6 ms·

Ask HN: Good private email host with IMAP?

53 points by zamalek 4y ago

I'm looking for suggestions for an email host that includes IMAP access: my wife is very attached to the Gmail interface (web and phone), and so I need to cover that in the transition (and maybe convince her otherwise in the long run). That sadly immediately rules out Protonmail. Bonus points for EU jurisdiction, and a mail interface that doesn't look like the 90s (for my use).

bounder 4y ago
I have been using https://soverin.net https://soverin.net. It has a privacy-first approach to email, while at the same time they are transparent in regards to its operation. They operate and are based in the Netherlands.
mtmail 4y ago
I use https://runbox.com/ https://runbox.com/ based in Norway
LeonTheremin 4y ago
Privacy does not exist.
- usr1106 4y ago
  Privacy might face many challenges. But in the freer part of world the biggest challenge is users selling their privacy in exchange for so-called free services.
- addingnumbers 4y ago
  Lots of people say privacy doesn't exist but for some reason they'll usually refuse to follow up by publishing a full dump of their email and instant messages.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thesketh 4y ago
I've been using the free mailboxes Gandi gives you with a domain for years. It's been solid and both UI options (SoGo and Roundcube) are decent
369548684892826 4y ago
Fastmail is good. Their web calendar is also great, and can sync with google calendar if you want it to. Bonus feature: Fastmail Notes can sync into iOS Notes app.
lucideer 4y ago
Fastmail is the best I've used. If EU jurisdiction is important to you, Runbox* and Mailfence are pretty ok - their service isn't as well-documented nor polished/reliable as Fastmail (e.g. I've hit some odd errors fetching large amounts of messages over IMAP - e.g. connecting a new client and blind first big sync of mail on an account with a large archive) but overall they're both extremely serviceable. Re: mail interfaces, Runbox's is a little better than Mailfence, but both are a little dated. Again, Fastmail is better here; non-EU is their only fault imo. * Runbox is technically not actually EU, per se, being Norwegian.
DougMellon 4y ago
I have been using Fastmail for three years now and very happy with the product.
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
mailinabox and the VPS of your chosing
miniman1337 4y ago
infomaniak is very cheap and based in Switzerland, has a modern UI and supports IMAP
kitkat_new 4y ago
mailbox.org
usr1106 4y ago
mailbox.org is German. They allow you to register and pay without contact details (although a full criminal investigation could proably easily trace back the payment). I have not used them except for some occasional testing, but the engineering made a solid impression.
- abawany 4y ago
  I've been a mailbox.org customer for a few years and have found them to be very reliable and reasonable. The pricing is also great and they allow the use of one's own domain. My only criticism is their 2fa implementation.
- tpetry 4y ago
  I am using mailbox.org and they are very good at what they do. The company behind them do mailserver stuff for 20+ years. BUT their UI is from the 90s which rules them out by the requirements. It‘s not a bummer for me as I never use the Web UI.
luke2m 4y ago
https://purelymail.com/ https://purelymail.com/ has no hard limits and roundcube (a modern looking webmail) but is a smaller operation.
AlbertVAustin 4y ago
I've been using https://migadu.com https://migadu.com for some time and it works fine (also underwent a Gmail->Migadu migration using imapsync).
worg 4y ago
Migadu is in Switzerland, I've been a customer for a few years and had pretty much no issues (The only one I remember was a delivery issue I had once), they support IMAP/SMTP/POP and although their Web isn't the most modern out there it looks OK for 2022
- junon 4y ago
  Seconding Migadu, support is also very quick and pleasant.
throwaway787544 4y ago
Fastmail is decent. It's not perfect but it works. Very good integration with Google to retrieve legacy mail/calendar/contacts. Can even send mail through your Gmail account.
Noxis 4y ago
posteo.de or mailbox.org see: https://digital-hilfe.com/die-besten-und-sichersten-e-mail-anbieter-im-vergleich/ https://digital-hilfe.com/die-besten-und-sichersten-e-mail-a... sorry it's in german, but you could let run a translation tool
chewz 4y ago
Fastmail... Decent option, good support, can host static webpage and dump your file on a file store...
prophesi 4y ago
I've been using Mailfence since it's built in to Thunderbird and seem trustworhy. Even their support team communicated only via PGP, which is sadly a fun and novel experience in 2022. I think you have to pay for IMAP/POP/etc support though.
rasmusei 4y ago
+1 for Fastmail. Very fast, very reliable since I started using it in 2016. Absolutely the best webmail client I have used. UI not too unlike Gmail. The UI is fully keyboard-controllable for almost all tasks. Great search. Great calendar. Good amount of settings & security control for power users. Android app works well.
- evulhotdog 4y ago
  It pains me that I can’t customize the keyboard shortcuts on Fastmail web client, It made me not switch. Their mobile app seemed fairly kludgey as well. Certain gestures didn’t really work the way that you would think because they implemented some custom way of handling it which just made the user experience worse.
zaggynl 4y ago
https://disroot.org/en/services/email https://disroot.org/en/services/email
cjk 4y ago
After seeing Gmail harvest my messages for ads, I started hosting my own email server. It was fun for a time, but got awful tedious, so I switched to Fastmail. They’ve been great. Haven’t looked back.
- barbarbar 4y ago
  How did you discover that?
  - cjk 4y ago
    It was pretty obvious based on the ads I was seeing while looking at my mail. They allegedly stopped doing this in 2017: https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-emails-1202477321/ https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...
    - barbarbar 4y ago
      Ouch. That is indeed horrible. Thank you for link - I didn't know.
kovac 4y ago
I recently switched to Runbox and so far so good. Before switching I tried out the following 1. Fastmail: tried and stopped using because of Australian law that is relatively more hostile to privacy and is more expensive that Runbox when adjusted to features (e.g. alias count limit for personal domains) 2. Mailbox.org: Tried and stopped using because firstly they made a payment routing mistake when I upgraded to a paid account during the trial and blocked sending of emails. Took a few days to get it cleared. Also, there are important features you can't try on a free trial like sensing emails to non-mailbox.org domains, configuring your own domains, etc. They quote alleviating spam account risk but it doesn't feel right when runbox allows you to try these features for free before signing up. Also, mailbox.org forces cloud drive, video calls, etc on you. I don't need that crap. Just need a solid mail service. If you want encryption, you have to upload/let them generate the private key for you. While this is technically necessary to encrypt your mail box using pgp, I don't think this is a good idea. I think entrusting the key and the lock to the same people defeats the purpose of encryption. 3. Posteo: doesn't allow personal domains. This is a deal breaker for me. 4. Soverin: I ran into some issue with Soverin. Can't remember what that was. I really wanted to use them otherwise since they seem like a small team and I like supporting small businesses. Finally I settled for runbox because they show a decent level of commitment to privacy, cheaper for the set of features they offer (unlimited aliases on your own domain, catch all, etc), let you try all their features on free account which I think is a very good sales posture, there's a fantastic deal right now that gives you a two year subscription for the price of one. I do not have any affiliation with runbox btw. I highly recommend using your own domain in case you need to lift and shift at some point, use pgp keys for privacy whenever possible and take a principled stand against bullshit laws like those in Australia if you care about privacy. Overall, right now, runbox will give you the best set of features and comparable privacy guarantees to their competitors for a better price.
- roydivision 4y ago
  +1 for Runbox. I’ve been a client for over ten years, no problems.
- bachmeier 4y ago
  > tried and stopped using because of Australian law that is relatively more hostile to privacy I see this kind of thing all the time. I could understand if you emailed a lot of stuff to yourself, but privacy is ultimately going to be determined by both email providers. It seems in this case that email is being used as a substitute for secure file sharing and secure chat.
kevincox 4y ago
I tried a few but eventually decided to run my own (for incoming). Fastmail was the best. They have IMAP integrated with contacts and calendaring. Sieve filtering and good webui. The main reason I left them is that they were rejecting (not just spam-folder) important mail, even if I whitelisted the domain by adding a contact. I contacted support and it took them forever to get back and when they finally did they basically said "nope, we will reject those, you are wrong about what spam is". It didn't leave a good taste in my mouth. Migadu was pretty good but I had trouble getting my catchall accounts working how I wanted too. MXroute was very opinionated and I didn't agree with all of their opinions. They pretty readily block large blocks of IPs or senders so you will miss mail. They also don't believe in Bayesian spam filtering and it shows as a lot of spam ends up in your inbox. So not only was I missing mail I wanted I was getting a lot of mail I didn't. They also have 5 webmails that aren't well integrated as well as 2 address books and 2 calendars. They seem to really like trying new things but miss out on integration such as using my address book for spam filtering. On the upside the support was fast and direct. I appreciate the clarity of the responses. I think there are some people who would love this provider but their choices don't work well for me. While I can't recommend it I ended up managing my own incoming mail. Spam was surprisingly barely an issue. RSpamd with default settings is working excellently. Basically I dumped my spam folder (1 month) and archive (many years) into the spam learning and it has been doing an excellent job. The flexibility of running your own mail-server is also nice because I can do things like signed addresses for giving out different emails to different companies.
- d12bb 4y ago
  Not judging on the mails itself, but actually rejecting is the right way. Spam folders tend to get ignored, if one doesn't know he misses an email, he won't look there. When a mail gets rejected, the sender is noticed, so he can take measures to ensure the recipient gets the info.
  - kevincox 4y ago
    In practice roughly 0% of senders will react, except for maybe add you to a blacklist of bouncing addresses. If it is in my spam folder at least I can find it if I know I should have it. I've wondered if it would be useful to reject + store in spam. This way I have a copy and the sender can know that I likely won't see it.
munro 4y ago
> That sadly immediately rules out Protonmail. I think you could run the ProtonMail Bridge on a personal server. It wasn't intended for that, so IDK how secure it is for exposing on the open internet. Protonmail is soooo good, so I'd hate to rule it out, and I'd like a solution too. And it makes sense why they don't support IMAP directly, because the protocol doesn't support it, because the emails are all encrypted on their server, and IMAP doesn't support end to end encryption (to my knowledge)
- fragile_frogs 4y ago
  Protonmail is awesome. Even though I have been a paid customer for years, mostly to support them, I only recently started to actually use the products and they are really good and I love the focus on privacy.
d12bb 4y ago
I'm happy customer of posteo.de for years now. They don't want to have data they don't absolutely need (e.g., you can pay cash envelope), they're very transparent on what they do with the data they need to have, gov requests etc., they have optional full encryption built in… and it's only €1/month :)
- achusay 4y ago
  They would be my first choice, but the fact that they have their home page in so few languages (English, German and French) makes me rule it out. I don't want to share my address and then have to answer the same question over and over as to why am I using some weird foreign email provider. For me, that's a huge plus for Tutanota/Proton but Tutanota doesn't support IMAP and Proton is too expensive (I don't care about its other features, the only thing I need is IMAP).
fxtentacle 4y ago
mailbox.org (Berlin, Germany)
lizardactivist 4y ago
Posteo
paulnpace 4y ago
I haven't actually used it, but as a long-time self-hoster I do keep an eye out for some place to migrate should something happen, and the one I've eyed is https://mailcheap.co https://mailcheap.co. I haven't found any meaningful negative reviews online and they are by far the lowest price. They primarily use OVH I think in France, it's stated somewhere on their site.
- deeesstoronto 4y ago
  Does anyone have experience with mailcheap.co? I also have an eye on it - mailcheap.co, migadu, and mxroute let you use the dovecot superuser (I.e. dsync to backup/replicate etc)
NoboruWataya 4y ago
I use mailbox.org and have no issues with it. I don't think the web interface looks amazing but I only use it with IMAP clients so it's not an issue for me. You can get a free trial account which is quite limited in functionality but will show you the web UI at least, so you can make your own decision. I have also used soverin.net and broadly found it was fine, but ran into a couple of issues like difficulties managing spam settings, poor documentation on website etc. Worth noting that soverin.net also requires a phone number to sign up, which some people dislike on privacy grounds (may or may not be a deal-breaker for you).
marssaxman 4y ago
I've been happy with pair.com. I don't know what you think the 90s looked like, but they have a roundcube instance available, or you can run whatever you want on your hosting account.
- lcall 4y ago
  ditto for pair.com -- reasonable prices, good service, no weird behaviors, been in business a long time and seem likely to continue.
folkrav 4y ago
Seeing all the praise for Fastmail, I just switched today from my previous Google Workspace. Import process was seamless, things are running smooth. Interface is rather snappy. Just had to reconfigure my IMAP/SMTP settings and generate app passwords where necessary. Happy new customer, for the time being.
Zeik0s 4y ago
mailcow.de => hosted mailcow on servercow.de, a sleak UI, hosted in Germany
aborsy 4y ago
What’s the difference between Gmail and Fastmail services? The governments from both sides mine email data aggressively. Wether the companies also do it, and to what extent, there is no way to tell (Fastmail says it doesn’t, unlike Google, but we can’t verify). As for differences, Gmail security is unrivaled AFAIK, and Gmail is free.