Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What do you use instead of Gmail?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 76 posts

Re: Ask HN: What do you use instead of Gmail?

#11

Post by justusw »

I'm very happy with https://mailbox.org/. They are based in Berlin, Germany right here in my neighborhood. They offer:

* Caldav/Carddav

* Optional at rest encryption using your PGP public key

* Microsoft Exchange API

* Pretty decent web mail interface

* For iOS/macOS: Configuration profiles that make it really easy to start configuring new devices

* Easy domain aliases

* Cheap and affordable (< 20 Euro per year)

Re: Ask HN: What do you use instead of Gmail?

#12

Post by robin_reala »

I moved to Runbox a week ago and am happy (so far at least). Before I switched from Gmail I worked out what my requirements were and evaluated a few services, wrote up my findings at http://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/ . Fastmail is the obvious competitor, but I wanted a mail service that didn’t have servers in the US (Fastmail have US and Amsterdam, but replicate across then instead of letting one pick a region as far as I can see).

Re: Ask HN: What do you use instead of Gmail?

#13

Post by coconut_crab »

I have been using Posteo for a few year ( https://posteo.de/en/help?tag=end-to-end ). Pro:

  - Cheap: 1€/month for 2 GBs mailbox
  - Basic functionalities such as Web interface, SMTP, POP3, CalDav, CardDav are all included.
  - They seem to take privacy and security seriously, including email encryption, 2FA signin or recently Autocrypt[1]
  - The warm fuzzy feeling of using 100% renewable energy for your email.
Cons:

  - No custom domain
  - Might have less features than other providers[2]
[1] I am not a security expert nor I have validated their claim

[2] I use notmuch with emacs for reading email, it works great and very fast so I don't really need any other features.

EDIT: I also run my own email server but the effort involved is just not worth it, IMO.

EDIT2: Formatting

Re: Ask HN: What do you use instead of Gmail?

#17

Post by PuffinBlue »

Zoho Mail and RunBox. Zoho has dedicated EU branch if you want that:

https://www.zoho.eu/ https://www.zoho.com/ https://runbox.com/

FastMail gets a lot of love here but I think Zoho has more to offer in the ecosystem if you are willing to pay. It's a pretty decent drop in functionality replacement for a lot of Google (docs etc).

RunBox is kind of simple and and old school but it's solid and works.

Zoho Mail is also available free too and it's extremely generous for ad free hosting:

https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html?src=zmail

Scroll down the page a bit under the paid for price listings and it's headed 'free plan'. Includes hosting your own domain too.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use instead of Gmail?

#19

Post by EnderMB »

larrysalibra wrote: post #15

Very happy Fastmail customer here. Find the web interface more responsive than gmail and the IMAP implementation seems to be play better with apple's mail clients.

The web interface is fantastic, to the point where I use my Fastmail account for most of my email because it's less of a pain in the ass to go through.

The mobile app is also fantastic, but I've had instances in the past where I've received no notifications if an unread email is left in my inbox. I'm the kind of person that won't check my email unless I get a notification, so there have been times when a week has passed, and I've gone to wonder why I'm so unpopular, only to find a hundred unread emails from people wondering where I am.

Post reply on HN