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What's a good alternative to gmail? Fastmail? Protonmail? Other? I don't mind paying a small subscription.

pportela 5y ago
Personally I liked disroot, not only does their email fits me well (most of the time), but so does their calendar. For some reason though, sometimes some emails take a bit longer to reach you, but that's quite rare.
microtonal 5y ago
I have been using Fastmail for many years. My wife also switched a couple of years ago. The web interface is fast, they have great IMAP support, contribute to open standards (JMAP). They can also be the DNS server for your domain. When I contacted support a few years ago about a keyboard shortcut issue in their webmail, they were very friendly and rolled out a fixed to their beta version very quickly.
- jeffparsons 5y ago
  I use Fastmail and have been very happy with them. They have been trying to deal with a DDoS attack from around the time this story broke. I initially didn't think anything of the timing, but given that this story is _literally about potentially criminal conspiracy_ it tickles the part of my brain that wants to indulge in other conspiracy theories -- e.g. someone connected to Google thinking "quick, we'd better make it look like a bad idea to try moving off GMail".
markmiro 5y ago
I use hey.com You have to get used to their system but now I prefer it compared to Gmail
lamontcg 5y ago
I mean at this point hotmail, outlook or icloud would be preferable.
tmccrary55 5y ago
I have a paid protonmail account but haven't fully switched because the search feature is abysmal.
- addingnumbers 5y ago
  Their spam detection is true garbage. One year in I had zero actual spams blocked and hundreds of false positives. Unsolicited mail from a direct mailer in India for an SEO webinar, straight to the inbox. Every message from your bank, straight to the spam folder. Am I sure it didn't catch some spam and age it out before I saw it? Yes, because I had to go in every 2-3 weeks to pull my banking messages and other false positives out. A process which invariably went "Open Junk folder, Look for spam, Find none, Check All, Move to Inbox." Here's the kicker, there's no option to even turn spam filtering off. It took me five cycles with the support team to get them to offer an inscrutable sieve filter that would disable filtering if I pasted it exactly right in an unvalidated free text field. (The second-to-last agent told me there is a way to do it with sieve filters and then closed the ticket without saying how, so I had to open another ticket asking if they would kindly share the solution they coyly hinted at.)
  - Drdrdrq 5y ago
    So what you are saying is that they are very good at filtering spam, they just got inbox and junk folders mixed up? ;)
    - slig 5y ago
      Gmail was behaving exactly like that for me for a couple of months. There was a huge HN thread of people with the same issue and that might have made someone at Google to fix finally the issue.
kolme 5y ago
I recommend Posteo! https://posteo.de/en https://posteo.de/en
mikem170 5y ago
I'm very happy with gandi.net, $16.49 per year for a .com domain name and two email accounts (accessible via web, imap, etc), plus aliases. Been around for twenty years. They have a "no bullshit" promise.
ladberg 5y ago
I use Gmail but never use the web interface (or log in with it at all for the most part). I just use the built in mail clients for iOS/macOS but any app will do. They can still see your mail but can't do much with it as I use DDG for the most part and am logged into a different account for stuff like YouTube.
Winsaucerer 5y ago
Not saying it’s a good alternative, but if you believe Apple’s marketing about privacy, they now allow you to use your own custom domain for family emails.
Anadorr 5y ago
I've done my research just yesterday and decided upon mailbox.org. I fully switched over in less than 4 hours. It's hosted in Germany (GDPR regulations and reasonable privacy), supports custom domains, provides cloud storage and office suite and supports full inbox encryption with your own public key - the service provider allegedly can't even read your email after they encrypt it. To move your existing email from GMail, first remove large junk/spam/ads emails and then download everything with Thunderbird over IMAP, then slowly copy emails to mailbox.org folder. It also provides cloud storage (which I intend to use in addition to Syncthing) and cloud office suite.
snowl 5y ago
Migadu is very cheap and a great alternative. 20 dollars a year if you don't use email much

Personally I liked disroot, not only does their email fits me well (most of the time), but so does their calendar. For some reason though, sometimes some emails take a bit longer to reach you, but that's quite rare.

microtonal 5y ago

I have been using Fastmail for many years. My wife also switched a couple of years ago. The web interface is fast, they have great IMAP support, contribute to open standards (JMAP). They can also be the DNS server for your domain. When I contacted support a few years ago about a keyboard shortcut issue in their webmail, they were very friendly and rolled out a fixed to their beta version very quickly.

jeffparsons 5y ago
I use Fastmail and have been very happy with them. They have been trying to deal with a DDoS attack from around the time this story broke. I initially didn't think anything of the timing, but given that this story is _literally about potentially criminal conspiracy_ it tickles the part of my brain that wants to indulge in other conspiracy theories -- e.g. someone connected to Google thinking "quick, we'd better make it look like a bad idea to try moving off GMail".

markmiro 5y ago

I use hey.com You have to get used to their system but now I prefer it compared to Gmail

lamontcg 5y ago

I mean at this point hotmail, outlook or icloud would be preferable.

tmccrary55 5y ago

I have a paid protonmail account but haven't fully switched because the search feature is abysmal.

addingnumbers 5y ago
Their spam detection is true garbage. One year in I had zero actual spams blocked and hundreds of false positives. Unsolicited mail from a direct mailer in India for an SEO webinar, straight to the inbox. Every message from your bank, straight to the spam folder. Am I sure it didn't catch some spam and age it out before I saw it? Yes, because I had to go in every 2-3 weeks to pull my banking messages and other false positives out. A process which invariably went "Open Junk folder, Look for spam, Find none, Check All, Move to Inbox." Here's the kicker, there's no option to even turn spam filtering off. It took me five cycles with the support team to get them to offer an inscrutable sieve filter that would disable filtering if I pasted it exactly right in an unvalidated free text field. (The second-to-last agent told me there is a way to do it with sieve filters and then closed the ticket without saying how, so I had to open another ticket asking if they would kindly share the solution they coyly hinted at.)
- Drdrdrq 5y ago
  So what you are saying is that they are very good at filtering spam, they just got inbox and junk folders mixed up? ;)
  - slig 5y ago
    Gmail was behaving exactly like that for me for a couple of months. There was a huge HN thread of people with the same issue and that might have made someone at Google to fix finally the issue.

kolme 5y ago

I recommend Posteo! https://posteo.de/en https://posteo.de/en

mikem170 5y ago

I'm very happy with gandi.net, $16.49 per year for a .com domain name and two email accounts (accessible via web, imap, etc), plus aliases. Been around for twenty years. They have a "no bullshit" promise.

ladberg 5y ago

I use Gmail but never use the web interface (or log in with it at all for the most part). I just use the built in mail clients for iOS/macOS but any app will do. They can still see your mail but can't do much with it as I use DDG for the most part and am logged into a different account for stuff like YouTube.

Winsaucerer 5y ago

Not saying it’s a good alternative, but if you believe Apple’s marketing about privacy, they now allow you to use your own custom domain for family emails.

Anadorr 5y ago

I've done my research just yesterday and decided upon mailbox.org. I fully switched over in less than 4 hours. It's hosted in Germany (GDPR regulations and reasonable privacy), supports custom domains, provides cloud storage and office suite and supports full inbox encryption with your own public key - the service provider allegedly can't even read your email after they encrypt it. To move your existing email from GMail, first remove large junk/spam/ads emails and then download everything with Thunderbird over IMAP, then slowly copy emails to mailbox.org folder. It also provides cloud storage (which I intend to use in addition to Syncthing) and cloud office suite.

snowl 5y ago

Migadu is very cheap and a great alternative. 20 dollars a year if you don't use email much