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Ik.me: a free email address for life developed and hosted in Switzerland
- infomaniak 6y agoWith 20 GB of storage, this Swiss-made messaging system allows you to repatriate and store the emails of a lifetime. Access to kDrive with 3 GB of storage is also included for photos and online collaboration on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Currently restricted to Swiss citizens, this offer will soon be extended to the whole of Europe. For further details: https://news.infomaniak.com/en/free-swiss-email-address/ https://news.infomaniak.com/en/free-swiss-email-address/
- shiftpgdn 6y agoThere is no such thing as a free lunch. How does this company intend to monetize this product? Email (and photos) are things people highly depend on.
- quattrofan 6y agoThis is in that link “Our business model is about safeguarding data, not selling it. We’re developing our own ecosystem so we never have to compromise on our values. No personal data is analysed or resold to third parties. Our free services such as SwissTransfer, kMeet and ik.me are financed by our paid products and contribute to extending Infomaniak’s reach.” Marc Oehler, COO at Infomaniak"
- mattmanser 6y agoSo, selling your email content and personal data when he sells his company in 5 years time?
- rusticpenn 6y agoIts apparently a 20 year old company, which is pretty old by internet standards.
- archerx 6y agoold != not shady.
- rusticpenn 6y agoMy parent comment was talking about "him" selling the company in 5 years. Your argument does not work against that specific point.
- 1_player 6y agoAlso old != will last forever
- teva 6y agoExactly. I don't know what are everyone talking about. It's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, hosting provider here in Europe. It's older than Google.
- alacombe 6y agoHow are you planning to balance privacy, citizenship / real name usage requirement and obvious law enforcement requirements ?
- netsharc 6y agoCitizens (like you write here), or residents (like what it says on the website)? 25% of Swiss residents are not citizens (i.e. they have a permit to live in the country but hold a foreign passport), so that's an important distinction.
- speedgoose 6y agoWhat is the business model ?
- tehlike 6y agoI presume you will pay for the overage
- vmurthy 6y agoNot OP. Indirect answer. From the website [0], it appears that they have hosting services, domain registration services etc. None of these per se are high margin , so I am going to assume that their "web consultancy" business[1] has some margins to justify offering this for free. For all I know, this is a way to get people to the top of the funnel and then they will sell other services to these folks. [0]https://www.infomaniak.com/en https://www.infomaniak.com/en [1]https://www.infomaniak.com/en/about https://www.infomaniak.com/en/about
- PetitPrince 6y ago> "web consultancy" business Notably, they provide[1] VOD and AOD for the Swiss French public radio and television (RTS), the French Belgian public television (RTBF), and the Montreux Jazz Festival. [1] https://www.infomaniak.com/en/multimedia/vod-aod/audio-on-demande/references https://www.infomaniak.com/en/multimedia/vod-aod/audio-on-de...
- dt3ft 6y agoProbably sponsored by state actors in return for unfettered access to your inbox. 20GB free for life simply does not compute. Oh, and they require a phone number during signup, and in Switzerland, a phone number can only be issued if you present a valid identification.
- Faaak 6y agoSelling you other stuff (web hosting, ...) if you like their service
- mettamage 6y agoIs "ik" referring to the Dutch "I"? Regardless of the reason, I'm biased to like the name already ;-)
- dylz 6y agomy assumption was the first and last letters of their brand
- dingaling 6y agoWhich is a poor choice of name because it requires some knowledge of the parent company in order to know whether the first letter is an 'i' or an 'l'
- boraoztunc 6y agoReferring to Ike Broflovski of course! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t77Zv9Eo0-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t77Zv9Eo0-k
- import 6y agoHaha no, but makes sense.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- p1necone 6y agoIs there a https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ equivalent for startups that promised 'forever'/'lifetime' service and then shut down a few years later?
- tluyben2 6y agoIt is not easy to do something 'lifetime' obviously. I set out to create a service 'for life'[0], it is 15 years old next year, it has loyal clients and it's getting an update (rewrite, modern skin, app, modern features, launching 1/1/'21) for it's 15th birthday. But although I promise never to sell (out; no ads, no data sales etc) and have the entire product (source etc) in escrow, anyone can break their word + contract obviously. I keep promising lifetime anyway and hope that others who do do not break their word easily either. [0] https://flexlists.com https://flexlists.com
- _puk 6y agoOff topic, but wow that loads fast! Let's hope that the "modern rewrite" doesn't slow it down too much ;) On topic - kudos for being free. There must be a threshold where a company that's "free forever" can be thought of as being there for the long haul, and I think 15 years definitely cuts it!
- tluyben2 6y agoI have some 'sponsoring clients' luckily. They are telling me for years to make a paid plan and that was always the idea. Maybe it's 15th birthday is good for that too.
- mongol 6y agoQuite some commitment. When do you plan to retire?
- tluyben2 6y agoI am not planning to retire. I tried retirement after I sold my company and I really did not like it. I might step out of computing, however that does not exclude running this. Also I have good friends who are helping. I would say we can revisit this topic here in at least 15-20 years and it'll still run (and probably will need a new skin ;) ).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Darmody 6y agoI see they offer My kSuite for 50€/year but there's no way to see what they offer for that price without creating an account.
- Darmody 6y agoAm I being down voted because I can't find the specs of the paid version they are offering? HN, please...
- dgiol 6y agoMmm, "privacy-friendly". It asks for a phone number (it's mandatory during sign up), which can only be obtained with an official ID...
- smarx007 6y agoprivacy !== anonymity
- thdrdt 6y agoPrivacy is the control to choose what kind of things about yourself you would like to expose. If that control is gone there is no privacy.
- kgwgk 6y agoSo there is no privacy in your home because someone somewhere knows who lives there?
- smarx007 6y agoI agree with what you say. The difference is that you consider a provider your adversary when it comes to the task of that control and I consider a GDPR-respecting company to be my partner in that attempt (yes, I know who Snowden is) to control [what kind of things about yourself you would like to expose].
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago> privacy !== anonymity Why not? With the same reasoning you could deny selling people food unless they show you their government ID. Would you consider such an abomination a country where privacy still exists? If you strip people from basic anonymity for no sane reason they have no privacy. If all you want is to prevent people from signing up infinite accounts then have them solve a bazillion captchas or pay a token amount of cryptocurrency, but don't ask them to connect their account to completely unrelated private information. Email operates independently of cell phone numbers, so it shouldn't be required to connect yours to your mail address.
- nicopappl 6y agoInfomaniak is a well known Swiss hosting company that existed for over 20 years. I'm a bit surprised to see this name here in hacker news. I would be surprised if this wasn't a long-term move. Simply because claiming "free for life" and back down would be disastrous for their reputations.
- archerx 6y agoInfomaniak is one of the worst host I have ever worked with, I was forced to deal with them on a previous job and it was not a good experience, also their support was incredibly unhelpful and condescending. I also don't trust them because they pay for positive reviews, I know this because on of the "review writers" offered money me to translate some of the reviews he's written to English. I love Switzerland but I will never use a Swiss host because you pay more and get less every time.
- dt3ft 6y ago"This offer is currently only available in Switzerland and requires a swiss phone number." As such, this should not be on HN.
- adtac 6y agoNo different from the America-only services we see frequently.
- Tajnymag 6y agoShould all the US-only services be banned from HN as well? Quite a good chunk of links would be gone from the frontpage, including all the news sites that have EU IPs blocked due to GDPR.
- zeepzeep 6y agoYes
- 90red 6y agoIf we could source a single disposable virtual Swiss number we could all use it, if the service doesn't ban the number after so many uses. I'll be sure to update if I find one, everything I've seen is stale.
- smarx007 6y agohttps://www.migadu.com/ https://www.migadu.com/ is a fine (paid) Swiss email service if you have a few domains (simply a happy customer).
- ExcavateGrandMa 6y agoback|track'ing mail for free :Ð
- qertoip 6y agoThis offer is currently only available in Switzerland and requires a Swiss phone number. It's a standard KYC-based e-mail service.
- betimsl 6y agoTutanota is a very good alternative too.
- gaegt 6y agoI advice against tutanota. I explained why in a comment above. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25125002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25125002
- noncoml 6y agoNo matter what you use for hosting, make sure your email address is on a domain name you own.
- PaulKeeble 6y agoIf you buy the domain through a company like Gandi you also get some free email storage and webmail as well. It isn't great but for the cost of a domain name you can get 5 mailboxes and it is quite a good deal. When you outgrow it host it with whoever you want and transition your mail storage. Having your own domain gives you a lot of options to move your email around to the best deal and hosting at the time, companies are going to come and go and if you utilise free email a domain in front of it will avoid having to change 500 accounts on the internet when you inevitably have to move.
- jdndbfbf 6y agoWhat happens when your registrar shuts you off?
- noncoml 6y agoYou change registrar. The domain name is yours AFAIK. But in any case, Google shutting you off is much more likely than your registrar doing so.
- alexmingoia 6y agoEmail will never be secure, since it is not end-to-end encrypted. Regardless of the service you use, your data is sitting on a server available in plaintext to someone who has the keys. We need to move on from email.
- wwn_se 6y agoI prefer to pay even if its clear that the price don't cover the whole cost. Because the EU customer protections are pretty good if you are a customer (not sure that it applies if you are using free stuff). Self hosted or paid is my first choice if at all possible especially for one of the most important services.
- karamanolev 6y agoSwitzerland is not in the EU. A lot of the EU consumer protections don't apply.
- systemvoltage 6y agoFolks - pay $5/month for Fastmail, Migadu, ProtonMail, or self host + your own domain name. Companies like this come and go, it’s a good chance you’ll still own the domain name. There is no such thing as free. They’ll nag you for hosting on their site. UI will degrade over time. Something will give, if not now, at some point in the future. Lifetime is a bold claim. I’m being cynical but this smells like an attempt to get a whole lotta buzz. I also do not buy the Swiss marketing. You know how you know a company is Swiss? They’ll tell you. 100% of the time, every time. That said, I think Swiss laws are great and immune to a lot of bullshit. Edit: I meant free in absolute sense. There are some relatively free things out there. For example: readthedocs.org, but runs on donations from big companies like Microsoft. Same with GitHub (free private repos after Microsoft acquisition). Perhaps Ik is big enough to afford to build goodwill through free email? I know Apple is getting a lot of flak lately, but iCloud email is also “free” and not adtech driven.
- monkin 6y ago+1 for Migadu or ProtonMail, both offer great service, but Migadu with $19 yearly plan and amount of features is just incomparable to any other service.
- omnimus 6y agoWorth noting i suspect they had some issues and maybe the company was sold? It was quite young company. I had it for few years but there was very litle activity, no bug fixes, updates, messages. It was a bit worrysome. Now they have changed branding and pricing so hopefuly its moving again.
- monkin 6y agoI remember they had some issues at the beginning of a year when international lockdown struck. That huge surge of remote workers made problems for many companies. But I’m using them for few years and never been happier. :)
- Fnoord 6y ago
- red_admiral 6y agoLet me get this right: a Swiss company, offering email FOR LIFE, hosted on a Montenegro domain? What's the backup plan if that domain becomes unavailable for whatever political reason in the future? I would personally assess the risk of some damned stupid thing happening in the Balkans that loses them the domain higher than the same thing happening to a .ch address, and perhaps a bit too high for a service whose main selling point is for life.
- andrewshadura 6y agoThis is hilariously wrong. When did something like that happen the last time in Montenegro?
- dchest 6y agoIn 2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.yu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.yu
- londons_explore 6y agoTrying to figure out if this is sarcastic, or you aren't aware of the .yu domain...
- cee_el123 6y agooff topic - without a comma between life and developed, my first thought was that this is about some sort of artificial life developed in Switzerland
- supernova87a 6y agoFor life? Whose, mine or theirs?
- londons_explore 6y agoWhoevers is shorter...
- immmmmm 6y agothey also offer a good alternative to wetransfer: https://www.swisstransfer.com/fr https://www.swisstransfer.com/fr i'm hosting a website and cloud server by them and quite pleased so far.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- aneutron 6y agoThere is not such thing as a free lunch.
- stanislavb 6y agoThe question is - "what's the catch"?
- 90red 6y agoDoes anyone know of a free disposable SMS site which has Swiss phone number? I would really like one of these email addresses but don't have a Swiss number and they are forcing this privacy-hostile restriction on us.
- ev1 6y agoSwiss phone numbers require ID/residency, including VoIP. Several VoIP sites state "The customer can either apply for a new number with the desired prefix or transfer an existing telephone number. Swiss telephone numbers are reserved exclusively for users with verifiable domicile in Switzerland." It is extremely hostile, yes.
- madduci 6y agoI hope it will not be "free for life" as in Google Photo or HP Ink Print program, just as latest examples of "free for life" services.
- jascii 6y agoFor those thinking that being hosted/developed in Switzerland is some sort of guarantee of privacy, look no further than CryptoAG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
- nmz 6y agoAlthough I am baffled whenever I hear "lifetime" on any service. I do believe it is possible. sdf and other public shells offer email and go strong for years. Just don't offer unlimited bandwidth or memory.
- Iwan-Zotow 6y agowho's life exactly we are talking about?
- craftoman 6y agoWhy giving so much weight on Switzerland? I don't have anything personal with that country but why do I have to know it as a user? Afaik Switzerland is not part of the EU and regulations may not be stable.