6 ms·

I am on google’s grandfathered free tier for my domain. Recently it has gotten annoying with new google products since they have to be supported by g-suite for

I am on google’s grandfathered free tier for my domain. Recently it has gotten annoying with new google products since they have to be supported by g-suite for you to use them. So I recently was shopping around for a new host. Basically I’m a non-business user who is probably in your target market. As others have said, your pricing is unpredictable and hard to compute. As I’m evaluating you with competitors, I’m not going to invest the time. In my experience, when a company makes it hard to know what you’re actually going to end up paying, you usually end up paying more than you want (see: Verizon). From a business perspective, it seems to me your value proposition is that you are striving to be the cheapest email provider. I think you should consider the kind of customer this attracts. The sort of person who thinks a few dollars a month per email address is too expensive is going to be high maintenance. If you want this to be sustainable, I think you need a different angle. Consider that all these other email providers basically charge around the same amount. That isn’t an accident. I don’t know the email business, but I assume it needs a certain margin to actually be sustainable and these guys have landed in the right ballpark. If you’re looking for business customers, then your pricing is basically rounding error compared to the other guys. It’s not materially different enough to matter for a business of any reasonable size to be worth having as a customer. In fact, the lack of predictability is a major deterrent. Businesses need to create budgets and every variable cost adds to the complexity of the forecast.

gnrl 8y ago
Look into migadu. :-)
rkangel 8y ago
> Recently it has gotten annoying with new google products since they have to be supported by g-suite for you to use them Interesting - which products has this been an issue for? I'm on the same grandfathered GSuite deal and used to have this problem, but haven't in a while.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 8y ago
  When I setup a Chromebook (without enterprise activation) about 18 months ago, I ended up with an individual Google account for my free-tier GSuite email address. I'm not sure if it was a Chromebook thing, a Chrome profile thing, or a problem between by Chromebook and my chair!
- orf 8y ago
  Google home calendar integration :(
- JunkDNA 8y ago
  I was flat out unable to use the family sharing feature of YouTubeTV. Support from gooogle was helpful but they didn’t have much to offer in the way of a workaround. They researched it and basically told me to get gmail accounts for everyone in my family or share my google account with my kids (!!!). Interestingly, I asked if I switched email providers if my account would revert to one that would allow family sharing. They couldn’t guarantee it.
newscracker 8y ago
> The sort of person who thinks a few dollars a month per email address is too expensive is going to be high maintenance. I have to disagree with this. Any email service that costs several dollars per mailbox per month is way too expensive for most people who tend to have more than a few email addresses, including shared ones. In many cases these may not be conducive to be trimmed down using aliases. Take a look at Posteo.de, mailbox.org and Runbox.com. All of them are highly privacy focused, been around for several years, and also provide email for a low price. With prices of hardware going down, even those prices sometimes look high when you see the storage quotas, the low number of aliases (except Runbox), etc. (I concede that hardware is just one part of the solution, but see what Migadu.com says on that front). Setting up a family of users even on Fastmail’s lowest tier (without own domain support) would soon become quite expensive, not to mention the standard plan.
- jamestanderson 8y ago
  I checked out Posteo and noticed on the sign-up page it does not allow certain symbols in passwords. I get the error message: "[password] is invalid (must have at least one lower case and one upper case letter as well as one number or symbol - diacritics and exotic symbols are not allowed)" Wonder why that is.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    I have no idea why they disallow those. But you could email them and ask. They usually respond in a day or two. Side note: Posteo does not allow own domains (you can only choose from the list of Posteo.* domains that the company owns). The reason for that is mentioned in their FAQ (in short, the company doesn’t want to have or store customer identifying information wherever possible).
- Tomte 8y ago
  Posteo are the guys who don't allow your own domain, only posteo-owned domains. When you ask them about it they will lie and tell you that it's not technically possible. Most people have no idea what a MX record is and that other providers support own domains, so they fall for it. Obviously they depend on customer retention by customer lockin. I hate people who directly lie like that for their monetary benefit. So I would never go anywhere near them.

gnrl 8y ago

Look into migadu. :-)

rkangel 8y ago

> Recently it has gotten annoying with new google products since they have to be supported by g-suite for you to use them Interesting - which products has this been an issue for? I'm on the same grandfathered GSuite deal and used to have this problem, but haven't in a while.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 8y ago
When I setup a Chromebook (without enterprise activation) about 18 months ago, I ended up with an individual Google account for my free-tier GSuite email address. I'm not sure if it was a Chromebook thing, a Chrome profile thing, or a problem between by Chromebook and my chair!
orf 8y ago
Google home calendar integration :(
JunkDNA 8y ago
I was flat out unable to use the family sharing feature of YouTubeTV. Support from gooogle was helpful but they didn’t have much to offer in the way of a workaround. They researched it and basically told me to get gmail accounts for everyone in my family or share my google account with my kids (!!!). Interestingly, I asked if I switched email providers if my account would revert to one that would allow family sharing. They couldn’t guarantee it.

newscracker 8y ago

> The sort of person who thinks a few dollars a month per email address is too expensive is going to be high maintenance. I have to disagree with this. Any email service that costs several dollars per mailbox per month is way too expensive for most people who tend to have more than a few email addresses, including shared ones. In many cases these may not be conducive to be trimmed down using aliases. Take a look at Posteo.de, mailbox.org and Runbox.com. All of them are highly privacy focused, been around for several years, and also provide email for a low price. With prices of hardware going down, even those prices sometimes look high when you see the storage quotas, the low number of aliases (except Runbox), etc. (I concede that hardware is just one part of the solution, but see what Migadu.com says on that front). Setting up a family of users even on Fastmail’s lowest tier (without own domain support) would soon become quite expensive, not to mention the standard plan.

jamestanderson 8y ago
I checked out Posteo and noticed on the sign-up page it does not allow certain symbols in passwords. I get the error message: "[password] is invalid (must have at least one lower case and one upper case letter as well as one number or symbol - diacritics and exotic symbols are not allowed)" Wonder why that is.
- newscracker 8y ago
  I have no idea why they disallow those. But you could email them and ask. They usually respond in a day or two. Side note: Posteo does not allow own domains (you can only choose from the list of Posteo.* domains that the company owns). The reason for that is mentioned in their FAQ (in short, the company doesn’t want to have or store customer identifying information wherever possible).
Tomte 8y ago
Posteo are the guys who don't allow your own domain, only posteo-owned domains. When you ask them about it they will lie and tell you that it's not technically possible. Most people have no idea what a MX record is and that other providers support own domains, so they fall for it. Obviously they depend on customer retention by customer lockin. I hate people who directly lie like that for their monetary benefit. So I would never go anywhere near them.