4 ms·

Email seems like more of a free market than most things considering the incredibly low barrier to entry. You can even host your own email server, you can't reas

Email seems like more of a free market than most things considering the incredibly low barrier to entry. You can even host your own email server, you can't reasonably do that with a lot of the software that you use every day. Just because a particular provider is good and cheap and has a lot of satisfied customers doesn't make it any less of a free market.

ggm 8y ago
It just feels like a truism. Absent a formal regulation oversight any market is free in these terms. Were not comparing Japanese gold plated apples and trader Joe floor dropping oranges with mould on, were looking for competition in the sense BMW competes with Mercedes and Lexus. Google is giving away some thing of huge value, which is highly reliable spam free email. They "charge" your privacy which is beyond price. If you seek equivalent functionality the software cost alone for the one I regard as comparable is 350 dollars which as a purchase amortised out is $10 a month over three years but I have to spend another $10 a month to host it, and I still have a single point of failure. So price wise fastmail may be enormously good value or expensive depending how you feel: there are not a heap of competent competitive alternates. Maybe five? Sure, that's a competitive market in Herfindahl Hirschman Index maybe? But in practice it's not far off a duopoly. Google or o365, fastmail or proton. It's a pair of competing entities not one market.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
>You can even host your own email server // As long as you don't want deliverability to Gmail or Outlook addresses. Though you can pay for Outlook deliverability it seems. They're very pinickety about allowing mail through from self-hosted or even low-traffic shared hosting IME [albeit limited].
- gsich 8y ago
  You can self host and deliver to those addresses. Without troubles.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    I've had no end of trouble. I'm not the only one according to reports from others online.
    - gsich 8y ago
      Unused IP, set PTR (seems important) and MX, SPF and DKIM, although I'm not sure how relevant the last one was. I can imagine that Gmail will block you if you try to send mail from an IP that was previusly used to spam.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        Couldn't really work out why Gmail wanted to block me, yes obvs using SPF/DKIM/etc. - long trusted domain (15y), never any spam, whitelisted on client side. MS blocked it according to their third-party system because it was associated with another IP address [ie other IP was once used by same ISP] that had once had spam on it (wasn't currently blacklisted in any SBL). There's no way to check before you build out the system, so unless you have an easy way to change IP and ISP then I'd be cautious.
        gsich 8y ago
        I was not thinking about self hosting at home.

ggm 8y ago

It just feels like a truism. Absent a formal regulation oversight any market is free in these terms. Were not comparing Japanese gold plated apples and trader Joe floor dropping oranges with mould on, were looking for competition in the sense BMW competes with Mercedes and Lexus. Google is giving away some thing of huge value, which is highly reliable spam free email. They "charge" your privacy which is beyond price. If you seek equivalent functionality the software cost alone for the one I regard as comparable is 350 dollars which as a purchase amortised out is $10 a month over three years but I have to spend another $10 a month to host it, and I still have a single point of failure. So price wise fastmail may be enormously good value or expensive depending how you feel: there are not a heap of competent competitive alternates. Maybe five? Sure, that's a competitive market in Herfindahl Hirschman Index maybe? But in practice it's not far off a duopoly. Google or o365, fastmail or proton. It's a pair of competing entities not one market.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

>You can even host your own email server // As long as you don't want deliverability to Gmail or Outlook addresses. Though you can pay for Outlook deliverability it seems. They're very pinickety about allowing mail through from self-hosted or even low-traffic shared hosting IME [albeit limited].

gsich 8y ago
You can self host and deliver to those addresses. Without troubles.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  I've had no end of trouble. I'm not the only one according to reports from others online.
  - gsich 8y ago
    Unused IP, set PTR (seems important) and MX, SPF and DKIM, although I'm not sure how relevant the last one was. I can imagine that Gmail will block you if you try to send mail from an IP that was previusly used to spam.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Couldn't really work out why Gmail wanted to block me, yes obvs using SPF/DKIM/etc. - long trusted domain (15y), never any spam, whitelisted on client side. MS blocked it according to their third-party system because it was associated with another IP address [ie other IP was once used by same ISP] that had once had spam on it (wasn't currently blacklisted in any SBL). There's no way to check before you build out the system, so unless you have an easy way to change IP and ISP then I'd be cautious.
      - gsich 8y ago
        I was not thinking about self hosting at home.