Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that service won't let you transfer it themselves).

I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple accounts - I just have one account with multiple domains/email addresses). Apple's email hosting is 22 years old (pre-dating Gmail by 4 years) and seems like it won't be going anywhere anytime soon. They've recently expanded their email offerings with things like "Sign In with Apple" and "Hide my Email."

Zoho Mail will give you free hosting without IMAP or $1 for 5GB, $1.25 for 10GB, $3 for 30GB, $4 for 50GB, $6 for 100GB (billed annually).

Microsoft 365 will cost $5.83/mo for 1 person or $8.33 for a family of 6. Each account gets 1TB of storage (6TB for the family in total) and you get all the Microsoft Office apps. One issue is that the domain needs to be with Go Daddy which ups the price a little given their premium pricing on domains which is around an extra dollar per month.

FastMail is $5/mo for 30GB, $9 for 100GB.

There's no magic email provider that no one ever complains about - including Google where we've heard horror stories of getting locked out with no one to even contact. It also seems like no one wants to be hosting your mail for free with IMAP support anymore (and almost no one wants to host your domain email for free generally).

For me, migrating to iCloud+ was cheap and easy. I'm already on a Mac and iPhone. I set up some simple rules to filter my mail on my Mac and I'm enjoying the instant response of a native app. At $1/mo, there's no lock-in to annual billing and it basically costs nothing.

Microsoft 365 seems like a good deal if you're looking for a lot of storage and Microsoft Office apps. 1TB for $5.83/mo is basically the same price per GB as Dropbox, but you're also getting mail and the Office apps.

I use Migadu as well & recommend them: The ability to have unlimited domains (even on the cheapest tier) is key for a domain name hoarder like me.

Also went looking for an alternative and moved everyting to mailbox.org...

If it’s for personal use, then the Microsoft 365 personal plan is $70 per year and includes the full office suite and mail. Otherwise, $12 per month will get you mail and Office.

As alternative I would suggest Office365, but If you used Google workspace for so long, why not just pay Google? Why you have to change. Just pay and do nothing... They invested billions for you to use it for free so long. Its a good service.