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Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

infomaniak.com

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Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#71

Post by chewzerita »

systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

I pay the $\approx$ 1 USD a month for Posteo, but after reading about Migadu, I might decide to switch over. Their pro/con page[1] is extremely refreshing. I know this doesn't really matter, but the whole design of their site is very attractive to me following the brutalist/minimalist style (see also miniflux[2] or lobsters[3]).

[1] https://www.migadu.com/procon/

[2] https://miniflux.app/

[3] https://lobste.rs/

EDIT: Posteo is here: https://posteo.de/en

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#72

Post by tjoff »

systemvoltage wrote: post #66
ylee wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no such thing as free. I agree, which is why I've been paying for Pobox.com since 1996. $20 a year for three forwarding aliases of your choice. Fastmail purchased the company a few years ago but I've noticed no changes.

FastMail is an amazing company. Their UI is old school and packs a punch. Their mobile app is fantastic . They also invented some new JSON based email standard: https://jmap.io/

Last I tried their mobile app it was just an embedded web browser, quite the turnoff.

Has that changed?

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#73

Post by nunodonato »

systemvoltage wrote: post #66
ylee wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no such thing as free. I agree, which is why I've been paying for Pobox.com since 1996. $20 a year for three forwarding aliases of your choice. Fastmail purchased the company a few years ago but I've noticed no changes.

FastMail is an amazing company. Their UI is old school and packs a punch. Their mobile app is fantastic . They also invented some new JSON based email standard: https://jmap.io/

I Love fastmail,just renewed my yearly subscription. Having that said, the mobile app is not fantastic at all. Try working with it with a poor or non-existent connection and good luck even accessing your calendar

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#74

Post by Galanwe »

harha wrote: post #64
p1necone wrote: post #12

Is there a https://killedbygoogle.com/ equivalent for startups that promised 'forever'/'lifetime' service and then shut down a few years later?

I wonder if companies can be held liable by customers and/or competitors if they break that promise. My (very brief, IANAL) intro to civil law in Switzerland covered an interesting detail in contracts: contracts (or parts) need to follow “good morals” to avoid being invalidated [0], an example of which would be that the contract shouldn’t bind the parties for perpetuity. So this part of the contract couldn’t be enfor…

> I wonder if companies can be held liable by customers and/or competitors if they break that promise.

Do we really care though? You can just scrap the company and do an other one.

An other option is just to change the terms, display a pop-up to users saying "Hey, our terms changed, do you accept the new ones?". You can bet 99.999% will click yes and not read the new terms.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#75

Post by karamanolev »

wwn_se wrote: post #43

I prefer to pay even if its clear that the price don't cover the whole cost. Because the EU customer protections are pretty good if you are a customer (not sure that it applies if you are using free stuff). Self hosted or paid is my first choice if at all possible especially for one of the most important services.

Switzerland is not in the EU. A lot of the EU consumer protections don't apply.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#76

Post by onebot »

karamanolev wrote: post #62
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

I do agree that Swiss laws are generally good, but consumer protection is significantly worse than for example the EU. For many things, a EU person will take something for granted and get screwed over, mostly in terms of strange socially accepted norms + "if it's in the AGB (terms of service) good luck arguing/defending".

Switzerland isn't part of the EU.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#77

Post by Fnoord »

tluyben2 wrote: post #36
mongol wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite some commitment. When do you plan to retire?

I am not planning to retire. I tried retirement after I sold my company and I really did not like it. I might step out of computing, however that does not exclude running this. Also I have good friends who are helping. I would say we can revisit this topic here in at least 15-20 years and it'll still run (and probably will need a new skin ;) ).

> I am not planning to retire.

With all due respect, you probably should plan around this. What if you suddenly die tomorrow? I'm not trying to threaten or scare you, its just that you (and your customers) should plan around this. An example of such planning which likely fits the glove for all readers here, is to have your private key or password at a notary.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#78

Post by systemvoltage »

chewzerita wrote: post #71
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Folks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to…

I pay the $\approx$ 1 USD a month for Posteo, but after reading about Migadu, I might decide to switch over. Their pro/con page[1] is extremely refreshing. I know this doesn't really matter, but the whole design of their site is very attractive to me following the brutalist/minimalist style (see also miniflux[2] or lobsters[3]). [1] https://www.migadu.com/procon/ [2] https://miniflux.app/ [3] https://lobste.rs/ EDIT:…

Mini flux looks amazing. I’m a fan of this type of design. You’ll like FastMail, if you can ignore the stupid cliche cartoons on the homepage and actually use their web email client. Very much Brutalist circa 2005 style.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#79

Post by smarx007 »

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #57
smarx007 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

privacy !== anonymity

> privacy !== anonymity Why not? With the same reasoning you could deny selling people food unless they show you their government ID. Would you consider such an abomination a country where privacy still exists? If you strip people from basic anonymity for no sane reason they have no privacy. If all you want is to prevent people from signing up infinite accounts then have them solve a bazillion captchas or pay a token…

I did not say you do not deserve anonymity. I simply disagreed with the OP who laughed at a possibilty of any kind of privacy unless complete anonymity was guaranteed. While not arguing regarding the validity of the proposition above, I simply wanted to highlight that those are two different concepts that have two different entries in a thesaurus.

Example everyone can relate to: when you go to a doctor, they look at your medical history and in most cases you need an appointment first. This means your visit is no longer anonymous. However, I think everyone agrees that you still deserve privacy with respect to the details of your visit.

Re: Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland

#80

Post by harha »

Galanwe wrote: post #74
harha wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if companies can be held liable by customers and/or competitors if they break that promise. My (very brief, IANAL) intro to civil law in Switzerland covered an interesting detail in contracts: contracts (or parts) need to follow “good morals” to avoid being invalidated [0], an example of which would be that the contract shouldn’t bind the parties for perpetuity. So this part of the contract couldn’t be enfor…

> I wonder if companies can be held liable by customers and/or competitors if they break that promise. Do we really care though? You can just scrap the company and do an other one. An other option is just to change the terms, display a pop-up to users saying "Hey, our terms changed, do you accept the new ones?". You can bet 99.999% will click yes and not read the new terms.

> You can just scrap the company and do an other one.

In this case probably yes, that's what the limited liability is for in companies. Though if you have legal issues with the old company, some jurisdictions may not let you start another one (or at least be director).

If it's Google (Photos) or HP (lifetime printing) making the promise and driving competitors out of the market, I think it's a valid claim.

> An other option is just to change the terms

I'm not sure if that's an option if your customer has signed up under "lifetime" terms. While these parts of the terms they've signed up for are void, they could claim that they've had damages (costs or missed opportunities) by this "immoral" offer.

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