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

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

#51

Post by concinds »

voisin wrote: post #40
mdasen wrote: post #22

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 acco…

I just did the Gmail —> iCloud transition and was frustrated that the MBOX format failed to maintain labels / folders. Everything went into a single place. On researching it seemed like the best process was to set up two IMAP accounts in Apple Mail and simply drag and drop the directories. I’ve done this, but it is still a pain and took 100x longer than I expected.

I really don't recommend doing that with Apple Mail. I did, many years ago, and ended up losing quite a few emails due to Apple Mail bugs; I did it again a few years later and ended up with weird corruption of email headers (wrong "received" dates).

That was way before the Catalina Apple Mail data loss bugs. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/11/mail-data-loss-in-macos-1...

Any sysadmin will tell you Apple Mail has had occasional weird dogshit bugs for a decade.

Use Thunderbird, it's more likely to be robust and not corrupt your emails, then feel free to switch back to Apple Mail once you've moved everything.

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

#52

Post by EwanToo »

mdasen wrote: post #38
Pasorrijer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. You can host through any provider and link it to Office365.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalize... Q: I already own a domain that's registered with a provider other than GoDaddy. Can I set up a personalized email address in Outlook.com? A: At the moment, we only support connecting domains managed by GoDaddy with Outlook.com. Maybe that only applies to "Microsoft 365 Family or Microsoft 365 Personal" and not their business offering? They have a basic b…

If you do some googling you can find forum posts on how to do it manually, though I've not tried it myself

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

#53

Post by mdasen »

NetWorth16254 wrote: post #30

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.

Google Workspace is expensive: $6/mo for 30GB. Microsoft will give you 1TB plus the Microsoft Office apps (plus email) for that price. If you have a family of 6 with a custom domain, Google is going to charge you $36/mo while Microsoft will charge you $8.33/mo - plus each person gets 1TB of storage and the Microsoft Office apps.

I think the reason to switch is that Google decided to use the same pricing that they want to get out of enterprises for individuals/families. Sure, $6/user is nothing to a company that is paying that worker $5,000+ per month, but it can be annoying for a family (even if it's still relatively affordable). But then you have to think about whether you want to pay $12/user to upgrade their storage making it $72/mo for a family of 6. And you still don't get the Microsoft Office apps. They aren't strictly necessary in a lot of situations, but they're still pretty commonly used.

It just seems like Google isn't offering great value for individuals and other companies offer something better. In a certain way, it feels like Google is charging $6/user/mo just for the custom domain. With Microsoft 365, it at least feels like you're getting something above a standard account with the Microsoft Office apps and 1TB of storage.

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

#54

Post by modeless »

You can still use the Gmail UI with a custom domain for free. All you need is a mail server. Once it's set up, configure a free Gmail account to fetch your email with IMAP and send from your domain with SMTP. Now you own your email but still get the Gmail UI as long as you want to use it, for free, with the option to use any other client you want as well.

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

#55

Post by csande17 »

ipaddr wrote: post #47
hn_version_0023 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I like about Fastmail is the ability to serve static web content directly from the “Files” section of their apps/website. Since they already manage the domain for email, spinning up static sites at subdomains is really easy and really nice.

I'm a new fastmail customer. Fastmail doesn't control my domain how does this feature work?

Fastmail recommends setting them as the DNS nameserver for your domain. If you do that, then they'll automatically add any records needed to host websites with them. (They'll also set up records for stuff like DKIM and SPF for you, which helps your email stay out of spam filters.)

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

#56

Post by oauea »

guerrilla wrote: post #25
Scarbutt wrote: post #17

I've decided that I'd rather give my money to someone else Why? the less cumbersome route is to pay google.

Why would you pay a company with no support and who constantly cancels features and products? Also, why would you want an ad company reading your email to weaponize against you?

If you pay you do have support and they do not analyze your email.

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

#59

Post by brewmarche »

moedersmooiste wrote: post #26

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

I like them as well, especially their catch-all feature. But they increased prices for their cheapest custom domain plan from 1 to 3 euros per moth not so long ago. While I’m still grandfathered in, it doesn’t feel good. I know it’s not too much in absolute terms but the relative increase is steep.

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

#60

Post by Saris »

voisin wrote: post #40
mdasen wrote: post #22

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 acco…

I just did the Gmail —> iCloud transition and was frustrated that the MBOX format failed to maintain labels / folders. Everything went into a single place. On researching it seemed like the best process was to set up two IMAP accounts in Apple Mail and simply drag and drop the directories. I’ve done this, but it is still a pain and took 100x longer than I expected.

Mailstores free home version works pretty well for this. You can backup your IMAP account in it, and then it has the option to export that archive to another IMAP account. It does retain folder/label structure (although it places them under a parent "Mailstore" label, but that's easy to fix after).

It will also read EML, MSG, PST, and MBOX formats, and connect to Outlook and Thunderbird.

https://www.mailstore.com/en/products/mailstore-home/

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