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Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

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Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#31

Post by znpy »

mdasen wrote: post #22

Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that service won't let you transfer it themselves). I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple acco…

> One issue is that the domain needs to be with Go Daddy

Absolute dealbreaker.

There's no real reason why I can't just point my MX at them, do the additional configuration[*] and have them host my mail.

Any explaination would be pure (and utter) BS.

[*] being setting spf, dkim records and stuff

Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#33

Post by hn_version_0023 »

josephg wrote: post #16
wiradikusuma wrote: post #11

Google is not just email. It's the email client. It's the calendar. It's the calendar integration with email. How do you replace those?

> How do you replace those? These days? Pretty easily! Fastmail also has an email client, and a calendar. The calendar is integrated into its email service too. And the calendar integrates really well with iCal / CalDAV. I find fastmail syncs calendar entries between my apple devices more reliably than apple's own icloud. The big hole in fastmail's offering is that they have no replacement for google docs & spreadshe…

One thing I like about Fastmail is the ability to serve static web content directly from the “Files” section of their apps/website.

Since they already manage the domain for email, spinning up static sites at subdomains is really easy and really nice.

Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#34

Post by Pasorrijer »

mdasen wrote: post #22

Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that service won't let you transfer it themselves). I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple acco…

Not true. You can host through any provider and link it to Office365.

Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#35

Post by Pasorrijer »

znpy wrote: post #31
mdasen wrote: post #22

Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that service won't let you transfer it themselves). I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple acco…

> One issue is that the domain needs to be with Go Daddy Absolute dealbreaker. There's no real reason why I can't just point my MX at them, do the additional configuration[*] and have them host my mail. Any explaination would be pure (and utter) BS. [*] being setting spf, dkim records and stuff

This is not accurate. I host through Site ground and have absolutely no issues setting O365 as my mail provider.

Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#36

Post by f_ »

znpy wrote: post #31
mdasen wrote: post #22

Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that service won't let you transfer it themselves). I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple acco…

> One issue is that the domain needs to be with Go Daddy Absolute dealbreaker. There's no real reason why I can't just point my MX at them, do the additional configuration[*] and have them host my mail. Any explaination would be pure (and utter) BS. [*] being setting spf, dkim records and stuff

I don't think this is true; I am running Microsoft 365 and use AWS Route 53 and manually set up DNS records to work with Microsoft 365 just fine.

Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#37

Post by nodesocket »

mdasen wrote: post #22

Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that service won't let you transfer it themselves). I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple acco…

Is iCloud+ IMAP/Push?

Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#38

Post by mdasen »

Pasorrijer wrote: post #34
mdasen wrote: post #22

Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that service won't let you transfer it themselves). I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple acco…

Not true. You can host through any provider and link it to Office365.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalize...

Q: I already own a domain that's registered with a provider other than GoDaddy. Can I set up a personalized email address in Outlook.com?

A: At the moment, we only support connecting domains managed by GoDaddy with Outlook.com.

Maybe that only applies to "Microsoft 365 Family or Microsoft 365 Personal" and not their business offering? They have a basic business offering for $5/mo, but it doesn't include the Office apps (just the online versions).

EDIT: It looks like non-GoDaddy is for business/enterprise plans: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/setup/a...

Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#39

Post by buro9 »

Fastmail

I've just moved, and it's great. Import is fantastic (I migrated 14GB of email) and I've used Dmarcian to monitor and confirm everything is perfect on the SPF, DKIM front. Spam initially got through, but once trained it's been flawless I've personally abandoned labels for folders as I used barely 10 labels in Gmail and seldom added more than one, but they do support labels if you want that. It's great for wildcard email and aliases.

I've moved the calendar over too via Google takeout for the individual .ics files. On Android I use DAVx5 to keep using the Google calendar app (point it at your fastmail account and it will display in Google calendar).

For Drive I've moved to syncthing and am using a Synology NAS as my always online master copy, but each of my computers has a copy. I also installed libre office on my laptop.

And I'm keeping a Gmail account just for Android backup and app purchases, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?

#40

Post by voisin »

mdasen wrote: post #22

Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that service won't let you transfer it themselves). I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple acco…

I just did the Gmail —> iCloud transition and was frustrated that the MBOX format failed to maintain labels / folders. Everything went into a single place. On researching it seemed like the best process was to set up two IMAP accounts in Apple Mail and simply drag and drop the directories. I’ve done this, but it is still a pain and took 100x longer than I expected.
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