Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#241

Post by litmus-pit-git » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 3:54 AM UTC

giuliomagnifico wrote: post #171

litmus-pit-git wrote: post #101

And I will be leaving Mailbox.org for Runbox, or Purelymail, or Fastmail. I have a few more months' credit remaining on Mailbox, besides I am yet to try the trials. (This is for the author and anyone else) If you are looking for responsive (or even barely responsive) and responsible support responses whenever you need it, weigh your options very carefully about which mail host you want to move to. You might need it o…

Fastmail's base plan is excessive for me (60GB of storage) and costs twice as much as Mailbox, plus it's not an EU service.

It is for me as well. It's an obscene plan. They should have plans for us normal humans :)

But having burnt my fingers couple of times I need to be with a provider who has some sort of "real" and responsive support (and accountable) and that costs money so there's that. For me EU is not a condition, neither is e2ee (as long as it's E at Rest), but I understand it might be for others. I hope mailbox is good for you and unless you need some support it will good. There were no outages or any general things breaking during my usage of many years.

Good luck.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#242

Post by crossroadsguy » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 3:59 AM UTC

AnonC wrote: post #46

> The last two providers offered true end-to-end encryption ProtonMail and Tutanota offer end-to-end encryption only when both the sender and recipient are using the same (i.e., ProtonMail->ProtonMail or Tutanota->Tutanota). If you’re emailing someone outside those or if you’re receiving emails from someone outside those, and you want encryption, you’d have to go to PGP (with its own complexities).

That's why I find their mandatory requirement of exposing their hosted emails only to their clients is such a bizarre take (if not pure bs).

I mean for god's sake just let me use IMAP/POP3.

You give me encryption at rest, safety and privacy in transit, and do not sell my data. You also offer to let me put up my GPG key on your admin portal so that I can easily read e2ee mails in your webmail.

Thank you, all that is very nice. Now get out of my way and do not try/pretend to be Signal and email at the same time.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#243

Post by doctorpangloss » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 4:05 AM UTC

rendleflag wrote: post #122

I’ve been a Fastmail user for years, having left Gmail. It works great and have nothing be but praise for them. I use my own domain with them so if I decide to leave it’s not an issue worrying about updating people with my new email.

That’s the thing, you never left Gmail, since most recipients use it. You have to play by Google’s rules for deliverability across all mail providers. It cannot be “left.”

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#244

Post by Telaneo » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 4:10 AM UTC

mxuribe wrote: post #147

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a domain that I use as my primary email address, but it's a "premium" domain that costs quite a bit to lease every year. To me the main concern here is that my payment fails, I don't notice, the domain goes up for sale and somebody grabs it. Then they have access to everything. So, I use my personal domain for all mail except anything that's "vital" like government websites, banking, paying rent, etc. for which…

Hi @TranquilMarmot, first off, i think the recommendation from @AnonC on their long term approach to registering a domain name is absolutely brilliant! Do that! Another recommendation you should consider is to find a domain that ends in one of the common top-level domains - like .COM, .NET, or .ORG - because for using with *vital government services* you would not believe how many good natured civil servants (or for…

> but folks outside of U.S. are perfectly cool with all manner of different TLS.

Users in other countries are very likely to be more familiar with both their own local domain, and have probably also experienced websites from neighbouring countries, while your average American has never even seen a website with a .us domain (never even seen it used myself), and are a lot less likely to have needed to go to a .ca or .mx website.

That said, I'd expect to get a similar reaction from people in other countries if you said your email was firstname.lastname@mydomain.christmas, or whatever other funny top level domain.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#245

Post by Mr_Minderbinder » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 4:10 AM UTC

binaryturtle wrote: post #96

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #49

I spent the past month "de-Googling" my life after I saw a notice in my Gmail inbox that it was 20 years old. I took a step back and realized just how invested into the Google ecosystem I was. Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Maps, Keep, Photos, YouTube, FitBit, Android. Basically my entire digital life. My goal was more diversifying than security/privacy, but security/privacy is a really nice bonus. I ended up going wi…

How do you de-google yourself properly when every 3rd website stops working entirely unless you whitelist some google stuff in your content blocker?

It is almost always blocking first party JavaScript and XHRs that causes breakages. I have rarely had to enable Google anything in uMatrix to get a site to work (more often it is Cloudflare), and it is only if the site insists on reCAPTCHA.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#246

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 4:37 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #177

onlyhumans wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail is kind of a weird service. If you stop paying they release your email for someone else to take over. Pretty unacceptable this day and age.

I really wish all mail providers made it easy and seamless to bring your own domain (or register and manage one in the background for you, without you having to care for the details). Obviously giving a service-tied email domain to users is a great lock-in strategy. But it's worrying that so many people have a big part of their online identity tied to Google. (You can even sign up for a Google Account without GMail,…

Fastmail makes it super easy to bring your own domains. As many as you want even on their cheapest plan.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#247

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 4:55 AM UTC

onlyhumans wrote: post #134

rendleflag wrote: post #122

I’ve been a Fastmail user for years, having left Gmail. It works great and have nothing be but praise for them. I use my own domain with them so if I decide to leave it’s not an issue worrying about updating people with my new email.

Fastmail is kind of a weird service. If you stop paying they release your email for someone else to take over. Pretty unacceptable this day and age.

This does not appear correct. I lost my original account in 2013 and the handle is extremely unique, and I just tried to reregister it, and it won't allow it. ("Sorry, [redacted]@fastmail.fm has already been taken.")

Are you sure you didn't confuse domains? My original handle is on fastmail.fm, but it will let me register that on fastmail.com.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#248

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 5:01 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #198

mantra2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothered me about Gmail was that it was central to my life and if something were to happen and they locked my account they have zero support. With that out of the way I feel perfectly happy with FM — no need to go further down the paranoia hole.

I'm on fastmail with an xyz.dev domain and keep a gmail for legacy purposes. Unfortunately some email validators will reject my short FM address.

Right. Everyone has to keep a Gmail address as backup because of all these edge cases. For one, some domains (like yours) are just rejected. I tried to register an account with a huge corporate SMTP provider recently but they've not updated their allowed gTLD in 10 years and their devs fought me for weeks telling me it was my domain that was wrong, not their system until they finally gave in.

And secondly, many sites, like Reddit, use a Gmail address as some sort of signal of quality. You can avoid a lot of new account bans on Reddit simply by registering with a Gmail instead of your own domain.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#249

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 5:04 AM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #23

I'm going to plug fastmail. Rationale: (1) tech support that actually reads your messages and replies with a solution demonstrating comprehension of the message that you wrote. Amazing. I've emailed them twice and gotten a great response both times. (2) it is the best UI I've seen outside gmail; (3) They have continued actively developing their UI, with nice updates released perhaps in the last 6 weeks. (4) keyboard…

I think I'm over 20 years using Fastmail now? It just works. I've never had a single ounce of trouble with them. Their support is great. There are few products in life that I would recommend without question, and Fastmail is one of those. If only every company was this good.

Re: Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

#250

Post by akoboldfrying » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 5:13 AM UTC

soraminazuki wrote: post #208

akoboldfrying wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domain names work the same way -- once you stop paying for it, someone else can buy and use it. Do you have the same problem with domain names? If so, how would you propose to fix it?

That's incredibly dishonest reasoning. Are you seriously telling me that unless people have a solution for fixing DNS, commercial email should be free to hand out used email addresses? Seriously?

Sure.

Now that you've said what you wanted to say about how dishonest the question is, would you like to either answer it or explain why the analogy fails to hold?