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Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

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Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#51

Post by J_Darnley »

thezilch wrote: post #20

You have to be biting your tongue awfully hard to shoot off "Google is, in other words, the new AOL." He admits all of the services are not complete alternatives, save for maybe RSS readers. In other words, either 99% of users can't manage to use these non-alternatives for reasons like calendar and contacts not syncing, or they already don't use the product like RSS, or they definitely won't be able to run their own…

> Firefox sucked -- thanks Chrome.

Sorry but the influence of Chrome on Firefox has been universally negative perhaps with the exception of performance.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#52

Post by k3n »

namityadav wrote: post #38
rufugee wrote: post #19

I've been eyeing some of the some of the Zimbra hosts (01.com, xmission.com) as a possible home for my email accounts, as we've been testing Zimbra at my day job for a possible Exchange replacement and I've liked the experience so far. Anyone have experiences with Zimbra (and the hosts) to share?

I was also looking at Zimbra some time back. But threads like this made me stay with Gmail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=662348

I don't have a dog in this fight, but to be fair, that thread is 1434 days old.

Not saying that anything has changed -- I really have no idea -- but I'm not sure how prudent it is to base high-tech decisions off anecdotal data that is 4 years old.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#53

Post by jmgrosen »

J_Darnley wrote: post #51
thezilch wrote: post #20

You have to be biting your tongue awfully hard to shoot off "Google is, in other words, the new AOL." He admits all of the services are not complete alternatives, save for maybe RSS readers. In other words, either 99% of users can't manage to use these non-alternatives for reasons like calendar and contacts not syncing, or they already don't use the product like RSS, or they definitely won't be able to run their own…

> Firefox sucked -- thanks Chrome. Sorry but the influence of Chrome on Firefox has been universally negative perhaps with the exception of performance.

Such as?

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#54

Post by easyfrag »

vertis wrote: post #13

I recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail.fm for much the same reasons as the OP. Fastmail.fm managed to migrate 30k emails without so much as a sweat. I still haven't worked out what I'm going to do about Google Reader :(

I've switched to feedbin.me ($2 a month), web app is ok, iPhone Reeder (iOS) can sync but not yet iPad version.

Has few bells and whistles (which is a plus in a way - not infected with social disease) but does the basic read and sync quite well.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#55

Post by J_Darnley »

jmgrosen wrote: post #53
J_Darnley wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox sucked -- thanks Chrome. Sorry but the influence of Chrome on Firefox has been universally negative perhaps with the exception of performance.

Such as?

Hiding protocol in the URL bar. Fading the server "file path" after a domain name. Tabs in the title bar. Non-native look. No menu toolbar. Status bar. And those are just the ones I'm aware of.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#56

Post by zrail »

masnick wrote: post #33
eggbrain wrote: post #27

I've been using GMail since its inception, so I figured I'd try the authors first suggestion, FastMail to see how the competition was fairing. The article mentions that FastMail operates both "free and paid tiers of service", so I figured I'd make a free account and poke around. But I've clicked and searched for five minutes now and found nothing except paid plans with a free trial. Am I missing something? Also, the…

The article is incorrect: there is no free tier but there is a 2 month free trial. https://www.fastmail.fm/action/signup/?type=personal&acc... In terms of additional features: - Support for Sieve scripts - LOVE this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language) - Way faster loading time, snapper interface - Lots more customizability (look at the display settings for an individual folder: https://files.…

Does Fastmail.FM have the equivalent of the "Archive" action in Gmail? Mail.app on OS X and on iPhone seem to play well with Archive and it's not something that I really want to give up.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#57

Post by ineedtosleep »

eggbrain wrote: post #27

I've been using GMail since its inception, so I figured I'd try the authors first suggestion, FastMail to see how the competition was fairing. The article mentions that FastMail operates both "free and paid tiers of service", so I figured I'd make a free account and poke around. But I've clicked and searched for five minutes now and found nothing except paid plans with a free trial. Am I missing something? Also, the…

To clarify and to add onto what masnick wrote, the article _was_ right. The free tier was an option previously, but FastMail has recently dropped that tier in favor of a free trial and, I'm assuming, a lower tier that has a lower cost.

Any previous users of the free tier will still have their account for free, possibly until further notice, but there is no obvious indication that they'll just drop your free account (unless you're inactive for their specified time period).

I have two email accounts with Fastmail mostly because they were the only free email service that supported Yubikey, but aside from that feature, I would call them "just another email service."

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#58

Post by footoverhand »

rdl wrote: post #16

I'd never heard of Lavabit before; it looks like they're still operational, although their website hasn't been updated much since around 2007. Looks interesting. I'd really like to see a high-quality secure email provider get wide adoption.

I've been using them for quite a while and found their service to be reliable. Even their webmail access is decent. A con is that their spam filtering isn't as good as gmail.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#59

Post by acabal »

I've been working on removing myself from the Google silo for the past few months. It's tough, and the alternatives just aren't as good or convenient as what Google offers, but I think it's an important thing to do at least on principle.

I found Owncloud to be difficult to install and very buggy. For self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV, I chose Baikal (http://http://baikal-server.com/) instead of Radicale. It seemed easier to set up and it's been working great so far. There's no web interface unfortunately, and the Thunderbird addon that connects to CardDAV (SOGO connector) is buggy at times too.

Replacing Dropbox doesn't seem practical right now. Owncloud is buggy, Sparkleshare seems like a "when you've got a hammer, everything's a nail" kind of solution, and I haven't tried Seafile yet because the configuration is intimidating and I haven't really heard anything about it.

Rackspace has great hosted email for $1/inbox/month. Eventually I want to bite the bullet and host my own mail server (I still have nightmares from when I self-hosted email a few years ago) but in the meantime I've really liked Rackspace.

Hacker idea: Create an OSS self-hosted email appliance. Simple setup for a one-inbox self-hosted email server, including DNS, DKIM, spam filter, etc. No matter what anyone says Dovecot/Postfix is not for mere mortals and self-hosted email in general is so full of pitfalls it could be an Indiana Jones temple.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#60

Post by imperialWicket »

tbirdz wrote: post #42

Also another suggestion, for a Google Analytics replacement you could try using Piwik, an open source web analytics platform. Of course I think you'll have to provide your own hosting for it.

Senseless self plug: I'm working on a saas piwik platform and looking for beta users. Email is in the profile.
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