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Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose?

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Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose?

#1

Post by comatory »

I know i could go all nerdy and set up my own mail server but honestly I don't want to deal with it. My main concern with Gmail/Google in general is ad targeting and I've been slowly moving away from their services that I've been using since 2005.

I am looking for following: - IMAP based email. - Reasonable inbox size ( 5 GB or so) - contact syncing ( Card DAV, LDAP ) - calendar sync - nice little extra would be custom domain

I've heard good things about Fastmail but I'm not sure if $40 a year is too much. Maybe not I just don't know other options. I've also heard about Rackspace but that seems more complex to setup plus I couldn't find the pricing on their site.

Thanks for suggestions.

Re: Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose?

#2

Post by duncan_bayne »

I can't speak highly enough of Fastmail.

Great UI (nowadays, I've heard it has been rough in the past), they've just added calendars with CalDAV sync and are working on contact sync with CardDAV. My custom domain (bayne.id.au) was handled quickly and easily. Also, they have excellent support - I've emailed them a few times and always wound up speaking to a clueful developer (when it hasn't been PEBKAC on my part).

I do wonder what the software world is coming to, though, when $40 / year is considered expensive. I saw a similar complaint about an Android app I use (Tasker) which costs around $5 if I remember rightly. $5! That's less than the price of a (good) hamburger, for an app that makes my life easier in a number of significant ways.

Are we on some sort of doomed race to the bottom like budget airlines?

Re: Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose?

#3

Post by bluerail »

I would recommend Outlook.com from MS.

I switched from all of my google services recently[1] for the same reason as you, targeting. And for the email services, I picked outlook for its minimal nature and the nice UI that gives a pleasant experience compared to the cluttered Gmail interface(IMO).

I created a new email with Outlook and forwarded all my Gmail content to the Outlook including contacts using their 'Gmail to Outlook' migration tool[2]. And along with it created some aliases for different purposes. The only thing I miss from Gmail is their multiple email accounts using "+', but as said Outlook provides a more or less alternative "aliases" feature.

One thing I really like about Outlook apart from its UI and manageability is its ability on managing everything from my Twitter account to Gmail chat right from the mailbox itself.

[1] - http://blog.therth.com/blog/2014/09/23/my-new-outlook/ [2] - http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/outlook-com/gmail/

Re: Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose?

#4

Post by zachlatta »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #2

I can't speak highly enough of Fastmail. Great UI (nowadays, I've heard it has been rough in the past), they've just added calendars with CalDAV sync and are working on contact sync with CardDAV. My custom domain (bayne.id.au) was handled quickly and easily. Also, they have excellent support - I've emailed them a few times and always wound up speaking to a clueful developer (when it hasn't been PEBKAC on my part). I…

Going to second Fastmail. I've been a user of it for the past three months and it's easily worth the cost, especially considering it's for something as vital as email. Before Fastmail I hosted my own email server and used sup to access my email. Switching to Fastmail was one of my biggest productivity boosts in the past 6 months. Really wish they'd get CardDAV sync in though :-/.

Re: Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose?

#5

Post by Andrenid »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #2

I can't speak highly enough of Fastmail. Great UI (nowadays, I've heard it has been rough in the past), they've just added calendars with CalDAV sync and are working on contact sync with CardDAV. My custom domain (bayne.id.au) was handled quickly and easily. Also, they have excellent support - I've emailed them a few times and always wound up speaking to a clueful developer (when it hasn't been PEBKAC on my part). I…

I switched to Fastmail about a year or so ago, and love it. Custom domain as well.

Reliable, nice UI, works flawlessly on all my devices (would like Push notifications on iPhone but 15 minute polling works fine for my purposes).

Re: Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose?

#9

Post by rawland »

Some people are mentiong services like Fastmail here.

To me this sounds like replacing one "evil" with another. Can somebody please prove me wrong! Right now, I'm walking the Postfix+Dovecot+Roundcube path. Other options I'm looking into right now are:

https://www.mailpile.is/ - which look very promising

https://whiteout.io/ - also interesting

Re: Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose?

#10

Post by ro-ka »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #2

I can't speak highly enough of Fastmail. Great UI (nowadays, I've heard it has been rough in the past), they've just added calendars with CalDAV sync and are working on contact sync with CardDAV. My custom domain (bayne.id.au) was handled quickly and easily. Also, they have excellent support - I've emailed them a few times and always wound up speaking to a clueful developer (when it hasn't been PEBKAC on my part). I…

I also recommend Fastmail. No complaints. UI is great.
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