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I second Fastmail for email & calendar. The key vendor lockin that has made it hard for me to get away from Google Workspace (f/k/a GSuite) is Google Docs. Lot

I second Fastmail for email & calendar. The key vendor lockin that has made it hard for me to get away from Google Workspace (f/k/a GSuite) is Google Docs. Lots of people in my work and personal life share and collaborate on Google Docs. That's not easy to deal with unless your email address is on the Google platform. I tried and desperately wanted to like Microsoft's equivalent Office 365 or whatever its called now. I quickly learned that to administer Microsoft's product requires a full time job. It's horrendously buggy, complex and not catered to SMBs. Microsoft Office itself is pretty good and Word's collaboration features are approaching parity with Google's. But administering a domain in Microsoft world is just not worth the effort. Google Workspace's domain admin panel, on the other hand, seems to strike the right balance between features and complexity and more-or-less works as expected. I am really trying to move my life away from Google, but as long as folks in my sphere use Google Docs, that is hard to do. If Google Docs doesn't concern you, I fully endorse Fastmail and have used it in my personal life since 2017.

cproctor 5y ago
This has mostly been my experience as well. I moved my email and calendaring to Fastmail, keeping my vestigal gmail address. I use this google account for Docs and nothing else. (For academics, do not keep your writing/cv/syllabi/etc in a Google account tied to your university email address!) I still get a personal email addressed to gmail every couple of months despite a years-long process of autoreplies asking family and friends to move to my new email address. It takes a long time but it's worth it. As I've started hosting more websites (mostly academic projects like unfold.studio or learning-machines.net), I have come to appreciate more and more the ability to point multiple domains' MX records to my single fastmail account. A nice additional benefit is the ability to handle wildcard email addresses. When I log in to ebay, it's with ebay.com@<subdomain>. When I log in to the IRS, it's with irs.gov@<subdomain>. When someone sells an email address or starts spamming it, I can cut it off. And I can hope that maybe a few less rows are getting joined in the big database in the sky.
- extra88 5y ago
  > A nice additional benefit is the ability to handle wildcard email addresses … > When someone sells an email address or starts spamming it, I can cut it off. If you have your Fastmail account configured for wildcard, or "catch-all" addressing, does it let you cut off specific aliases? G Suite/Workspace lets you do catch-all addressing but if one address starts getting spammed, there doesn't seem a way to make it bounce, you can only filter it out. One thing Fastmail Standard accounts have over G Suite/Workspace is allowing an order of magnitude more specific aliases. When you use the address-per-site technique you describe you can easily hit the few dozen alias limit per-account on G Suite/Workspace.
  - cproctor 5y ago
    Hmm, I'm actually not sure. It hasn't happened a ton so I usually just filter out spam after it arrives.
auslegung 5y ago
https://cryptpad.fr/ https://cryptpad.fr/ Looks like an excellent private online office suite. Others may still be on Google and you’re unlikely to change that, but you can start using this for your own stuff (and they have sharing)
larrymyers 5y ago
I just went through this experience due to the notification from Google that my free G Suite Legacy account was going away. Fastmail's documentation and onboarding experience made it a few hours of work to do the migration. I'll also be going the same route and using an old vanilla gmail account for Google Docs as needed.
lrvick 5y ago
When people send me google docs I make use of the guest account feature. You do not need a Google account.
- hkhanna 5y ago
  It's still doable, yes, although the guest account feature is relatively new. But it's cumbersome to use because, at least the last time I used it, every 7 days you have to re-authenticate via a verification code sent to your email.
NGRhodes 5y ago
You can still get a google account without signing up for Gmail, so you can still use Google Docs and share/collaborate fine.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
I just switched to Fastmail this past week and like it quite a bit. On a related note, I changed my credit card email address, and it triggered a security alert & they froze all 4 of my credit cards. They asked for three different forms of documentation to prove I was who I say I am, and reviewing the evidence will take 7 to 10 days. So if you change your email, be prepared for a little pain just in case.
- rovr138 5y ago
  Switch to your own domain if you can. That way you can change providers and never worry about this stuff.
mrbonner 5y ago
Thank you for your suggestion. I have now paid for G workspace for a month so that I could migrate. I am the only user and not using any other products of G suite. Fast mail seems to be the best option for me.
627467 5y ago
The thing is: if the custom domain email was setup as a new Google account (not a gsuite one) we would get most (all?) the same features as gsuite including docs and drive. I assume these account will continue to have this, no?

cproctor 5y ago

This has mostly been my experience as well. I moved my email and calendaring to Fastmail, keeping my vestigal gmail address. I use this google account for Docs and nothing else. (For academics, do not keep your writing/cv/syllabi/etc in a Google account tied to your university email address!) I still get a personal email addressed to gmail every couple of months despite a years-long process of autoreplies asking family and friends to move to my new email address. It takes a long time but it's worth it. As I've started hosting more websites (mostly academic projects like unfold.studio or learning-machines.net), I have come to appreciate more and more the ability to point multiple domains' MX records to my single fastmail account. A nice additional benefit is the ability to handle wildcard email addresses. When I log in to ebay, it's with ebay.com@<subdomain>. When I log in to the IRS, it's with irs.gov@<subdomain>. When someone sells an email address or starts spamming it, I can cut it off. And I can hope that maybe a few less rows are getting joined in the big database in the sky.

extra88 5y ago
> A nice additional benefit is the ability to handle wildcard email addresses … > When someone sells an email address or starts spamming it, I can cut it off. If you have your Fastmail account configured for wildcard, or "catch-all" addressing, does it let you cut off specific aliases? G Suite/Workspace lets you do catch-all addressing but if one address starts getting spammed, there doesn't seem a way to make it bounce, you can only filter it out. One thing Fastmail Standard accounts have over G Suite/Workspace is allowing an order of magnitude more specific aliases. When you use the address-per-site technique you describe you can easily hit the few dozen alias limit per-account on G Suite/Workspace.
- cproctor 5y ago
  Hmm, I'm actually not sure. It hasn't happened a ton so I usually just filter out spam after it arrives.

auslegung 5y ago

https://cryptpad.fr/ https://cryptpad.fr/ Looks like an excellent private online office suite. Others may still be on Google and you’re unlikely to change that, but you can start using this for your own stuff (and they have sharing)

larrymyers 5y ago

I just went through this experience due to the notification from Google that my free G Suite Legacy account was going away. Fastmail's documentation and onboarding experience made it a few hours of work to do the migration. I'll also be going the same route and using an old vanilla gmail account for Google Docs as needed.

lrvick 5y ago

When people send me google docs I make use of the guest account feature. You do not need a Google account.

hkhanna 5y ago
It's still doable, yes, although the guest account feature is relatively new. But it's cumbersome to use because, at least the last time I used it, every 7 days you have to re-authenticate via a verification code sent to your email.

NGRhodes 5y ago

You can still get a google account without signing up for Gmail, so you can still use Google Docs and share/collaborate fine.

devoutsalsa 5y ago

I just switched to Fastmail this past week and like it quite a bit. On a related note, I changed my credit card email address, and it triggered a security alert & they froze all 4 of my credit cards. They asked for three different forms of documentation to prove I was who I say I am, and reviewing the evidence will take 7 to 10 days. So if you change your email, be prepared for a little pain just in case.

rovr138 5y ago
Switch to your own domain if you can. That way you can change providers and never worry about this stuff.

mrbonner 5y ago

Thank you for your suggestion. I have now paid for G workspace for a month so that I could migrate. I am the only user and not using any other products of G suite. Fast mail seems to be the best option for me.

627467 5y ago

The thing is: if the custom domain email was setup as a new Google account (not a gsuite one) we would get most (all?) the same features as gsuite including docs and drive. I assume these account will continue to have this, no?