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Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

moddedbear.com

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Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#481

Looking for your alternative? Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail. It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant . They live up to the name! Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked -…

I've been very happy with Protonmail, you can even use your old Gmail address from within Protonmail [0]. Although arguable doing that is counter productive, you want receive gmails but reply with you new address -> Yes this is the time to buy a domain and own an address for the rest of your life, so you can move again with little pain in the future ;)

[0] https://proton.me/blog/proton-mail-connect-gmail

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#482

Looking for your alternative? Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail. It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant . They live up to the name! Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked -…

One additional benefit of Fastmail is fast, helpful tech support. The few times i’ve needed them, they’ve answered quickly and given me what i needed in the first response.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#483

Looking for your alternative? Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail. It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant . They live up to the name! Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked -…

I've been very happy with Protonmail, you can even use your old Gmail address from within Protonmail [0]. Although arguable doing that is counter productive, you want receive gmails but reply with you new address -> Yes this is the time to buy a domain and own an address for the rest of your life, so you can move again with little pain in the future ;) [0] https://proton.me/blog/proton-mail-connect-gmail

I temporarily moved from Fastmail to Proton Mail, but found several downsides:

* Loading mails (especially when going quickly through them) has quite some latency. Possibly due to decrypting.

* Search is pretty bad compared to Fastmail.

* The keyboard shortcuts seem to never work correctly.

So I went back to Fastmail for mail (we still use Proton Drive, which has its own set of warts).

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think seeing superiority or obnoxiousness in the comment you replied to was a pretty large reading error on your part. The tone was sympathetic to people whose inboxes receive more than they can handle. The last sentence of your comment sounds quite condescending.

The part of their comment I quoted is not particularly subtle in my opinion. It undercuts the superficially "sympathetic" tone. If they actually intended it to be sympathetic they should be more careful in their phrasing. I'm skeptical.

GP post is correct; you are reading way too far into it. Zero superiority intended.

I'm stating it as a style of how I manage my inbox. It's not some big achievement on my part. It's how I stop from feeling overwhelmed by my inbox. Everyone else can do whatever they want.

It's not like I'm that loyal to Gmail. But I've yet to find an alternative that replaces this functionality that I've become accustomed to. It's why I'm asking so many questions of people in this thread.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people accessing emails from the webUI. Email is SMTP and IMAP, use any number of clients to access your email.

> Why are people accessing emails from the webUI. Email is SMTP and IMAP, use any number of clients to access your email. Because the UX of most email clients is extremely bad when compared with the webui of these email providers.

It's also IMAP is an awful protocol with so many glaring issues its impossible for a modern client to paper over them. Fastmail invented JMAP but it doesn't seem to have taken off with any other providers.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#486

Looking for your alternative? Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail. It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant . They live up to the name! Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked -…

my only problem with fastmail is their spam filtering is so bad. they mistake legit emails quite often

I disagree. Their spam filtering has been top notch for me. Sometimes spam does get through, but marking that as spam has made sure the next ones of the same are flagged correctly.

Lately LLM generated spam has fooled it more often, though. Let's see if that becomes a problem.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#487
I've moved to Migadu a few years ago for more or less the same reason, but pre AI - Google's unrequested filtering and sorting made things actively worse on my daily chaos. Moreover the eternal threat of Google cutting the cord for any non-defined infraction and locking you out of your own life is crazy. I still use drive and other Google features, but my email is just an account login and nothing more.

Migadu has been a breeze, very sane and transparent payment model, human support, infinite domains and accounts (!). What I really miss are calendar features which are just underdeveloped, but it seems mostly the Microsoft and Google have ruined that area by doing whatever they want.

I like the instructions Migadu gave for copying your emails over - just open thunderbird and copy or move everything from one account. I put everything in an Archive folder so can find it if ever needed. Just insanely pragmatic and it worked.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#488
post #439
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to care, but I don't anymore. They can read my emails, my code, track what websites I visit and what music I listen to, be my guest. I'd let them read my thoughts directly if we can build technology to do that lol. I realized that ultimately, these corporations are too stupid to do anything of value with all that data, so I don't feel threatened.

The danger isn't that they'll do anything of value; the danger is that they'll do something stupid with your data.

You're probably right, I'm an idiot. I just think there's not much we can do about it, so might as well not take it too seriously. At least for the innocuous type of surveillance like reading my emails to learn how to sell me product. Things that you really want to keep for yourself shouldn't really touch the internet at all.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been very happy with Protonmail, you can even use your old Gmail address from within Protonmail [0]. Although arguable doing that is counter productive, you want receive gmails but reply with you new address -> Yes this is the time to buy a domain and own an address for the rest of your life, so you can move again with little pain in the future ;) [0] https://proton.me/blog/proton-mail-connect-gmail

I temporarily moved from Fastmail to Proton Mail, but found several downsides: * Loading mails (especially when going quickly through them) has quite some latency. Possibly due to decrypting. * Search is pretty bad compared to Fastmail. * The keyboard shortcuts seem to never work correctly. So I went back to Fastmail for mail (we still use Proton Drive, which has its own set of warts).

Agreed, there are quirks, and there is also an AI writer, though it never disturbed me and hope it never will.

But generally the UI is clean and they align with my values.

There is a bridge software that bridges Proton and imap so you can use any client. Never used it though, I find the apps pretty good. The latest generation is focussing on off-line use which will hopefully drive down down some of the latency, especially that of the calendar app is pretty bad atm.

My father somehow loves the search, but I myself am also unimpressed tbh. I do like the tagging system.

+ I'll add the obligatory complaint about the lack of Linux Protondrive client.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#490

Looking for your alternative? Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail. It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant . They live up to the name! Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked -…

I was quite surprised how much better search and spam filters are on fastmail. Both things I did not believe a small company could do better than Google, but I think they did. I also find the interface better. I was also expecting Google to have resources for optimizing details, that a small company wouldn't get around to. Fastmail also lets you e-mail a real person for help and they usually take it very seriously -…

I am not a Fastmail user but I completely doubt this. I have been using Gmail for 20 years and I have never seen a spam mail land in my inbox which has always impressed me. Everything else I have used from time to time does miss a few, which I guess it might be acceptable if you want to move to another host.
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