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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?

#61

Post by gumby »

nodesocket wrote: post #37
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…

Is iCloud+ IMAP/Push?

Yes and has been since it was introduced.

Unlike gmail they appear to implement the full imap protocol

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

#62

Post by jread »

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…

+1 for iCloud+. I moved 3 business/family domains and shutdown my G Suite legacy account with no issues, and no extra cost (already paying for iCloud). Can't beat $0.99/mo for 50GB shared on up to 6 accounts.

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

#63

Post by guerrilla »

vmoore wrote: post #57

I'm confused by all the branding. Google change the names to things every week. Is it Google Docs, or Google One, or Google Workspace, or GSuite? They need to stop this.

Google Workspace is just your own instances of their services running on their servers for you. You manage it as your own domain and it has all the services you get with a with GMail account, including Google Docs. It was called G Suite before. I don't know what Google One is.

[edit: "Google One replaced the paid services of Google Drive." Apparently Workspaces is for businesses and Google One is for consumers. It seems that you can't use your own domain as a consumer.]

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

#65

Post by 15characterslon »

moedersmooiste wrote: post #26

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

Be aware that Mailbox.org allows any user to send emails as ("from") any other user via SMTP and these emails will look legit since they pass SPF and DKIM checks. Many consider this a security issue.

There was a quite lengthy discussion about this in their forum but they deleted it since. They refused to fix it. Archive.org still has it. Content is in German (sorry):

https://web.archive.org/web/20210123192856/https://userforum...

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

#66

Post by hobo_mark »

modeless wrote: post #54

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.

That's what I'm doing. Gandi provides two free mailboxes for each domain hosted with them.

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

#67

Post by fire »

mdasen wrote: post #53
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 wan…

> 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 if you're like me who has already been paying $12/user/m ( which is higher than it used to be! ) just for the unlimited storage aspect... Congrats! That's going away in a few months and the only equivalent is upgrading to an actual enterprise plan, which I _believe_ starts at $20/user/month

I just want to store my raws without spending an arm and a leg, god dammit

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

#68

Post by stn8188 »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #33
josephg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you replace those? These days? Pretty easily! Fastmail also has an email client, and a calendar. The calendar is integrated into its email service too. And the calendar integrates really well with iCal / CalDAV. I find fastmail syncs calendar entries between my apple devices more reliably than apple's own icloud. The big hole in fastmail's offering is that they have no replacement for google docs & spreadshe…

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.

This is a huge feature for me. I had set up my EE consultancy and even though I'm no longer doing any side work the Fatmail hosting feature allows my to keep a professional-looking static site for no extra cost with a place to post periodic blog updates and even the beginnings of a niche knowledge base. I love it!

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

#70

Post by fire »

modeless wrote: post #54

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.

Cloudflare's email routing offering seems to be a good fit for this as far as I can tell.
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