7 ms·

Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc?

49 points by cl42 9y ago

Curious if people use any personal email tools. I like gmail but also realize I haven't looked for an alternative in several years.

crispytx 9y ago
protonmail
carrotam 9y ago
I find thexyz.com a really good alternative they have a $20 per year plan and a $50 that adds more storage and syncs your contacts and calendars also. It does a great job of keeping spam out too.
the_common_man 9y ago
Rainloop with cloudron is awesome
mindcrash 9y ago
Protonmail: 100% guaranteed E2E encrypted, nice UI, servers based in Switzerland, Android/iOS apps available aswell. Oh, and open source. https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/ As a nice addon they also recently launched a interesting VPN solution. Also headquartered in Switzerland with core infrastructure located in Switzerland and Iceland. No logging, and Tor routing is available with a single mouse click. https://protonvpn.com/ https://protonvpn.com/
reaper7 9y ago
I also have thexyz.com as my email provider, very reliable service and I like how there are unlimited aliases included so I can have someotheremail@thexyz.com or 2news@thexyz.net also sent to my main address.
revanthc 9y ago
Hello, I work for Zoho Mail, so I may be slightly biased here but I would recommend Zoho Mail :). Let me try to convince you about why you should move to Zoho Mail. 1. Privacy - We are a 100% ad-free email service. We always have been and always will be. We don't scan your emails for keywords, we don't show ads, anything. We are 100% committed to maintaining your privacy. 2. Cost - We have a free plan that is free for up to 25 users. Through our referral program, you can get another 25 users absolutely free. That's a total of 50 free users, which is plenty for most small businesses. Our free plan is perfect for that. Above that, our paid plans start at $2/user/month. You can take a look at our pricing here - https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html. 3. Reliability - We have a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Zoho Mail, which is the industry standard. We constantly work on upgrading our infrastructure to maintain that reliability. In the odd event of a downtime, we have contingency plans in place for you to access your email. 4. Features - We are constantly innovating with email, to make it fit into the modern workplace. We've introduced a new feature called Streams, which is perfect for teams and combines slack like real-time collaboration with email. We also have a host of exciting new features for email. 5. Integrations - Zoho Mail is part of 30+ apps from the Zoho family. All our apps are well integrated with each other, and can be used to run your entire business from the ground up. In addition, we are also integrated with 3rd party apps like Dropbox, Asana, Trello, and more. 6. Migration - We make it easy and hassle free for people to migrate their email to Zoho Mail. It is free of cost, and there is absolutely no data loss at all. To begin with, I recommend you try our free plan. All the features of the paid plans are available in Free as well, so you will get a clear picture of what Zoho Mail is. If I can help in any other way, please feel free to reach out to me at revanth@zohomail.com. Thanks!
Everula 9y ago
Just started using Spark https://sparkmailapp.com https://sparkmailapp.com for Mac and iPhone (couples of weeks now) and quite like it, generally overall positive experience and great UI. PS., I am not working in the company, just using couple of their products.
busymichael 9y ago
I have looked around but haven't beat a paid g suite account. I have also coded some custom extensions to Gmail that make it more useful. The most popular one I run is https://dndemail.com https://dndemail.com. It basically adds do not disturb to Gmail.
alansmitheebk 9y ago
I use protonmail (protonmail.com). It's encrypted email developed by the scientists at CERN. The data is hosted in Switzerland and therefore subject to Swiss privacy laws. There are app for iPhone and Android. They just came out with a VPN product, too.
- wheresvic1 9y ago
  The free plan is only limited to 500 Mb though.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    Pay for your email or you are the product.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Email is the most important thing you have online, why wouldn't you pay for it?
- lyonlim 9y ago
  I've been testing ProtonMail for a couple months now in search of a Gmail alternative. What's keeping me from fully switching is support for contacts and calendar syncing as well... That's where I started looking at FastMail.
- wprapido 9y ago
  ahappy protonmail user here, too
  - reacharavindh 9y ago
    Do they support inline images in Email now? Last time I was using it(long ago), neither the web UI, nor the email apps supported drag & drop of images into the compose window..
    - wprapido 9y ago
pbiggar 9y ago
I'm excited by superhuman (https://superhuman.com https://superhuman.com). Alas I haven't got an invite. Also, dunno if they're going to support my style of email use out of the box (I'm strict adherent to the Andreas Klinger style: http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmail-more http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-t...).
- OJFord 9y ago
  > I'm excited by superhuman (https://superhuman.com https://superhuman.com) That looks like any other Electon-based email client that someone decided wasn't cool enough any more...
  - pbiggar 9y ago
    Can you explain? I don't see how you got to that conclusion.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      The first screenshots on the homepage. It looks like every other electron email app (and also messaging app). Also the overuse of the word "brilliant" is quite grating too.
  - ben_romano 9y ago
    I've been using Superhuman for a couple months on and off and I agree that Superhuman visually looks similar to some electron based email clients. However, functionality wise it's quite unique. There is a very strong emphasis on keyboard shortcuts. I never have to use my mouse, which as a frequent vim user is a big plus. The only issue I have with Superhuman right now is that there isn't 100% feature parity with Gmail yet; however, that's quickly improving with each release. Disclaimer: I'm friends with an employee at Superhuman.
nkkollaw 9y ago
Google Inbox is really amazing, it groups email automatically and its spam filter is awesome.
- patrickdavey 9y ago
  I also like Inbox, except that the desktop experience is so utterly woeful.
  - koymas 9y ago
    I use Inbox because I cannot find any other free alternative. It is awesome on the phone....but on the computer it takes forever to load.
- JCzynski 9y ago
  The spam filter is way overzealous. I switched back to unInboxed Gmail after the third time I never got shown an important email and missed an appointment; all three happened within the same month.
tgragnato 9y ago
Tutanota https://tutanota.com https://tutanota.com - https://github.com/tutao/tutanota https://github.com/tutao/tutanota - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutanota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutanota The company is based in Germany and benefits from BDSG.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  They don't support IMAP or even POP3, right?
  - tgragnato 9y ago
    They don't, but apps for iOS and Android are available. These protocols do not guarantee end-to-end encryption, it's been a choice.
    - daenney 9y ago
      The lack of search kills it though for me. Doesn't say anything about that for the premium tier either. But even for a small test run, no search and no IMAP so I can't hook up a search engine myself makes this largely useless to me. Sad though, it looks pretty promising. Aside, IMAP and POP3 can guarantee end-to-end encryption. Since they aren't used to send your messages, just for you to fetch them from your provider, all you need is TLS and we're done. So it could be supported without compromising much of anything from a security perspective, though you'd lose the rest of the encryption features.
- OJFord 9y ago
  No pricing information without signing up for the free tier?
  - tgragnato 9y ago
    https://tutanota.com/pricing https://tutanota.com/pricing
    - 9y ago
reacharavindh 9y ago
Fastmail. Paying $30/yr for my email hosting. Pros: I don't have to worry about my emails being scanned to create a profile of me. I got my <firstname>@fastmail.com which I could not with Gmail. As a paid customer I get support for if/when something is wrong. Has solid Web UI that is minimal and fast. Email client for ios works great. Cons: Not the cool new thing. Setting it up for shared calendar with others was a bit unintuitive. Every now and then someone sends me a Google Doc, and I need to think about how to open it without a Google account. Spam filter is not as good as Google's. A phishing email gets to the inbox every now and then. But, I report them.
- minikites 9y ago
  I've been using Fastmail since 2008 and it's been great ever since. I've submitted a few support requests in my time using the service and they were handled promptly and politely.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  Not getting <firstname>@ shouldn't really be a problem. Everyone should buy their own domain name for email. It's cheap, easy to setup (and natively supported by Fastmail), and it means that you're not locked into one mail provider ever again. Don't be <firstname>@fastmail, be <firstname>@<lastname>.me - or whatever you prefer.
  - mcbruiser3 9y ago
    what about someone social engineering the registrar [1] or hacking the TLD nameservers [2] and getting control of all your accounts using that email? [1] https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-... [2] https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/ https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all...
  - inezk 9y ago
    so like 6 billion domains?
alnitak 9y ago
I have been looking for an alternative to the Google apps ecosystem, to support mailing, calendar, contacts and document editing, but most importantly it should allow me to have "guests" contributors to documents I can share with them. Anybody knows of a company providing such a service?
- the_common_man 9y ago
  Try nextcloud, rainloop, ether* on cloudron
- swsieber 9y ago
  Sandstorm.io? I don't think it would cover everything... but it might work.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I use FastMail for all my mail, calendar, and contacts, and Sandstorm.io for collaborative document work.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sheraz 9y ago
outlook on mobile and web is great. I happily throw my $8/ month at them. My only peeve is the confusing admin tools -- it is still Exchange on the backend, so there are a ton of features and settings that are simply in the way.
dangom 9y ago
I'm really happy with posteo.org 1. Ad-free, bloat-free, 1 Eur / month. 2. Privacy respecting, with clear transparency reports. 3. Support for IMAP/POP3.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Seconded. Happy customer since 3 years here. The only thing that's not nice is that they do not offer Bring-Your-Own-Domain. You can only have a @posteo.tld address (with a certain range of TLD).
rrggrr 9y ago
MIXMAX. It adds many great features to Gmail. Its too expensive, its pushing too hard to integrate with Salesforce, its probably too dependent on Gmail. But, all that said, I really cannot live without it. The founder Olof is a genius.
Sephr 9y ago
Paid Gmail & Inbox (G Suite). Personally, it feels like Google's spam filtering is still superior to the competition, so it would take quite a lot to get me to switch to a new vendor. Not to mention the integrated action buttons that Gmail and Inbox have supported for years. Those buttons are a great productivity enhancement that I have yet to see from most of the competition.
leke 9y ago
It would be great if telegram incorporated email into their system.
cl42 9y ago
THANK YOU EVERYONE! What an amazing set of answers. I'll be exploring a lot of these over the coming weeks.
alkhatib 9y ago
zohomail.com
kureikain 9y ago
I'm using Zoho. I have no issue so far. You can easily register and point your domain to them. Free if you have less than 5 users. You can then configure catch-all email to forward everything to you. Work pretty well on any IMAP/SMTP mail client.
- revanthc 9y ago
  Thanks for recommending Zoho Mail. Appreciate it :) Just want to let you know, however, that we've changed our pricing, and now we are free for 25 users. We have a great referral program as well that lets you earn a further 25 free users, should you need them. https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html
desster 9y ago
Take a look to ox.io, an European safe and secure mail provider. It take 1 to 2 days to get an invite.

49 points by cl42 9y ago

Curious if people use any personal email tools. I like gmail but also realize I haven't looked for an alternative in several years.

crispytx 9y ago

protonmail

carrotam 9y ago

I find thexyz.com a really good alternative they have a $20 per year plan and a $50 that adds more storage and syncs your contacts and calendars also. It does a great job of keeping spam out too.

the_common_man 9y ago

Rainloop with cloudron is awesome

mindcrash 9y ago

Protonmail: 100% guaranteed E2E encrypted, nice UI, servers based in Switzerland, Android/iOS apps available aswell. Oh, and open source. https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/ As a nice addon they also recently launched a interesting VPN solution. Also headquartered in Switzerland with core infrastructure located in Switzerland and Iceland. No logging, and Tor routing is available with a single mouse click. https://protonvpn.com/ https://protonvpn.com/

reaper7 9y ago

I also have thexyz.com as my email provider, very reliable service and I like how there are unlimited aliases included so I can have someotheremail@thexyz.com or 2news@thexyz.net also sent to my main address.

revanthc 9y ago

Hello, I work for Zoho Mail, so I may be slightly biased here but I would recommend Zoho Mail :). Let me try to convince you about why you should move to Zoho Mail. 1. Privacy - We are a 100% ad-free email service. We always have been and always will be. We don't scan your emails for keywords, we don't show ads, anything. We are 100% committed to maintaining your privacy. 2. Cost - We have a free plan that is free for up to 25 users. Through our referral program, you can get another 25 users absolutely free. That's a total of 50 free users, which is plenty for most small businesses. Our free plan is perfect for that. Above that, our paid plans start at $2/user/month. You can take a look at our pricing here - https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html. 3. Reliability - We have a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Zoho Mail, which is the industry standard. We constantly work on upgrading our infrastructure to maintain that reliability. In the odd event of a downtime, we have contingency plans in place for you to access your email. 4. Features - We are constantly innovating with email, to make it fit into the modern workplace. We've introduced a new feature called Streams, which is perfect for teams and combines slack like real-time collaboration with email. We also have a host of exciting new features for email. 5. Integrations - Zoho Mail is part of 30+ apps from the Zoho family. All our apps are well integrated with each other, and can be used to run your entire business from the ground up. In addition, we are also integrated with 3rd party apps like Dropbox, Asana, Trello, and more. 6. Migration - We make it easy and hassle free for people to migrate their email to Zoho Mail. It is free of cost, and there is absolutely no data loss at all. To begin with, I recommend you try our free plan. All the features of the paid plans are available in Free as well, so you will get a clear picture of what Zoho Mail is. If I can help in any other way, please feel free to reach out to me at revanth@zohomail.com. Thanks!

Everula 9y ago

Just started using Spark https://sparkmailapp.com https://sparkmailapp.com for Mac and iPhone (couples of weeks now) and quite like it, generally overall positive experience and great UI. PS., I am not working in the company, just using couple of their products.

busymichael 9y ago

I have looked around but haven't beat a paid g suite account. I have also coded some custom extensions to Gmail that make it more useful. The most popular one I run is https://dndemail.com https://dndemail.com. It basically adds do not disturb to Gmail.

alansmitheebk 9y ago

I use protonmail (protonmail.com). It's encrypted email developed by the scientists at CERN. The data is hosted in Switzerland and therefore subject to Swiss privacy laws. There are app for iPhone and Android. They just came out with a VPN product, too.

wheresvic1 9y ago
The free plan is only limited to 500 Mb though.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  Pay for your email or you are the product.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Email is the most important thing you have online, why wouldn't you pay for it?
lyonlim 9y ago
I've been testing ProtonMail for a couple months now in search of a Gmail alternative. What's keeping me from fully switching is support for contacts and calendar syncing as well... That's where I started looking at FastMail.
wprapido 9y ago
ahappy protonmail user here, too
- reacharavindh 9y ago
  Do they support inline images in Email now? Last time I was using it(long ago), neither the web UI, nor the email apps supported drag & drop of images into the compose window..
  - wprapido 9y ago

pbiggar 9y ago

I'm excited by superhuman (https://superhuman.com https://superhuman.com). Alas I haven't got an invite. Also, dunno if they're going to support my style of email use out of the box (I'm strict adherent to the Andreas Klinger style: http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmail-more http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-t...).

OJFord 9y ago
> I'm excited by superhuman (https://superhuman.com https://superhuman.com) That looks like any other Electon-based email client that someone decided wasn't cool enough any more...
- pbiggar 9y ago
  Can you explain? I don't see how you got to that conclusion.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    The first screenshots on the homepage. It looks like every other electron email app (and also messaging app). Also the overuse of the word "brilliant" is quite grating too.
- ben_romano 9y ago
  I've been using Superhuman for a couple months on and off and I agree that Superhuman visually looks similar to some electron based email clients. However, functionality wise it's quite unique. There is a very strong emphasis on keyboard shortcuts. I never have to use my mouse, which as a frequent vim user is a big plus. The only issue I have with Superhuman right now is that there isn't 100% feature parity with Gmail yet; however, that's quickly improving with each release. Disclaimer: I'm friends with an employee at Superhuman.

nkkollaw 9y ago

Google Inbox is really amazing, it groups email automatically and its spam filter is awesome.

patrickdavey 9y ago
I also like Inbox, except that the desktop experience is so utterly woeful.
- koymas 9y ago
  I use Inbox because I cannot find any other free alternative. It is awesome on the phone....but on the computer it takes forever to load.
JCzynski 9y ago
The spam filter is way overzealous. I switched back to unInboxed Gmail after the third time I never got shown an important email and missed an appointment; all three happened within the same month.

tgragnato 9y ago

Tutanota https://tutanota.com https://tutanota.com - https://github.com/tutao/tutanota https://github.com/tutao/tutanota - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutanota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutanota The company is based in Germany and benefits from BDSG.

LeoPanthera 9y ago
They don't support IMAP or even POP3, right?
- tgragnato 9y ago
  They don't, but apps for iOS and Android are available. These protocols do not guarantee end-to-end encryption, it's been a choice.
  - daenney 9y ago
    The lack of search kills it though for me. Doesn't say anything about that for the premium tier either. But even for a small test run, no search and no IMAP so I can't hook up a search engine myself makes this largely useless to me. Sad though, it looks pretty promising. Aside, IMAP and POP3 can guarantee end-to-end encryption. Since they aren't used to send your messages, just for you to fetch them from your provider, all you need is TLS and we're done. So it could be supported without compromising much of anything from a security perspective, though you'd lose the rest of the encryption features.
OJFord 9y ago
No pricing information without signing up for the free tier?
- tgragnato 9y ago
  https://tutanota.com/pricing https://tutanota.com/pricing
  - 9y ago

reacharavindh 9y ago

Fastmail. Paying $30/yr for my email hosting. Pros: I don't have to worry about my emails being scanned to create a profile of me. I got my <firstname>@fastmail.com which I could not with Gmail. As a paid customer I get support for if/when something is wrong. Has solid Web UI that is minimal and fast. Email client for ios works great. Cons: Not the cool new thing. Setting it up for shared calendar with others was a bit unintuitive. Every now and then someone sends me a Google Doc, and I need to think about how to open it without a Google account. Spam filter is not as good as Google's. A phishing email gets to the inbox every now and then. But, I report them.

minikites 9y ago
I've been using Fastmail since 2008 and it's been great ever since. I've submitted a few support requests in my time using the service and they were handled promptly and politely.
LeoPanthera 9y ago
Not getting <firstname>@ shouldn't really be a problem. Everyone should buy their own domain name for email. It's cheap, easy to setup (and natively supported by Fastmail), and it means that you're not locked into one mail provider ever again. Don't be <firstname>@fastmail, be <firstname>@<lastname>.me - or whatever you prefer.
- mcbruiser3 9y ago
  what about someone social engineering the registrar [1] or hacking the TLD nameservers [2] and getting control of all your accounts using that email? [1] https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-24eb09e026dd https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-... [2] https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/ https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all...
- inezk 9y ago
  so like 6 billion domains?

alnitak 9y ago

I have been looking for an alternative to the Google apps ecosystem, to support mailing, calendar, contacts and document editing, but most importantly it should allow me to have "guests" contributors to documents I can share with them. Anybody knows of a company providing such a service?

the_common_man 9y ago
Try nextcloud, rainloop, ether* on cloudron
swsieber 9y ago
Sandstorm.io? I don't think it would cover everything... but it might work.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I use FastMail for all my mail, calendar, and contacts, and Sandstorm.io for collaborative document work.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sheraz 9y ago

outlook on mobile and web is great. I happily throw my $8/ month at them. My only peeve is the confusing admin tools -- it is still Exchange on the backend, so there are a ton of features and settings that are simply in the way.

dangom 9y ago

I'm really happy with posteo.org 1. Ad-free, bloat-free, 1 Eur / month. 2. Privacy respecting, with clear transparency reports. 3. Support for IMAP/POP3.

majewsky 9y ago
Seconded. Happy customer since 3 years here. The only thing that's not nice is that they do not offer Bring-Your-Own-Domain. You can only have a @posteo.tld address (with a certain range of TLD).

rrggrr 9y ago

MIXMAX. It adds many great features to Gmail. Its too expensive, its pushing too hard to integrate with Salesforce, its probably too dependent on Gmail. But, all that said, I really cannot live without it. The founder Olof is a genius.

Sephr 9y ago

Paid Gmail & Inbox (G Suite). Personally, it feels like Google's spam filtering is still superior to the competition, so it would take quite a lot to get me to switch to a new vendor. Not to mention the integrated action buttons that Gmail and Inbox have supported for years. Those buttons are a great productivity enhancement that I have yet to see from most of the competition.

leke 9y ago

It would be great if telegram incorporated email into their system.

cl42 9y ago

THANK YOU EVERYONE! What an amazing set of answers. I'll be exploring a lot of these over the coming weeks.

alkhatib 9y ago

zohomail.com

kureikain 9y ago

I'm using Zoho. I have no issue so far. You can easily register and point your domain to them. Free if you have less than 5 users. You can then configure catch-all email to forward everything to you. Work pretty well on any IMAP/SMTP mail client.

revanthc 9y ago
Thanks for recommending Zoho Mail. Appreciate it :) Just want to let you know, however, that we've changed our pricing, and now we are free for 25 users. We have a great referral program as well that lets you earn a further 25 free users, should you need them. https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html

desster 9y ago

Take a look to ox.io, an European safe and secure mail provider. It take 1 to 2 days to get an invite.