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It's great that Dovecot + Postfix + Roundcube + Managesieve + SpamAssassin works for you, but not everyone wants to take that path (or knows how to). $50/year i

It's great that Dovecot + Postfix + Roundcube + Managesieve + SpamAssassin works for you, but not everyone wants to take that path (or knows how to). $50/year is worth it for some people not to have to diagnose Roundcube issues. I think Gmail does hit a sweet spot for most power emailers. It took months for me to switch from my previous custom mutt + .procmail setup to Gmail. Do I still miss procmail sometimes? Sure. But overall, I save a ton of time using Gmail instead of rolling my own email solution.

thaumaturgy 16y ago
All of that is completely understandable, but -- unless they've changed recently -- Gmail's filtering is really pretty far behind from what it could be, and Gmail's interface is -- for me, and the clients I support -- a frequent source of complaints. That's not to say it's bad, but rather that -- given Google's size and the ridiculous amount of smarts on its payroll -- it could be a lot better. It just doesn't seem to be what Google is focusing on these days. I'll grant though that Gmail has, hands-down, the very best spam filtering in existence. I really don't know how you guys do that. But ... just to put things in perspective, I think that's the only killer feature that Gmail has left. Otherwise, it's pretty vulnerable; any service provider could launch the same setup I have, on the really cheap VPS services available these days, and readily compete with Google's business mail hosting.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  I tend to agree with you on filtering--I want the ability to filter on headers, for example. See http://www.google.com/buzz/109412257237874861202/Tu7U17YACA8/Heres-another-start-up-idea-Jeff-Jarvis-recently http://www.google.com/buzz/109412257237874861202/Tu7U17YACA8... where I made the argument that a startup could use Gmail OAuth to do filtering better than Gmail itself. But I do think that Gmail Labs is pretty hard to beat. Labs like "Send and Archive," "Undo Send," and "Quick Links" save my bacon on a pretty regular basis.

thaumaturgy 16y ago

All of that is completely understandable, but -- unless they've changed recently -- Gmail's filtering is really pretty far behind from what it could be, and Gmail's interface is -- for me, and the clients I support -- a frequent source of complaints. That's not to say it's bad, but rather that -- given Google's size and the ridiculous amount of smarts on its payroll -- it could be a lot better. It just doesn't seem to be what Google is focusing on these days. I'll grant though that Gmail has, hands-down, the very best spam filtering in existence. I really don't know how you guys do that. But ... just to put things in perspective, I think that's the only killer feature that Gmail has left. Otherwise, it's pretty vulnerable; any service provider could launch the same setup I have, on the really cheap VPS services available these days, and readily compete with Google's business mail hosting.

Matt_Cutts 16y ago
I tend to agree with you on filtering--I want the ability to filter on headers, for example. See http://www.google.com/buzz/109412257237874861202/Tu7U17YACA8/Heres-another-start-up-idea-Jeff-Jarvis-recently http://www.google.com/buzz/109412257237874861202/Tu7U17YACA8... where I made the argument that a startup could use Gmail OAuth to do filtering better than Gmail itself. But I do think that Gmail Labs is pretty hard to beat. Labs like "Send and Archive," "Undo Send," and "Quick Links" save my bacon on a pretty regular basis.