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Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?
With the recent thread on privacy in Chrome, I'm thinking of switching off Gmail. What email service is best for privacy? Or if you self-host, what email client do you like best?
- wchris 8y agoCheck protonmail.com and tutanota.de as alternatives
- ufo 8y agoIt is worth noting that these don't support IMAP and Contacts/Calendar like most email services do. (They say that it has to do with how they handle their encryption)
- achamayou 8y agoProtonMail does have an IMAP bridge you can setup locally.
- cerberusss 8y agoThanks for noting that. Strictly speaking, email doesn't include contacts and calendaring, but it completely slipped my mind and I had already shortlisted Tutanota.
- kashosoft 8y agoCheck protonmail.com
- RandomGuyDTB 8y agoProtonMail. Definitely ProtonMail. You can live off it for free as long as you delete old stuff but paying better for I think $5 a month (maybe more or less). Free is perfectly adequate for me personally though, I made the switch a couple months ago and haven't looked back. Might wanna set up auto forwarding though: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en
- greenyoda 8y agoI've been very happy with Fastmail.
- r3n 8y agoAnother happy customer of Fastmail here, and these are my opinions why you should give it a try: 1. They often express their opinions on topics like security and privacy. Like how things impact their users, where they stand, and how they plan to do. As a user I am happy to see a company actively talk about hard topics like these. 2. While they are not the most stable software service I ever use, but they always provide timely update. They also write postmortem to explain what happened technically, what did they do, and their future plans. As a developer, I am appreciated when a software company spent extra effort to acknowledge and explain issues of their service. 3. Their business model is simple. I pay money, they provide service.
- lamlam 8y agoI like fastmail personally because aside from being a fast experience, I like their well written guides and articles. It helps me set stuff up without feeling like I'm just following instructions and helps me understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
- wild_preference 8y agoI can't recommend them because they recycle email addresses when you stop paying for them. Not really something I can take seriously. They should just hold your email hostage until you start paying them again. Instead, they leave money on the table and create an amateur security failure.
- newscracker 8y agoOn this matter, Runbox is clear that it will not release/recycle the email address ever. Posteo, which I like and use, has a policy of recycling addresses after six months, which is quite harmful.
- brongondwana 8y agoWe do have plans to stop recycling email addresses quite so quickly. Having said that, if you have your own domain (recommended by most people so you can move providers) you also don't get the namespace reserved forever if you stop paying. Domains get recycled too.
- technion 8y agoI purchase Office through Office 365, so Exchange Online is just about free at that point. It runs a lot of the enterprise and I think it's been quite underrated in a lot of the Gmail discussions here.
- kerng 8y agoI still have a hotmail account from like 20 years ago and like it. Good thing is you can convert it to an @outlook.com alias if wanted, as that might look cooler. But I don't mind the hotmail name. Who knows, maybe one day it might be cool again. I pretty much skipped gmail entirely because of the personalized ad business. I also have a protonmail account which is good, but am not using it as much.
- h1d 8y agoI had one of their email account but after chaning my Skype profile, it somehow released it and had to register @outlook.com address and I had no way of getting back the old address which made a few web accounts inaccessible including Google which asked me to check my email for accessing it from a new device. All previous emails are inaccessible too. Unbelievable.
- peatmoss 8y agoMost important thing is to buy a domain so you can port your email address from provider to provider. I’ve had the same email address and several hosts over the years. I’m currently on Fastmail and find the service good.
- chuckcode 8y ago+1 nice having your own domain so you can port to different providers. Used fastmail for a few years and it is fine although their android app isn't great and hangs a fair bit needing to be restarted.
- vvanders 8y agoAnother vote for fastmail. They even do a pretty decent job being a DNS host as well. Simple setup to add subdomains if you're already using them as your primary/sec NS.
- misframer 8y agoTheir static file hosting is great too. Automatic Let’s Encrypt support!
- ar7hur 8y ago+1 for Fastmail with my own domain, I've used it for 4 years.
- fvargas 8y agoFastmail has worked well for me with custom domains. It's nice being able to create custom aliases for when an address is publicly visible e.g. GitHub so I know through what funnel emails are coming from. Like others have said, the Android app is not worth installing unless you're okay with limited and, in some cases, poor functionality. I suppose you can set it up with the Gmail or Outlook Android apps? I've never tried, as this defeats the purpose of not having those companies as your email provider :) Still searching for a good Android mail app...
- walkingolof 8y agoFastmail have worked great for me and my family, mail, calendar and contacts just like gmail.
- ivanfon 8y agoI use Thunderbird on desktop and K9-Mail on Android.
- witten 8y agoSame. But what do you use for the mail server?
- Endy 8y agoThat doesn't actually provide an alternative, those are just clients.
- jarvuschris 8y agoThere are tons of options for mail server if you can find a client UI you're happy with over Gmail's web UI (or Inbox's :'( ). IMO that's the hardest piece to replace, and I'm still not happy with any alternative
- niftylettuce 8y agohttps://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net if you are just forwarding domain aliases and want to switch off
- tslothrop 8y agoI switched from Gmail too a few months ago, setting up my own domain as well. I went with Mailfence, it's slightly cheaper than proton mail (€2.50 per month, but there's also a free tier), and still privacy focused. I think a few things could be improved (no catch all email address available, for example), but for that price I don't think I can complain. Edit: forgot to add that I used this website to compare different email providers: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/email-section/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/email-section/
- magtux 8y agoI went with Outlook 365. I've been using it for the last 2 years at my office and really like the rules options. It's been really pleasant and the Office web compatibility is nice.
- whitepoplar 8y agoI'd love to switch away from Gmail, but its security is so compelling that, afaik, nobody else comes close. How many other companies have Tavis Ormandy's on staff to do security audits for their users, let alone free users? Is there a single other email provider that gets security right to the extent Google does?
- Aeolun 8y agoWell, you could argue that your mail is safe from everyone except one. I’m not really sure if Google is more likely to fuck me over than any external actor, but it doesn’t feel right.
- brycehamrick 8y agoYeah I completely agree this is something that needs consideration. I do have an email address with my own domain but for security reasons any accounts I create are tied to my gmail address. I've known too many people who have had personal domain email addresses intercepted, particularly through compromised domain/DNS settings. One simple MX record adjustment could mean every single bank account, social media profile, etc. all can be taken over.
- h1d 8y ago> One simple MX record adjustment Not sure if it's simple but how do you intend to protect against DNS record hacks?
- Brian_K_White 8y agogoogle does the protecting against dns record attacks on gmail.com "How?" is not the unanswerable question for them and for that domain, that it is for you & me and you&me.com
- eikenberry 8y agoHow does using gmail address compromised DNS? I mean if they compromise your DNS it doesn't matter who is hosting your email, they just point the MX at a different service.
- Bud 8y agoIf you have your own domain, and self-host or have a small reliable provider host for you, client doesn't matter so much. You can pick your mix of clients for various devices. This is how I've done it for over 20 years now.
- yodon 8y agoOutlook.com (free) and Office365 (a few $/month/user on your own domain) are both great options. I personally much prefer both the web client and the various app clients to gmail's equivalents.
- kayoone 8y agoi doubt that MS is an improvement over Google when it comes to privacy concerns.
- snr 8y agoMSFT doesn't read your email to target you with ads.
- lvillani 8y agoAFAIK Google doesn't do that anymore. Source: https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-tractio...
- akvadrako 8y agoThat does say they don't read your email for ad personalisation, but it doesn't say they don't read your email. Reading your email for data gathering is their entire business model so if they don't explicitly say they don't, you should assume they do.
- icebraining 8y agoTheir business model is reading your email for ad personalization. How else would they make money from reading it?
- akvadrako 8y agoMarketing research.
- BlindRabbit 8y agohttps://www.migadu.com/ https://www.migadu.com/
- newscracker 8y agoSince yours is a new account here, I have to ask. Are you part of the team there or are you just a user? How’s the support? Whenever I, as a non-customer, contacted Migadu, it seemed like nobody read the emails. I also find the pricing logic a bit like it’s too good to be true, and am wary of providers who cannot sustain themselves.
- Schnouki 8y agoI'm just a user and I'm pretty happy with Migadu as well. I only contacted them once, and got a reply within a few hours. And a real reply, with technical details, written by someone who obviously understood the question very well. The webmail is really basic though: it's basically Rainloop (https://www.rainloop.net/ https://www.rainloop.net/) without any plugin.
- rookwood102 8y agoI like the way that you can have regex based email address filters, so for example you could have name.youtube.com@example.com forwarding to name's inbox, this is similar to gmail's "+" feature.
- rgovostes 8y agoI'd like to switch to Fastmail, but I have a handful of seldom-used secondary accounts (e.g., for family members), and it doesn't make sense to pay $5/mo/each when they're free on G Suite. Their pricing structure is designed for organizations or single users, but somehow my use case falls in between. It seems a bit off that my household can stream as many movies as we want for $11/mo, or have unlimited access to an enormous music catalog for $15/mo, but e-mail service costs more. ProtonMail looks about the same, actually more expensive, though they have a more attractive $30/mo plan for 6 users that it includes VPN access.
- BlindRabbit 8y agoI had the exact same problem. Then I found https://www.migadu.com/ https://www.migadu.com/ "Have as many email addresses on as many domains you need, anytime. No extra costs. All your projects, ideas, employees, family members and IoT devices are welcome. Pets too. Migadu is a radically different, independent email hosting from Switzerland. We do not count your domains, mailboxes, gigabytes or teeth."
- eikenberry 8y agoFirst I've heard of these guys but it looks like a great deal. It looks almost to good to be true for a family.
- bluehatbrit 8y agoI'd highly recommend it, I've been a customer for about 2 years now I think. As per my comment above, I've found them to be rock solid so far. I also can't speak highly enough of their customer service either.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoI'm just browsing their website and it seems a bit too good to be true... The only drawback I see are daily sending limits (which I'm very happy with).
- taterbase 8y agoCheck out https://posteo.de/en https://posteo.de/en. 12EUR/yr and comes recommended by the fsf[1]. [1]https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems
- Endy 8y agoI'm the weird one, I use Yahoo.
- tajen 8y agoHave you searched for a job recently? Doesn’t that prejudice you? Half joking only...
- pedrogpimenta 8y agoI'm super happy with mailbox.org, it has a feature that I've never seen in other place which is disposable addresses so that you can make accounts wherever you want without fear of spam! You just deactivate that email when you want or it will expire in 30 days.
- soufron 8y agoBuy a domain and use Thunderbird, or another email software!
- the_svd_doctor 8y agoYou still need a mail server no ... ?
- ulrikrasmussen 8y agoRegardless of which provider you choose, consider getting your own domain name. Then your email address its not linked to the provider, and you can easily change again in the future.
- woolvalley 8y agoThe hardest part is changing the email addresses for all of your accounts. Good opportunity to adopt a password manager and make your passwords strong.
- newscracker 8y agoI found that what’s even harder is dealing with commercial entities who can’t propagate the email address change throughout all their systems. So don’t release your existing accounts soon.
- newscracker 8y agoMy recommendation is posteo.de. It’s a lot cheaper than Fastmail if you need multiple mailboxes. Browse through the site and read through the company’s values. A bonus is its focus on being better for the environment. One point to note about Posteo is that it doesn’t allow custom domains (but there are plenty of Posteo domains to choose from). I don’t see this as a disadvantage for my use though. Other recommendations are Runbox and mailbox.org, both being near the price of Posteo while also allowing custom domains for certain plans. Posteo, Runbox and Mailbox.org provide IMAP support. So you’re not stuck with the provider if you want to move your mails out (unlike ProtonMail, which has an IMAP bridge only for paid accounts and is a bit more cumbersome to install/use than the alternative of just picking any email client of your preference).
- splittingTimes 8y agoI second posteo. Happy customer. Also, you can stay anonymous as a user, as you can pay the yearly fee of 12 Euros in cash via postal mail.
- mikeloden 8y agohttps://protonmail.com https://protonmail.com privacy first https://posteo.de/en https://posteo.de/en secure and green https://dismail.de/serverlist.html https://dismail.de/serverlist.html
- JoeyTawadrous 8y agoI'm so devastated that Google Inbox is closing down, I decided to recreate it! Feature for feature. https://inboxzeroemail.com https://inboxzeroemail.com I simply cannot go back to using Gmail
- alphabettsy 8y agoFastmail
- crispinb 8y agoI've just gone the other way. Having recently moved from macOS to Windows, I couldn't find a single mail client that I am willing to use daily. I'm now forwarding my hosted IMAP to a gmail account, simply in order to use the gmail web client. I do admit this is kind of sad.
- earenndil 8y agoClaws mail? Thunderbird? Outlook? Mailinabox? None of those work?
- crispinb 8y agoNever heard of Mailinabox, and I don't want to buy or subscribe to Office (AFAIK the only way to get Outlook). I've tried the others you mention, as well as a bunch of alternatives. Windows software in general is much poorer than that available for macOS, and this seems particularly true of mail clients. The built-in UWP one is particularly hilarious (does Microsoft really think anyone will use it?)
- rajaganesh87 8y agoProtonmail.ch
- dewey 8y agoThere are so many threads like this and the answers usually boil down to the self hosting group and the other group who believes that paying someone to do the job is the right thing to do. I’m in the latter group and always recommend Fastmail. I migrated all of my families accounts there with multiple domains and couldn’t be happier. For something I use hours every day it’s well worth paying someone to keep it secure and online.
- bamboozled 8y agoFastmail has been also flawless for me since signing up. Highly recommended.
- charmides 8y agoI think paid email services are a great idea, but $50 a year and 2 GB of storage for Fastmail seems expensive to me. Why not something closer to five or ten bucks a year? Can someone explain to me why this type of pricing makes sense?
- onion2k 8y agoPricing 101: Price has nothing to do with the cost of providing the service, and everything to do with the value the customer puts on what they're buying. The value you put on email is $10/year, so Fastmail doesn't represent good value. Other people obviously think its worth more. Fastmail are providing their service to those people.
- charmides 8y agoI need to respectfully disagree with you here. In a free market, pricing does have something to do with the cost of providing a service because companies that overcharge would quickly lose market share to competitors, especially in a wildly competitive space like email. Also, ten bucks a year has nothing to do with how much I'd personally be willing to pay for email. It is just my estimation of the amount you could charge people while still keeping healthy profit margins in this industry, however I don't have much domain knowledge regarding email and that figure could be very wrong. I'd love to hear from an expert.
- mychael 8y agoFastmail and ProtonMail
- Annatar 8y agoWhich service is best? The one you roll out on your own, in your rack, on your own servers in the basement. Unfortunately, configuring a complete end-to-end e-mail solution in 2018 is an incredibly complex affair. The hardest part is the SPAM filtering. On the command line, I use pine with the maildir patch; in the browser, I recommend the open source version of "eGroupware", a complete replacement for Microsoft Outlook: https://github.com/EGroupware/egroupware/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/EGroupware/egroupware/blob/master/README.... https://www.egroupware.org/ https://www.egroupware.org/
- lifeformed 8y agoIs there a good turnkey solution for this, and other services? I mean not with my own physical servers, but I'd pay to have an image with mail all set up and other services, like remote storage, etc, all ready to go and plop it on ec2 or something.
- Annatar 8y agoNo idea about Amazon or Azure ready images.
- joshbode 8y agoCan definitely recommend FastMail - I migrated from Gmail around 4 years ago and haven't looked back It has a clean, powerful UI with good shortcuts. DNS management and basic site hosting (with automatic Let's Encrypt support), great calendar and contacts support. Had some problems with some senders getting rate limited a while back, but worked with support to get it fixed up.
- jayalpha 8y agoGet your own domain at Gandi. Free Email included. Or buy a domain and Email as a service here: http://infomaniak.com/ http://infomaniak.com/ If you are disappointed about the search capabilities of Thunderbird, install recoll for search
- ngrilly 8y agoI love Gandi, but their email service is still unable to sign outgoing emails with DKIM, which is almost mandatory nowadays to avoid being flagged as spam.
- walkingolof 8y agoI saw that too, but they add the following on their FAQ page `If you use Gandi’s DNS however, you are free to add the TXT zone file record needed to add the necessary “_domainkey” TXT entry for your domain. You would then need to see with your outgoing email provider concerning the configuration of their mail server for the service.` source: https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/faq/index.html https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/faq/index.html
- ngrilly 8y agoYes, this answer has been there for a long time. But it doesn't solve the issue.
- simias 8y agoMy company uses Gandi for email and I don't think I'd recommend them. They often have outages and as ngrilly points out they don't implement all the best practices when it comes to anti-spam. I don't have a lot of experience with competing services (I self-host myself) but surely there are better alternatives out there.
- ezhik_ 8y agoIf you need strong privacy, then go to ProtonMail. Otherwise, try https://yandex.com https://yandex.com. For personal domains you can use https://connect.yandex.com https://connect.yandex.com, which is free (with ads) for unlimited users or $3 per user per month (available in several countries) without ads. I've been using Yandex Connect for quite long time (free and paid). They are very good. Yandex Connect goes with Email (fully unlimited), Cloud Storage, Wiki and Simple Messenger. There is also an option to control domain's DNS, but it's optional.
- samat 8y agoBe careful, Russian secret services have an official access to all communication on their servers. If your threat model includes bad actors from Russia — it's a no go.
- iillexial 8y agoYandex is a Russian mail-service. I wouldn't trust them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13274443 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13274443
- ezhik_ 8y agoLet's be honest: Any company must comply with local authorities in any country they work in. I'm pretty sure, that we can find such article about any major US based service and FBI/NSA/etc, for example. Same for major services from Europe. Because of this I pointed to ProtonMail before going further. By the way, this article is about "Yandex's online payment service" (this service can be compared to PayPal), which is owned by Yandex only for 25%, other 75% is being owned by the biggest bank in Russia, which is owned by governance (just to clarify: Yandex is not).
- mantas 8y agoUS companies, in worst case, comply with democratic authorities. The whole separation of powers thing in US seem to work pretty well. Also, Yandex's founder did make it to anti-Putin-sphere personal sanctions list..
- voidr 8y agoYandex mail is free and you can get it to work with your custom domain.
- IBLEtech 8y agoDo not just consider Google to release your data like that. The news may be broadcast that third parties will have access to your data now. Google had always been keeping data for long. Switching to another platform may not be the best because those ones too never secure data. Then why should switch, except you have another aim of switching.
- negutron 8y agofree version of protonmail works for me but it's extremely slow also, it's switzerland and I don't trust switzerland because they have a long history of protecting both corrupt govs and criminals alike with 'anonymoyus banking' That may not exist anymore, but the criminal networks have already won, and that's switzerlands fault also it's where the cia and post-nazis store their money (coincidence? I think not) Eventually some madman like myself is going to come to power and the first thing they'll do if they are smart is to Nuke switzlerand. No one will see that coming
- chrisper 8y agoIt appears you need a reality check...
- nik1aa5 8y agoI administer all my domains on eurodns.com. They offer a decent service for a good price. Bonus: They use open-xchange as their mail backend, so you profit from a great web client. An account with 10GB for mail plus 10GB for cloud storage with unlimited aliases costs about 3€ per month. I mainly use their service for family mail. The only downside is that passwords of mail accounts cannot be changed individually in the web client i.e., I -- who has the account at eurodns -- as administrator have to set the passwords. I'm not affiliated with them. While the solution is not perfect, pricing is OK and domain service provider plus email hosting is done in the EU, which is the most important point for me.
- molteanu 8y agoFastmail
- lvillani 8y agoFastMail. It's one of the few third party hosts to support push email on iOS with the native Mail app (it's a custom protocol based on APNS), since Mail doesn't implement IMAP IDLE [1]. They are also the main sponsors behind the JMAP protocol [2] and some open source projects such as the Cyrus IMAP server. [1]: https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-push/#iosmail https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when-we-... [2]: https://jmap.io https://jmap.io
- FuckOffNeemo 8y agoFastMail IMO are one of the best email providers, by far. Their web GUI is fantastic and support teams are responsive and well versed.
- spondyl 8y agoIt's surprisingly responsive for large email accounts too. I had ~100K emails imported and marking all as read would take about 10 seconds. I can't complain with that all things considered.
- EdJiang 8y agoI’ve been using Fastmail for my personal email for the past four years, and love it. Really reliable, fast, and allows me to keep a personal email without all of the Google Apps stuff.
- nvmr 8y agoSwitched to Fastmail many years ago when self hosting became too time consuming for me. Never looked back. I had to use their support only very occasionally and even then their reaction time and competence were outstanding. They do just one thing - email - and do that very, very well.
- darekkay 8y agoThey do another thing: calendar. And I find it at least as good as Sunrise Calendar was before Microsoft shut it down.
- vinc 8y agoI use Mail-in-a-Box on my own server. It's free, open source, and well maintained. [1]: https://mailinabox.email https://mailinabox.email
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoI set this up for a client a while back and it was a very painless experience. They've been happily using it for a few years now with no complaints. (usually I sign people up with GSuite and roll it into the hosting charges but this client was very insistent on it being self hosted)
- tibu 8y agoOwn server with https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/. I don't use it but some friends use it successfully for years
- rajuvegesna 8y agoZoho Mail is a strong option. Comes with mobile apps, supports all standard protocols (IMAP/POP/ActiveSync), includes Calendar and many other modules. Zero tracking. Zero ads. Beyond Mail, Zoho offers several apps that can replace most of what Google offers. From Docs to office suite, note-taking to chat and many more. (Disclosure: I am with Zoho)
- wheresvic1 8y agoI can also second Zoho. It's primary target is small business and they have a massive suite of features but I'm just using their email and calendar. Their web interface is a bit annoying as you need to make a couple of clicks to get to the email but they provide mobile apps as well as IMAP access. So far I have not had any issues so I cannot say what their support is like.
- luchosrock 8y agoNot anymore :( They dropped IMAP and POP support for the free tier on new domains. They are part of the $2/user/month tier now
- have_faith 8y agoI will add that we use Zoho at work and have issues with emails about weekly. Their web interfaces are not very well designed although they do work OK.
- dotdi 8y ago+1 for Zoho. I use their completely free service for all my custom domains and I find the webmail pretty good. The web applications, in general, are pretty actively maintained, with new features every few months. Only had one bigger issue over the years and they resolved it within 24 hours. They also have a native dark theme on webmail that is pretty decent.
- maltalex 8y agoZoho is great for two more reasons: 1. Their free offering comes with support for custom domains, which is pretty unique. 2. There's Zoho.com and Zoho.eu. You can open your account on Zoho.eu if you prefer having your email hosted in the EU.
- pokstad 8y agoiCloud: free, no ads, privacy minded and push email in iOS
- lprd 8y agoI've been with Zoho Mail for a few months now and have had a great experience with them so far! Great security features, calendar support, as well as DNS management. I've also heard good things about FastMail and Proton mail. Compare and find out which service best suites your needs/budget. https://www.zoho.com/mail/?zmc=zoho-fa https://www.zoho.com/mail/?zmc=zoho-fa
- xpil 8y agoSame here! I moved my company email from google apps to Zoho a couple of months ago, and I'm not coming back. Reasonable pricing, plenty of features, quick (and human!) responses to support tickets. Will do the same with personal email soon.
- 11235813213455 8y agoProton Mail uses angular1 though https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient, pretty old
- simfoo 8y agoPosteo [1] They are based in Germany, are very privacy conscious (anonymous payments and registration) and offer full encryption support. With k9mail as mobile app I've been very happy so far [1]: https://posteo.de/en https://posteo.de/en
- Leace 8y agoI had contact with Posteo support and can confirm they are very helpful.
- bambataa 8y agoI use mailbox.org. It’s sligtly cheaper than FastMail but there’s probably not much in it. It’s been a good service so far. I have no complaints.
- fuzzy2 8y agoTried that. However, because they refuse to let their spam filter look at mail contents, it’s worthless. Other than that, it’s acceptable and custom domains are possible, too. Many of my mail addresses have been around for decades and receive substantial amounts of spam. Google correctly deals with that. Mailbox.org does not. In fact, during the week I experimented with it, their filter didn’t clear away a single spam mail.
- Accacin 8y agoI'd like to add I've been using Mailbox.org for about two years now and haven't personally had a problem with spam, although I actually didn't know they had a policy to not look at the content of the email.
- bambataa 8y agoI've not had a spam problem with them, but I did set up a new domain at the same time so the addresses I'm using have only been around a year or so.
- non-nil 8y agoAnother happy user here, but I think they deserve much more credit than simply being a cheap offer. They're big on both security and privacy (you can even sign up anonymously and send them cash through the mail), have some pretty cool PGP features, they strip the IP address from outgoing mail (underrated feature) AND they run a fairly updated XMPP server along with a Tor exit. For €1 a month you get 2GB of storage, 3 aliases (includes catch-all for custom domains), CalDAV/CardDAV sync, along with 100MB WebDAV storage for their office suite (which I've admittedly never used.) Good service, great price, pretty cool company. More people should check them out.
- sufyanadam 8y agohttps://sealmail.net https://sealmail.net is pretty good. I've used it for a couple years without any issues. It's imap based and I hear they're working on a web client.
- intothemild 8y agoWhat is with everyone here recommending Yandex? It's not secure and its not private https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13274443 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13274443 Don't use Yandex!
- ezhik_ 8y agoPlease, read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055514
- psergeant 8y agoYour comment says — essentially — “every email company shares with their host country”. If I take that at face value, I would take the USs and Australia’s rule of law and due process and concern for my privacy many many times over Russia’s current government’s.
- throwaway9d0291 8y agoAs a non-American: > I would take the USs [...] rule of law and due process and concern for my privacy many many times over Russia’s current government’s. I find this somewhat laughable given that we already have solid proof (Snowden) that not only does the US slurp up emails en-masse but it considers non-citizens to have zero privacy rights (this fun EO: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/new_rules_on_da.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/01/new_rules_on_...). The reason Russia is less of a problem is that even if I give Russia all my email, it has an order of magnitude less data because it doesn't have access to data from Facebook, Google, Twitter and the like like the US does. It also has less power over my life. I have investments in US securities that could theoretically be taken from me if the US government wished. Russia has no power over me.
- jxbo 8y agoIf you are willing to run your own, have a look at. https://poste.io/ https://poste.io/ I'm currently evaluating and running this myself for about 2 Months now. Really working great so far. The guys have very quick response to error reporting. Everything run via docker on a aws small instance. An completely free version could also be: https://mailu.io/ https://mailu.io/
- roydivision 8y agoI’ve been using https://runbox.com https://runbox.com with my own domain for 5 years now, and have only good things to say about them. Excellent service.
- robin_reala 8y agoI moved to Runbox from GMail earlier this year after the AMP-in-mail debacle. I wrote up my criteria and a bunch of different suppliers[1] and Runbox was the pick. I’ve been mostly happy with them, although their uptime hasn’t been brilliant recently. [1] https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/ https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/
- nopacience 8y agoNowadays i recommend runbox.com. The services are good and when needed support is also good. Clients have given good feedback. In the past i have recommended protonmail and fastmail.
- ar-jan 8y ago+1 for Runbox. Good prices, multiple custom domains possible, and an option to configure separate passwords per device/app.
- ekovarski 8y agoI am evaluating Runbox and Migadu right now; My only nitpick with Runbox is their pricing page, they need to clean it up and simplify it. Its information overload. I can always ask/click for more details but present me with the most basic info up front and centre.
- z3 8y ago+1 Protonmail Good security practice and decent Android app.
- Xunxi 8y agohttps://tutanota.com/ https://tutanota.com/ https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/ Port to your own domain name
- pmlnr 8y agoFor self-host: - iredmail if you want it simple - dovecot + postfix + opendkim + opendmarc + bogofilter + rainloop if you like tinkering and you have a small/personal setup. Drop in radicale with imap auth for calendar/contacts, and prosody with imap auth for jabber, and you're good for life, unless people want shiny web interfaces, in which case consider nextcloud for contacts/calendar. - zimbra as an all-in-one solution - exim + cyrus if you want mail only for a large company and you want it open source
- Theizestooke 8y agoThreads about email providers seem to be a prime target for astro turfers on HN. There are so many different providers, yet weirdly its always the same company with the most comments.
- zavi 8y agoThis has been going on for over a year now. A lot of astroturfing coupled with misinformation criticizing predominantly US-based incumbents. I think there are a few mods with a political agenda who are pushing this. Often the advertised replacement is an inferior product that doesn't even provide better privacy or securty than Google or whatever is being criticized. Interesting time to live in.
- simias 8y agoI'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but it's true that there are rather weird voting patterns in this thread. I self-host my email so I don't really have a horse in that race but I don't quite understand why all mentions of protonmail are downvoted while everything about Fastmail is at the top. Is there some context I'm missing?
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoThis seems pretty easy to prove or disprove based on the comment history of said accounts. The few I've checked out seem perfectly legitimate. Unless FastMail are paying people to spend all day maintaining perfectly normal HN accounts for the odd occasions that a discussion about email comes up... dons tinfoil hat
- chrischen 8y agoiCloud mail. No issues, and I already use the native iOS client.
- Egidius 8y agoDoes anyone have any experience with https://superhuman.com/ https://superhuman.com/ ? It is supposed to be very nice
- vbrandl 8y agoI'm self-hosting my mail server using mailcow[0] for little over a year now and everything works fine. It comes with a admin interface to manage accounts and the SoGo webmail client[1]. Getting it up and running was also pretty easy. Create some DNS records as described in the documentation, cloning the repository and starting everything using docker-compose. [0]: https://mailcow.email/ https://mailcow.email/ [1]: https://github.com/inverse-inc/sogo https://github.com/inverse-inc/sogo
- JoshuaAshton 8y agoI'd much prefer it if there was just 1 docker container and not a whole compose stack. I much prefer 1 docker container == 1 service.
- jgeraert 8y agoWell, there are multiple services involved in an email stack so I guess it does what you ask for.
- JoshuaAshton 8y agoWhat I mean is, what a person would honestly consider a service (such as e-mail, a website, a git server), not a technical definition of a service (a database, dovecot, php). I should have been more clear.
- wprapido 8y agoI'm split between GMail, ProtonMail and Yandex. Each of them having upsides and shortcomings, I'm quite happy
- gbtw 8y agoI like https://soverin.net/ https://soverin.net/
- vbezhenar 8y agoI didn't find anything better than Yandex for custom domains. It's free, it works and made by a huge company with good reputation.
- caycep 8y agoHow competitive is iCloud? since it already comes for "free" with the paid iCloud storage account...
- samat 8y agoIt does not have a custom domain, sadly.
- Bakani 8y agovfemail and protonmail are good mailbox, i have been using both for long and the are serving well. A trial of their will convince you. https://protonmail.com https://protonmail.com https://www.vfemail.net https://www.vfemail.net https://gold2naira.com https://gold2naira.com
- progee 8y agoI use ProtonMail and it's amazing
- paride5745 8y agoI am switching to outlook.com + cock.li (for anonymous emails). Keeping Gmail only for my Youtube addiction... There are better alternatives out there, but outlook.com offers what I need for free. I know it's not a very privacy friendly platform, but with many of my contacts on Gmail, there is no point in going full privacy like with Protonmail IMHO.
- SimonPStevens 8y agoThe most important thing is having your own domain. Then whatever provider you choose, the address is easily portable. I've no idea what your requirements are, but I've used office 365 small business premimum plan for years (£9.40 per month). It comes with a hosted exchange server which gives you loads of flexibility for very little effort. And for my purposes, I really like outlook as a desktop client. Not everyone agrees though. And as I want the desktop office apps anyway, the extra money for the plan with exchange included is minimal. There is also a cheaper 'essentials' plan which gives you the server stuff without the desktop office apps if you don't need/want/like them.
- anon39FE4 8y agoWithout evidence, just observation, can someone here explain to me why it seems every top comment and their child comments have sort of a corporate shill objective?
- elminjo 8y agoa true alternative has not to be hosted in a country of the Five Eyes group. I switched to mailbox.org and I am really happy.
- StreamBright 8y agoHow about Amazon WorkMail?
- krylon 8y agoIf you do not need custom domains, I can remain posteo (https://www.posteo.de/ https://www.posteo.de/). They charge one €uro per month for a 2GB mailbox, but on the upside, the servers are located in Germany, and they are completely ad-free.
- rjzzleep 8y agoFor the self-hosted folks there are: https://mailcow.email/ https://mailcow.email/ - dockerized, works with multiple domains, sogo for groupware. Compared to mailinabox's single disk, it has 6 docker volumes to keep track of. https://mailu.io/ https://mailu.io/ - dockerized, it has a section on kubernetes deployments, which i find weird, but I guess could make sense for companies https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ - no docker, no multiple domains, roundcube, nextcloud for groupware. Main disadvantage or advantage, depending on your perspective is that you need a mailinabox server per domain. And then this is the more hands on version, which I guess would be sovereign as ansible deployment. https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign IMHO sovereign puts too many attack vectors on a single machine.
- InternetOfStuff 8y ago> And then this is the more hands on version, which I guess would be sovereign as ansible deployment. I used to run a Sovereign box. It served me well for 2-3 years, but it got too cumbersome to maintain: they changed their approach to various configuation things (for the better, I'm sure), and threatened to break my setup in the process. All told, it felt like it had missed the sweet spot between pre-configuration and flexibility, in the end not quite giving you either. > IMHO sovereign puts too many attack vectors on a single machine. I turned off most of the attack vectors (I didn't need all the bells and whistles). But yes, they tried too hard, and over-complicated the setup as a result.
- arountheworld 8y ago> https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ - no docker, no multiple domains, roundcube, nextcloud for groupware. Main disadvantage or advantage, depending on your perspective is that you need a mailinabox server per domain. Are you sure? I am running mailinabox and have multiple domains and accounts with no issue.
- em0ney 8y agoSame here. Ran many domains on a single server for a long time
- apatters 8y agoIs there an open source email client which supports a conversation view similar to Gmail's? I find that to be an amazingly useful feature. The other thing Gmail does which has a lot of potential is message labeling (e.g., newsletters automatically go into a separate tab/folder).
- icebraining 8y agoFilters for putting emails in folders are pretty common. I use sieve[1] since I run my own server, but many clients and hosted services have their own mechanisms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language...
- Arkanosis 8y agoThunderbird + Conversations addon: https://addons.thunderbird.net/fr/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/ https://addons.thunderbird.net/fr/thunderbird/addon/gmail-co...
- dredmorbius 8y agoMutt, threading. Most mailers, actually, including basic ones such as Sylpheed.
- antpls 8y agoDoes anyone know about managed (free or paid) email servers without any web client? Only with IMAP, POP3, etc activated and storage space.
- ylere 8y agoDoes anyone know a (preferably self-hosted, but can be commercial) mail client that is as as good Gmail for power users? I always found it rather straightforward have a custom domain and even operate my own mail server, but haven't been able to do the same for the client. The features most important to me are: - Gmails speed and accuracy in search, especially on large mailboxes (100k+ emails) - this one is usually the deal breaker - easy & powerful automatic filter rules - web client - calendar integration (optional) - app for easy access to emails and search on mobile (optional)
- thraxil 8y agoI use AWS WorkMail and I'm moderately happy with it. It's pretty barebones, but works and hasn't given me any problems. I went with it because I use Route53 for my domains, and host most of my stuff on AWS anyway, so it was one less account/service to manage. The web interface is really basic, but I mostly access it through emacs/gnus or the android email client. My only complaint is that some of the documentation is wrong. It tells you to use an exchange setup for android, but that breaks. The plain IMAP setup works fine though. I can't really speak to privacy aspects, but I'm assuming that since I'm actually paying for the service, it's a little better than if I were using a free service like gmail.
- andrepd 8y agoI use ProtonMail and I am quite satisfied so far. Servers being in Switzerland is a huge plus in my book, compared to Gmail and fastmail which seems to be suggested so often.
- dilren 8y agoI use Protonmail. Its cool that you will not served any Ads. Currently i am using their paid version which costs me 5 euros a month. Give it a try.
- yc-kraln 8y agoI self-host SOGo on my own machine, it gives me mail + calendar + contact sync. Finally moving off from gmail feels so great. For others I recommend office365--fairly inexpensive, excellent support, and available either in the EU or entirely within Germany.
- stanislavb 8y agoHere it is a list with several Gmail Alternatives https://www.saashub.com/gmail-alternatives https://www.saashub.com/gmail-alternatives
- Roelven 8y agoI'd like to add https://soverin.net/features https://soverin.net/features here as well. It's similar to Posteo but offers unlimited aliases and more storage. Servers hosted in the Netherlands.
- jboynyc 8y agoI was a Soverin customer for a year but recently made the switch to Fastmail. I really wanted to like them, but sadly it seems like Soverin is content with their product being in a (barely) beta state. During the year that I used them, there were no improvements to spam filtering (which is abysmal), single sign on (nonexistent), reliability (poor, particularly for caldav) or filtering rules, to name just a few pain points. Their customer service was super responsive, but usually just to tell me that whatever I was asking about (flagging false positives, filtering mail based on an address pattern) wasn't supported. Soverin, please look at what Fastmail is doing and try to get at least 80% as good. The world needs more fastmails.
- mirimir 8y ago> What email service is best for privacy? There's no simple answer, because it comes down to your threat model. What do you want to keep private? Just content? Or also metadata, including your identity and the identities of your correspondents? And who are your adversaries? Random cybercriminals? Competitors? The email provider? Criminal investigators? Foreign intelligence agencies? Your government's intelligence agencies? > With the recent thread on privacy in Chrome, I'm thinking of switching off Gmail. OK, so the email provider is considered an adversary. If that's the case, the only prudent option is end-to-end encryption, done locally, and not using the provider's services. But that's barely workable. Most correspondents won't cooperate. Configuring clients correctly is nontrivial, to avoid attacks like Efail. Also, there's no forward secrecy, and metadata is not encrypted. For privacy at that level, you ought to be using something with forward secrecy, like Signal. And if anonymity really matters, you ought to be using something that does P2P via Tor .onion services, such as Briar or Ricochet. But anyway, you could use email with end-to-end encryption, use pseudonyms, and minimize metadata with some mix of VPN services and Tor. And then use providers with better reputations about privacy and security. Such as Autistici, CounterMail, Posteo, ProtonMail, Riseup, ScryptMail, Tutanota or VFEmail. However, there's no guarantee that any of them will refuse "lawful" access. For example, Autistici acknowledges that they might "lose control" over their servers, perhaps through seizure by police, or that their servers could "run into accidents that could undermine [their] security".[0] And Riseup redefined their warrant canary policy to exclude investigations of individual users, or groups of users, that don't put Riseup users generally at risk.[1] Even so, you're arguably OK as long as they can't decrypt messages, don't know who you or your correspondents are, or where y'all are located. 0) https://www.autistici.org/faq https://www.autistici.org/faq 1) https://riseup.net/about-us/press/canary-statement https://riseup.net/about-us/press/canary-statement edit: alphabetized provider list
- hannasanarion 8y ago> > With the recent thread on privacy in Chrome, I'm thinking of switching off Gmail. > OK, so the email provider is considered an adversary. I don't think Gmail is considered an adversary, it's just that you can now no longer log in to Gmail without also logging in to the same account in Chrome, which is a stupid non-user-friendly feature.
- bit_4l 8y agoI use both ProtonMail and Zoho Mail. - If you go for better security, ProtonMail. I use this for my personal email. - If you need better UI/UX & some other utilities, use Zoho Mail. It's free though.
- 8fingerlouie 8y agoI recently switched from GSuite to MXRoute.com after being recommended the service here on HN. Unlimited accounts/subdomains and 5GB space for $30/year.
- kameit00 8y agoI also use MxRoute. No problems so far. I would recommend it too, if you don't want to run you own email server. Also push works with macOS and iOS.
- rcdwealth 8y agoPosteo may be best for privacy as third party provider: https://posteo.de https://posteo.de Other resources on webmail: https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems For your self-hosted email, I recommend Courier MTA with Courier IMAP which is available on Debian GNU/Linux and other VPS/Server solutions: http://courier-mta.org/ http://courier-mta.org/ It also offers pretty nice, secure webmail SQWebMail system.
- JoshuaAshton 8y agoI selfhost with iRedMail which has a docker. Has done me fine so far.
- kakksakkar 8y agoProtonmail is my choice.
- petecooper 8y agoI'll leave this here - it's a chunky read and might need tailoring to your situation, but it's an excellent walkthrough: https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/mail-server-guide/ https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/mail-server-guide/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- r0m3chco 8y agoTutanota is secure and can use domain Posteo is ethical and anonyme
- Crosseye_Jack 8y agoIf you want to get your hands dirty https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ - The downside being no iOS push email as long you can put up with with that or you jerry-rig something else for push (say a simple a simple Slack bot to say "Hey you got mail from XYZ" and you then open mail.app yourself) or just live with the 15 min pull you will be fine. Have auto updates enabled and hosted on AWS with an RDNS record and not had any issues with it since. If you don't want to get your hands dirty or you can't live without iOS push email then FastMail - Downside being $50/year (if you want to use your own domain).
- fjeuplos 8y agoProtonmail
- kevingrahl 8y agoThis is not a recommendation but rather an inquiry. I’m currently using roundcube [1] on my server but have no clue if that’s the right choice for me. It works but I only use it because my hosting company recommended it and I just stuck with it. It seems to be open source so that’s a big plus imo. If anyone here has some experience with roundcube I’d like to know what you think about the software. Are there any flaws I should be aware of? Anything other projects are doing better? I value privacy over functionality and am willing to try out something new. [1] - https://roundcube.net https://roundcube.net
- anavarre 8y agoI didn't see https://kolabnow.com/ https://kolabnow.com/ mentioned anywhere. It's more than email, it's a groupware based on FOSS with a pretty good track record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolab_Now#Kolab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolab_Now#Kolab). Hosted in Switzerland with 2FA and strict privacy guidelines https://kolabnow.com/privacy https://kolabnow.com/privacy - No end-to-end encryption, though, but as everybody knows https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...
- im0nde 8y agomailbox.org
- wakkaflokka 8y agoI've been wanting to switch from Gmail for a while, just to try something new. I like the concept of ProtonMail (that my email is supposedly encrypted at rest and accessible only by me) but honestly the conversation here steers me away from it. Also the interface is fairly slow. The top recommendation here seems to be FastMail, which I'm doing a trial run of now.
- tomerbd 8y agoi'm going to miss inbox so much. 1. Reminders together with emails in same inbox. 2. Can change Reminders text. 3. Bundling. 4. Snooze Repeat. 5. Snooze Location (RIP). 6. Google Keep Reminders. Not sure how i'll manage my life back after March 2019.
- alkonaut 8y agoCould the inbox features be implemented by a mail application for "non-gmail mail" (i.e. imap) or does it require some special gmail sauce? I'd pay $20 for a smartphone mail app that works like inbox. A lot of people probably would.
- hungryroark 8y agoI haven't read all the comments but so far from what I have read I haven't found anyone mentioning Protonmail. Is it bad? Or not that known to people?
- harianus 8y agoIt is mentioned but does indeed not show up in the top comments. I use it now for a few weeks and I’m happy with it. It’s not cheap for having 3 custom domains: €90 or so, but I’m okay with paying for privacy.
- arihant 8y agoFor personal mail, Zoho is hard to beat. Free up to 5GB and $36/year for up to 30GB. They also communicate very well about any downtimes, disruption, which is extremely rare. Also, there is real customer support. I've accidentally deleted spam messages and they recovered it within hours after shooting one email.
- oyebenny 8y agoUmm, aren't you worried that they're able to restore DELETED emails? Just curious.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoI agree. I have been hosting my mail on Zoho for almost 2 years now and it's been pretty solid. The cool thing is you can use your own domain with their free tier if you don't need a lot of space. Also, using exchange active sync protocol, you get push email on iOS.
- mrmondo 8y agoI’ve had a very good experience with Fastmail (as others have commented as well I see) for heavy email use, calendaring & contact syncing across 7~ iOS and macOS devices.
- bproven 8y agoOther than supporting the company that is the reason you are leaving gmail (free), what are the thoughts on just paying for gsuite for $5/$10 a month since the privacy statement on gsuite is clearly stated? I'd like to avoid google, but the email service is pretty damn good (spam filter especially)
- humility 8y agoI've been using mailbox.org with a custom domain for over two years now. Although it's not free, the plans are quite cheap(starting from EUR 1/month). Have not had a single issue with it.
- omerh 8y agoI’m using ProtonMail with the free plan for more than 6 month now, still have some husk from Gmail being auto fowrorded to it. And for work I use gsuite for now. ProtonMail only did one thing wrong lately. They’ve added a payers feature a @pm.me short domain and allowing for the free users to only receive emails with this address. That was irritating and absurd, so I’m still thing if I want to move to move completely. Fastmail recycling makes them irrelevant.
- grep4master 8y agoRunbox. Norway-based, privacy-focused, responsive support, reasonably priced and so far reliable. It checks all the boxes for me.
- greenspot 8y agoI like to extend the question: Which online mail provider has many or just some third party integrations, in particular those offering mail merge and per recipient email tracking. Gmail is here unfortunately by far the leading product.
- grizzles 8y agoAnyone know - If you download your gmail cache from Google, is there an easy way to convert that to Maildir or is OfflineIMAP still the way to go?
- 3K7m7bUZyWA1KCD 8y ago
- m_st 8y agoI'm on Exchange online (~5$ per user/month) and rather happy. The Outlook Web App online interface is regularly updated, I can use a custom domain, have plenty of storage and adding my wife as well as alternate domains was rather easy. Add to that support for shared calendars and great support for push features (using Exchange Active Sync) on almost all systems. The main problem is that it is Microsoft and thus rather complicated: I now have a private Microsoft 'work' account for Exchange Online + a private Microsoft 'home' account for Office 365 Home Edition. So when I want to log into the online services (Mail, OneDrive, etc) I always have to think twice about which login to use :-(
- tkim90 8y agoCan anyone expliain why G Suite (the paid version of Gmail) is not considered safe for data privacy? From the site it says they are encrypted, regularly audited by 3rd parties and not used for ads. https://gsuite.google.com/faq/security/ https://gsuite.google.com/faq/security/
- Froyoh 8y agoIt is safe, everyone here seems to hate on Google products and Microsoft's Windows 10
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lmedinas 8y agocopy & paste from that link: " This encryption happens as it is written to disk, without the customer having to take any action. Google encrypts data with distinct encryption keys, even if they belong to the same customer. Data is encrypted using 128-bit or stronger Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Google encrypts core G Suite data while it is “in transit” as well, whether it is traveling over the Internet between the customer and Google, or moving within Google as it shifts from one data center to another. We encrypt this data between Google and our customers using HTTPS with forward secrecy. " The truth nobody knows but it seems that they encrypt with their own keys so that means they can open the data and read it.
- sigfubar 8y agoG Suite isn't private because Google isn't in the privacy or productivity business. It's an advertising company that happens to have a product line which looks like a productivity suite. Charging money for it is just a nifty way to defray the costs of collecting data for advertising purposes.
- techntoke 8y agoYou should file a False Claims Act then since they are FedRAMP verified for G Suite, unless you're just blowing smoke out of your ass.
- benhardy 8y agoUsing FastMail on my own domains. One account covers all the domains. Having more domains costs the same as one. They support several different kinds of address aliasing/wildcarding (including Gmail style '+' wildcards and multiple recipient). Their DNS is absolutely great with useful defaults. Never looked back.
- contem 8y agoStay on GMail, but don't log-in to the web interface. Instead use Thunderbird. That way you can read your mail without being forced logged-in to search or video. Google has been making this harder and harder though (now calling Thunderbird insecure, and requiring you to allow insecure app's in the options), but it is a good canary in the coal mine: Once I can't avoid this unified/universal log-in, I'll know Google turned me into an adversary. With this setup I deem Gmail to be the best service for privacy and security.
- dkhenry 8y agoI recently migrated to staying on GMail but using offlineimap and a program called notmuch to view and send mail. In this world I have all my mail locally, GMail is just an IMAP endpoint to store my mail.
- thinelvis 8y agoYou can use a standard email client hooked to Gmail to stop Google from getting your browsing data. You can relay your Gmail to another account with read-only access, replying from a VM with only email use (I do this on my phone). Or, only get/send your email from a VM that does nothing else. Because it seems like there's two issues here: Google gaining intel from your email itself, and Google gaining intel from your browsing data, gained from your use of Gmail in a browser. What I've suggested addresses browsing data.
- YvesWilken 8y agoWhat about ProtonMail? https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/! Secure Email Based in Switzerland.
- lucb1e 8y agoI self host using hMailServer (open source) and Thunderbird. It's so user friendly, if you are capable of installing software generally, you'll also manage this with no problems (maybe some reading up if you don't know the difference between IMAP and POP3, but that's about it). The issue is that HMS is Windows-only, but the ease of use is superb compared to anything I've seen on Linux. And it's open source so I'm moderately happy keeping this legacy system running in a VM until it's ported or a manageable alternative comes along.
- ekovarski 8y ago+1 hMailServer; Deployed it for a few clients who needed it to work with SQL Server. It was rock solid and hosted hundreds of domains and a ton of email accessed over various devices. It's not glamorous software as its pretty basic but if all you need is basic, it will not disappoint you, and usually most of the needs of many folks is pretty simplistic.
- born2burn 8y agoProtonmail. It is a free service from a company in Switzerland with end to end encryption. To add your own domain it charges few bucks a month. I used to self host but have moved to it completely.
- gibsonf1 8y agoZoho mail works well. Actually Zoho Docs and powerpoint are very good.
- rakibtg 8y agoBeing privacy concern i have stopped using email services. I would self host a server, how about that?
- edgarvm 8y agoWhat about protonmail?
- rustcharm 8y agoMicrosoft Outlook. Works great on-line and in the native app. Works with Apple's email client or Microsoft's on iOS. Great pricing, can have it on your own domain, and the best calendaring I've ever seen. https://outlook.live.com/owa/ https://outlook.live.com/owa/
- eximius 8y agoSurprised Migadu isn't on here. Cheap, use your own domains, IMAP. I can't recall the security/privacy provisions off hand, but my threat model doesn't include nation states or warrants. As long as I keep my domain and I have offline backups of my email, I'm happy. Oh, and it works! Never had emails get lost due to bad mail server configs.
- akulbe 8y agoI generally recommend against setting up your own email server. Most people just want to use it and not maintain it. However, in circumstances like this where you want to escape a crappy solution, I have been recommending "Mail In A Box" https://mailinabox.email https://mailinabox.email It's as close to a turnkey solution as I've found. I've been using it for one of my domains for a few years now. You'll need to be comfy with the CLI to set it up. You'll also need a VPS. EDIT: didn't realize other folks had already recommended it. It's worked great here. :)
- euske 8y agoI don't like how this question is phrased. It should be "Good alternativeS to Gmail?" Yeah. Please be it to multiple choices, for availability reasons and monopoly concerns. Sadly there aren't many good competitors in this arena (anymore), which always makes me nervous.
- saxonww 8y agoI'm doing the same thing, and I chose FastMail. It was easy to set up with a custom domain, and I've been making heavy use of aliases and plus addressing which I like. At least for my purposes, the web client is every bit as capable as the Gmail interface. I haven't tried to import mail from Gmail yet, but it looks straightforward. The big drawback I think is that Gmail was the interface for Hangouts/Voice, so I either need to find good alternatives for those things, or keep my Gmail account around for that purpose. I guess it feels a little weird to be paying for a personal email account, but for a single user it's not awful, and I end up owning the entire address. I think it's worth it.
- pcpcpc 8y agoI've been using GMail/Google Inbox for awhile and thinking about switching. Now that Google's announced they'll be shutting down Inbox next year, I want to finally make the switch. It seems like there's some consensus around FastMail for email. How's the calendar functionality with FastMail? Is there another good non-Google calendar alternative? I also made heavy use of the task/notification/snooze feature in Inbox. Is there anything like that in FastMail? Is there another good task management app that anyone would recommend?
- known 8y agohttps://prism-break.org/en/all/#email-accounts https://prism-break.org/en/all/#email-accounts
- dllthomas 8y agoAs for email clients, the happiest I've ever been was using nmh with some scripts and aliases. Setup was sufficiently not out-of-the-box that I haven't replicated it very often over the years.
- mankash666 8y agoNone. None come with $0/annum, spam filtering, deep search, state of the art 2FA, large amounts of storage, large collection of plugins, cross OS native clients, ....
- bullen 8y agoWrite and host your own SMTP server! ;)
- hnkf 8y agoI’ve been paying for a Mini account at Runbox for 2 years. I think they’re hosted in Norway or some other “safe(r)” location. The UI definitely needs some polish, including their marketing pages. Functionality-wise it’s top notch. I’ve no complaints to log so far. I also use them for CalDAV, CardDAV, and host a domain with a sub-account my wife uses. I’ve needed their customer support twice, and it was the best possible service in both accounts. This last time it was about 2FA after I locked myself out of my account. Really good service. That’s that. I’ve used Proton and Tutanota before. A long way back I was a very happy customer of Lavabit. All of these are privacy-conscious. Read the privacy policies, try to make sense of them. I would avoid Gmail like the plague, but I’m morally opposed to Google.
- atmosx 8y agoTutanota: https://tutanota.com/ https://tutanota.com/ (Germany) Proton: https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/ (Switzerland) Fastmail: https://www.fastmail.com/ https://www.fastmail.com/ (Australia) I went from self-hosted to fastmail for personal emails and I'm pretty happy with them. I have a gmail account too.
- dejaime 8y agoIt depends on why you are seeking an alternative service. Since you mentioned privacy, Proton Mail is, in theory, good for those with privacy concerns. Why in theory? Well, can't really trust anyone these days, can we? I mean, trusting a convicted perp or an unknown entity? Well, the unknown might be clean still, so it's better than nothing. But in the end, for privacy, the best is definitely self hosting.
- arunmp 8y agoI'l go with proton mail. fast, secure(reasonably) and has a free version.
- feliksik 8y agoFor the privacy savvy: https://www.startmail.com/en/ https://www.startmail.com/en/ Their servers are in Europe, and they cannot decrypt mail themselves. It's decrypted in your browser. 10 GB personal vault IMAP support 10 custom aliases Unlimited disposable aliases PGP email encryption I have never tried it though.
- psiops 8y agoSo either fastmail or host your own? Really? Any entrepreneurs present today? I sense opportunity..
- fingers76 8y agoGoogle Inbox - best thing ever to happen to email. Unfortunately they have announced that they plan to shut it down in March. GMail really is a horrible experience in comparison. Please sign here if you want to try and save Inbox: http://is.gd/save_google_inbox http://is.gd/save_google_inbox
- jaakl 8y agoIn EU at least you can switch mobile operators and keep your number; also there is some bank account porting system (not sure if you keep your number). Same way E-mail porting should be also required, so I can keep my gmail address. If mobile operators could forced give up "their owned" number prefixes, and create (pretty expensive) technical solution, then why email domain holders cannot be forced to do same?
- obahareth 8y agoI would say ProtonMail: https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/
- unstatusthequo 8y agoProtonmail.com
- cntlzw 8y agoposteo.de Yes, this costs a small amount of money.
- Slaul 8y agoIf I switch from gmail and I set up automatic forwarding of my emails to my new service, does Google still read my mail? Is there any easy migration path from gmail to another service that doesn't involve updating my email for every service I've ever used?
- yannovitch 8y agoI haven't seen more traditional email providers with lot of focus on privacy, such as : - infomaniak : https://www.infomaniak.com/en/hosting/e-mail https://www.infomaniak.com/en/hosting/e-mail starting at 1.5€ a month - myKolab However I have recently switched to a self-hosted solution, after years on gmail, because I wanted to be in control of my personal data, and because I can't be a proponent for privacy while being on a service like gmail. Time will tell ;)