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Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

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Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#11

Post by AmazingWill »

pors wrote: post #9

What is exactly the privacy concern that makes you move away from gmail?

When I consider targeted advertising and the sheer amount of data that I've pumped into Google services over the years it's scary to see how accurate of a picture advertisers and co have of me.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#13

Post by AmazingWill »

Sander_Marechal wrote: post #10

Why not host your own? It's not that hard. I run my own using exim4 + dovecot. It's pretty easy to set up. Plus, as a bonus I set up mutt on my server as well so when I am somewhere else I can just ssh into my box and read my mail.

I've been considering this, my main problem is that my cash flow is fairly spotty at times for a dedicated server and I would prefer not to have to worry about the security of my box, uptime and the like.

However if I must, I will.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#15

Post by scraplab »

Sander_Marechal wrote: post #10

Why not host your own? It's not that hard. I run my own using exim4 + dovecot. It's pretty easy to set up. Plus, as a bonus I set up mutt on my server as well so when I am somewhere else I can just ssh into my box and read my mail.

This is much more of a pain that it seems. To ensure deliverability you need to ensure that you manage SPF/Domainkeys records, that you're not running an open relay, and configure your own spam filtering. It's all quite easy to mess up, so I'd only recommend it if you know what you're doing. Your time is probably worth more than the few currency units/month for someone like fastmail.fm to do it properly.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#16

Post by warp »

scraplab wrote: post #15
Sander_Marechal wrote: post #10

Why not host your own? It's not that hard. I run my own using exim4 + dovecot. It's pretty easy to set up. Plus, as a bonus I set up mutt on my server as well so when I am somewhere else I can just ssh into my box and read my mail.

This is much more of a pain that it seems. To ensure deliverability you need to ensure that you manage SPF/Domainkeys records, that you're not running an open relay, and configure your own spam filtering. It's all quite easy to mess up, so I'd only recommend it if you know what you're doing. Your time is probably worth more than the few currency units/month for someone like fastmail.fm to do it properly.

I used to run a setup like this for a while. Spam filtering is the most annoying part of it, so I soon outsourced that (first to google postini, then to spamhero.com). But then I realized that my e-mail is now flowing through these services anyway, in fact, e-mail is unencrypted and flows through many ISPs which all can read it if they want to be evil -- so I might as well outsource all of it. So I switched e-mail for all my domains to tuffmail.com a few months ago, and am very happy with them so far.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#17

Post by tluyben2 »

mapleoin wrote: post #4

Lavabit is pretty good. I've been with them (Personal Account plan) for about 4 years now. No downtime, IMAP and a stated goal in caring about their users privacy. The webmail interface is pretty modest, but they do provide a way to set pretty advanced regex server-side filters. You have to upgrade to a paid plan if you want decent SPAM filtering though. They're also planning a surprise upgrade soon. http://lavabit.c…

Sorry, but for real work the ZOHO web interface is unusable. I'm not the only one who thinks that :) Especially if you are used to Gmail, ZOHO works like it has been written by drunk people.

Lavabit seems quite interesting.

Anyone going to write a Gmail clone for installation on your own servers finally? I would pay quite a bit for that.

Re: Ask HN: How to move away from Gmail

#19

Post by mechanical_fish »

scraplab wrote: post #15
Sander_Marechal wrote: post #10

Why not host your own? It's not that hard. I run my own using exim4 + dovecot. It's pretty easy to set up. Plus, as a bonus I set up mutt on my server as well so when I am somewhere else I can just ssh into my box and read my mail.

This is much more of a pain that it seems. To ensure deliverability you need to ensure that you manage SPF/Domainkeys records, that you're not running an open relay, and configure your own spam filtering. It's all quite easy to mess up, so I'd only recommend it if you know what you're doing. Your time is probably worth more than the few currency units/month for someone like fastmail.fm to do it properly.

I have, and am well served by, Fastmail's expensive plan: $40 US per year per domain. If you even know what all those terms in the above comment mean that's about half an hour of your time, tops. And it doesn't count the cost of the hosting for your server. And for the secondary server, which receives your mail while the primary is down for maintenance.
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