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Since this is related to moving out of Yahoo, in a previous thread about the security breach at Yahoo, I had asked for suggestions on other email providers who'
by newscracker 10y ago
Since this is related to moving out of Yahoo, in a previous thread about the security breach at Yahoo, I had asked for suggestions on other email providers who're better focused on privacy, security (and related to that, freedom). I came across a few suggestions that support custom domains, but found all of them wanting in some ways:
1. Fastmail - becomes very expensive if multiple people (say, in a team or family) want individual accounts even if their actual usage volumes are less. Pricing by user account is the barrier here, instead of pricing by usage (consider that it provides 600 aliases per user, which 99% of users wouldn't use to the full extent, but charges based on user accounts). Provides support for IMAP/POP, importing existing mails from other accounts and exporting mails out. A few hundred dollars a year for email is quite expensive for me.
2. Protonmail - no way to import mails from existing mail accounts or to export mails from the system. The lack of support for IMAP/POP means one does not have the freedom to move out. Suggestions on these have been waiting for two years with nothing to show for. Pricing is somewhat similar to Fastmail, but offers more flexibility. This too could get very expensive even with lower actual usage per user.
3. Tutanota - much better on flexible pricing based on different parameters, but it's similar to Protonmail in that it does not support importing existing mail or exporting mails out. It too lacks support for IMAP/POP and states that it's never going to support them for privacy reasons.
4. Startmail - quite similar to Fastmail on the pricing issue, but has IMAP support.
Are there any other providers who do better on all these fronts? I'd like to use custom domains, have multiple user accounts (with separate credentials), preferably manage storage across users, be able to import and export mails, and have IMAP/POP support in order to use different systems (phones, tablets, computers with different operating systems). I don't believe that web mail and custom apps ought to be the only way to use email.
- kijin 10y agoLuxSci is top notch. It's expensive if you only use it for one or two accounts, but can be cheaper than FastMail if you have several accounts sharing your disk quota. Runbox is probably as privacy-respecting as you can get without delving into the kind of zero-knowledge encryption schemes that make Protonmail and similar services incompatible with IMAP/POP. Their webmail is meh, but that won't matter if you usually access your mail via IMAP/POP.
- msh 10y agoI am using mailbox.org It's quite cheap and supports using your own domain. It's German based but I have had no issues communicating with the support in English.
- newscracker 10y agoThanks. The pricing and features look nice. But it does not allow importing existing emails into the mailbox account (and thus provide a way to permanently get rid of the older account while having a way to access older mails across multiple devices).
- msh 10y agoYes they actually do. The manual way is just to use a desktop email app like mail.app, outlook or Thunderbird to move the emails. That's what I did to migrate from Google apps, worked surprisingly well for even my very large amount of email. You can also use this way: https://support-en.mailbox.org/knowledge-base/article/audriga-e-mail-migration-service https://support-en.mailbox.org/knowledge-base/article/audrig...
- newscracker 10y agoThanks a lot for pointing to this. I had searched their knowledge base for "import", didn't find anything, and assumed this wasn't there. Both the paid option and the (free) manual option are straightforward.
- fredfisch 10y agoI found isync/mbsync to be a reliable tool to migrate my mail from one email provider to another.[1] You have to be into unix-y command line, though. [1] See e.g. https://psyq123.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/backing-up-email-from-any-imap-server-plus-syncing-and-migrating/ https://psyq123.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/backing-up-email-fr...
- newscracker 10y agoThat's useful only if the provider you're moving to supports importing mail. As mentioned in my comment, some of the privacy focused ones do not (or are yet to) support importing existing mails.
- fredfisch 10y agoOk, I misread your comment then. I thought you meant some sort of a tool/web gui which fastmail provides but others don't. Do those privacy focused providers even prohibit the import of mails via IMAP from your local computer? At least for isync/mbsync this not relevant and it seems to me that this a very basic operation of the IMAP protocol... (I'm not a CS person, don't weigh my words.)
- newscracker 10y agoYes, the ones I mentioned as not supporting mail import do not provide any method to import and don't support IMAP either.
- kaybe 10y agoPosteo.de is also German based, but seems cheap and reliable. It might be a bit too simple for your needs though.
- newscracker 10y agoThanks. This seems to provide everything except using a custom domain. The site says it doesn't allow custom domains for privacy reasons to avoid storing any information about the customer. Moving out of it may be painful because of this limitation (having to inform or update all contacts of a change in email address).
- watchdogtimer 10y agoIf you already have your own domain, why not just get a cheap shared hosting account, and use the mailboxes that come with it for free? They generally come with unlimited mailboxes with IMAP/POP3 support, and cost < USD$4/month.
- tdkl 10y agoI'm pretty happy with Servermx [1]. It's hosted in EU, has IMAP/POP/ActiveSync (AS is not mentioned on website since it's still in beta, but has worked since last year reliably), Cal&CardDAV (CardDAV offers full HQ contact photos). The prices are quite reasonable (1.8€ monthly for 10GB mailbox). Webmail interfaces are SOGo, Squirrelmail, Roundcube. Support tickets are answered instantly (couple hours). You can migrate existing mail via an IMAP importer (logs into target IMAP server with your credentials and pulls email to servermx). They offer a 30 day trial to check it out (without custom domain part for the trial), after that you can upgrade it to a full paid account, which supports custom domains. [1] http://servermx.com/ http://servermx.com/
- Crosseye_Jack 10y ago> They offer a 30 day trial to check it out (without custom domain part for the trial), after that you can upgrade it to a full paid account, which supports custom domains. From their features page. > With the trial product You can use your own domain name or use a free sub-domain of servermx.com which will be assigned to you at subscription time. Or did you mean they don't offer "Custom Web mail URL - Your domain name can be used for your web email client (example http://webmail.yourdomainname.tld)" http://webmail.yourdomainname.tld)" during the trial? Thanks for the heads up, I'll have to look into them as I'm getting bored of maintaining my own mail server and €24 isn't bad for a year. I'll have to look into them a bit more before taking the plunge though.
- tdkl 10y agoOh, my mistake then, I thought the trial was only possible with their email address. Even better :)