4 ms·
Could I use the free tiers of these services as a personal email service as an alternative to, say, Gmail? I'm using my own mail client (like SeaMonkey or Thund
by mysterypie 11y ago
Could I use the free tiers of these services as a personal email service as an alternative to, say, Gmail? I'm using my own mail client (like SeaMonkey or Thunderbird) and I have my own domain name.
Would they mind that I used the free tier in this way? Are there any downsides?
The reason is privacy. I don't want Gmail (or other free email services) scanning, analyzing, and saving away my email. I think the "transactional email services" in the featured article would be more private since their motivations and they way they make money are different than Gmail.
- gerry_shaw 11y agoMost (all?) don't have POP3/IMAP for incoming mail (they use webhooks for your web app) so you could send email through these but not easily receive it.
- Xeoncross 11y agoPerhaps there is a hack where you could configure the receive hook to forward the JSON object to some other free service (like the cloud databases) and then configure your desktop/mobile app to pull from there?
- glogla 11y agoThe problem with having your own mailserver is mostly that google and hotmail won't accept your mail. So you could have your own POP3/IMAP server, and only send outgoing mail through the transactional service.
- icebraining 11y agoYeap, that's me. I have it configured as a smart host[1] on my self-hosted exim server, so I can change it in just one place, without touching the email clients. Came in handy recently :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_host https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_host
- dantiberian 11y agoMany of these services are targeted explicitly on sending transactional email, e.g. user does something in an app and an email is sent in response. I doubt personal email usage would be covered. Also, they won't give you an 'inbox' like you would get with Gmail.