail and Proton and just have your own domain with MX pointing at them. Services are better in my opinion when you pay for them and you’re not the product.

Re: Gmail having issues

#367

Post by Triv888 »

gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

You need to at least hide your domain whois contact information if you are going to do this...

Re: Gmail having issues

#368

Post by madsbuch »

oakfr wrote: post #361
gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

Good luck getting the same quality of service as gmail with your own mail server. The fact that gmail fails every so often (extremely rarely actually) is a good sign: zero failure would mean that they are over-investing in quality and losing flexibility. Gmail only needs to be as good as the best web service out there.

Parent suggests to just run mail on your own domain.

The main thing here is to avoid single point of failure as in both domains (politically induced problems) and infrastructure (technically induced problems). If people would use more than just a handful domains/providers for mail then single failures would not have that big of an impact.

I have been hosting my mail on my own domain for the past 3 years and have not been impacted by this incident. Currently I am happy for protonmail that I use to host my mails at. But I know that I can easily move on, if service drops, and even selfhost.

Re: Gmail having issues

#369

Post by cutler »

gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

The main problem with self-hosting is indiscriminate blacklisting by Google and Microsoft. You only need to be on the same network as some spam artist to end up shunned. The tech giants are our new overlords.

Re: Gmail having issues

#370

Post by octoberfranklin »

mrich wrote: post #228
octoberfranklin wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely this. I am astonished that either (a) this switch has not been flipped yet or (b) this switch does not exist. Somebody is incompetent here.

Perhaps Gmail is just being discontinued ;)

don't get my hopes up!
Post reply on HN