Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email? • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by encryptluks2 » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 2:52 AM UTC

fy20 wrote: post #71

troydavis wrote: post #3

This question comes up a couple times every month. FastMail always comes up as a recommendation, so if you search comments for FastMail, you’ll find every past thread (and relatively few false positives): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru... Example from a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128198

How does FastMail handle tags? I tried Zoho but it's pretty terrible compared to how Gmail works. What I'd like is: 1) To be able to assign tags based on rules 2) To be able to view those tags in IMAP clients (Gmail exposes labels as IMAP folders) 3) To be able to Archive mail so they are no longer in the Inbox, but so the tag remains (in Gmail, 'Inbox' is just a tag that is removed when you Archive mail) Zoho fails…

Using Gmail labels for IMAP is not really ideal if you assign multiple labels, because if you end up syncing to another provider all those virtual "subfolders" has duplicate messages. You're much better off using your email client's built in labels and just syncing the 'All Mail' folder.

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

#172

Post by hammyhavoc » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 2:55 AM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #148

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.

Why would you want to use the Gmail UI though? I’ve found it to be one of the slowest, most bloated and resource-heavy web apps I use. It’s nothing like the Gmail of 10+ years ago when Google actually cared about the product.

They've got a new UX coming down the pipe, remains to be seen what the performance is like, but looks more modern at least.

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

#173

Post by hammyhavoc » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 3:02 AM UTC

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…

Yandex will do it for free up to 1,000 users.

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

#174

Post by crossroadsguy » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 3:06 AM UTC

hughrr wrote: post #124

infinityplus1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to read this reddit post about iCloud files disappearing. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/sixyvx/warning_files...

Just a heads up here: iCloud / OneDrive / Google Drive / DropBox are not a backup solution despite the vendors promoting it. They are there only for convenience. I have experienced file loss on OneDrive. I am now using iCloud and have had no file loss whatsoever. I regularly diff my offline backup with iCloud Drive contents mirrored to my mac. Also to note: About 50% of the stories you hear are users being morons. My…

If I ever will experience a file loss on iCloud I think I won’t even ever know the way it’s designed and the way it’s documented and the way way Apple deals with it even after reporting an issue.

Unless you deploy another tool or service to keep checking whether everything has been a file loss or inconsistency inside iCloud. Yes, it’s that opaque!

On the contrary on Dropbox I know exactly what is going on and there are features to revert a change.

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

#175

Post by bmarquez » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 3:11 AM UTC

crossroadsguy wrote: post #169

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…

If you want to try Apple’s: I have tried the iCloud+. It’s unstable, incomplete. Barely not shitty. Deliberately sparsely and vaguely documented. Their support employees don’t know the features around custom domain, HideMyEmail etc and refuse to accept anything about it on email and then being typical Apple they simply say no to saying anything on email - hell, there is no email you can contact them. They tell you “y…

So I made the switch from G Suite Legacy to iCloud+ (99 cents seemed like a bargain to try out) and it has a few kinks to work out.

Their documentation put double-quotes around the SPF records, and when I added them they didn't work -- had to remove the quotes completely.

And yeah, 3 email address limit and a weak icloud.com interface (compared to gmail) is also annoying.

But honestly I'll probably use it for a while, their IMAP support is good so I could always transfer emails out and point the domain records somewhere else. 99 cents a month is a bargain, the only other provider in that price range is Zoho Mail (which I also like and probably would have used if my contacts/calendar wasn't already on iCloud).

> @privaterelay.appleid.com

The @privaterelay.appleid.com is for email addresses that were created by using "Sign in with Apple", you don't have to pay for iCloud+ for that. If you create disposable emails with iCloud+ they come in the form: Coconut-Apple.0b@icloud.com (the words, numbers, and separators are random)

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

#176

Post by grepfru_it » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 3:12 AM UTC

eclipticplane wrote: post #165

All I want is a mail provider that will dump wild cards into my Gmail box. What's the best tool for that? I don't mind the Google Borg... but I'm not willing to pony up $$$ for simple wildcard email delivery.

I use namecheap for my domains. Their mail forwarding service does exactly this. I used to use joker which was also the same

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

#177

Post by crossroadsguy » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 3:13 AM UTC

concinds wrote: post #51

voisin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Huh it’ll start showing empty mails that’s full of text in other mail clients and web mail.

It’s been happening since 2016 (first time I noticed) and last reporter to them in January 2021. Then I gave up. It still happens.

Anyway that’s just one immortal Mail.app bug.

I am just in the process of finding another mail client (preferably native, paid, and open source that doesn’t read my mails)

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

#178

Post by Godel_unicode » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 3:20 AM UTC

EwanToo wrote: post #52

mdasen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The manual workarounds are to do things like disabling SPF, which is a very bad idea.

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

#179

Post by irfwashere » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 3:20 AM UTC

crossroadsguy wrote: post #169

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…

If you want to try Apple’s: I have tried the iCloud+. It’s unstable, incomplete. Barely not shitty. Deliberately sparsely and vaguely documented. Their support employees don’t know the features around custom domain, HideMyEmail etc and refuse to accept anything about it on email and then being typical Apple they simply say no to saying anything on email - hell, there is no email you can contact them. They tell you “y…

Why not just use simplelogin? Buy your own email domain and you can create random emails on the fly. Like if you're prompted to input your email you can use the name of the prompter companyxyz@yourdomain.com and it'll forward it to your regular mailbox. It's fantastic.

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

#180

Post by mLuby » Sun, Feb 06, 2022, 3:22 AM UTC

jrnichols wrote: post #166

voisin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's because Google has "labels" as their own extension to IMAP. It's non-standard and they don't care. They know it's a lock-in feature. If you have a linux box around, the "imapsync" tool works well.

Is that statement being downvoted because it's incorrect? (I have no idea, just asking because that statement appears relevant.)