4 ms·

> 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 ema

> 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.
- volongoto 8y ago
  I asked them (Posteo) about this 2 weeks ago and below is the response I received. I'm not an expert in this area, but the response sounded reasonable to me: > We do not offer domain services because we do not save any personal data for any of our services. This is not possible with domains. > Domains must be registered to a person’s name and address. As a provider, we would be required to store inventory data for all customers that use their own domains with us. As a result, we would have to provide this information to government agencies when requested. > Additionally, security reasons also play a role in this decision. With customer domains, the owner of the domain is responsible for setting up security features like DNSSEC (and as a result also DANE). Even things such as SPF and other protocols for delivery would lie in the customer’s hand and could not be guaranteed by us. > Because of these reasons we have decided not to offer domain services and instead to remain consistent with our focus on data economy.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    I got the same mail two years ago, I think (haven't kept it, but the "reasoning" sounds familiar). See, that's just half-truths that amount to lies. They claim they need to store personal information about you when you're using your personal domain. That's untrue. Only if you registered the domain with them they would need to know about you. It's also untrue, because unlike .de, many other TLDs don't require full names and addresses in WHOIS, or there are "privacy shield" services like the one nearlyfreespeech.net is operating. Security reasons. Also untrue (although it's a reasonable business decision that they don't want to handle customers calling their support with the customer's own domain set up problems). I continue to claim that there is exactly one reason they are refusing: A customer with a *@posteo.de address will pretty much never leave. I wouldn't mind very much if they admitted that, it's certainly a geeky niche to serve, but this security-and-privacy bullshit really makes me mad. Do you want to trust your privacy with a company that's lying, even if you wanted to argue that it's a white lie?
JunkDNA 8y ago
I’m not arguing that there aren’t people who have legit reasons to want to pay less for email services. I’m arguing that if the OP wants to run a profitable business, targeting that particular demographic is unwise. Hobbyist/tinkerer types have high quality expectations and will absolutely suck more support time and energy than, say, a busy dentist’s office who just wants to pay money and have their email work for 20 employees.

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.

volongoto 8y ago
I asked them (Posteo) about this 2 weeks ago and below is the response I received. I'm not an expert in this area, but the response sounded reasonable to me: > We do not offer domain services because we do not save any personal data for any of our services. This is not possible with domains. > Domains must be registered to a person’s name and address. As a provider, we would be required to store inventory data for all customers that use their own domains with us. As a result, we would have to provide this information to government agencies when requested. > Additionally, security reasons also play a role in this decision. With customer domains, the owner of the domain is responsible for setting up security features like DNSSEC (and as a result also DANE). Even things such as SPF and other protocols for delivery would lie in the customer’s hand and could not be guaranteed by us. > Because of these reasons we have decided not to offer domain services and instead to remain consistent with our focus on data economy.
- Tomte 8y ago
  I got the same mail two years ago, I think (haven't kept it, but the "reasoning" sounds familiar). See, that's just half-truths that amount to lies. They claim they need to store personal information about you when you're using your personal domain. That's untrue. Only if you registered the domain with them they would need to know about you. It's also untrue, because unlike .de, many other TLDs don't require full names and addresses in WHOIS, or there are "privacy shield" services like the one nearlyfreespeech.net is operating. Security reasons. Also untrue (although it's a reasonable business decision that they don't want to handle customers calling their support with the customer's own domain set up problems). I continue to claim that there is exactly one reason they are refusing: A customer with a *@posteo.de address will pretty much never leave. I wouldn't mind very much if they admitted that, it's certainly a geeky niche to serve, but this security-and-privacy bullshit really makes me mad. Do you want to trust your privacy with a company that's lying, even if you wanted to argue that it's a white lie?

JunkDNA 8y ago

I’m not arguing that there aren’t people who have legit reasons to want to pay less for email services. I’m arguing that if the OP wants to run a profitable business, targeting that particular demographic is unwise. Hobbyist/tinkerer types have high quality expectations and will absolutely suck more support time and energy than, say, a busy dentist’s office who just wants to pay money and have their email work for 20 employees.