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Register your own domain and use that for your email, and you'll no longer be held hostage by Google. Takes almost no effort and will cost you a few dollars a m

Register your own domain and use that for your email, and you'll no longer be held hostage by Google. Takes almost no effort and will cost you a few dollars a month.

lenerdenator 5mo ago
> and will cost you a few dollars a month Dead on arrival.
- AstroBen 5mo ago
  If you don't feel that's worth it you can use Gmail, yeah.
  - lenerdenator 5mo ago
    It's not just me; most people won't. That's the issue.
    - AstroBen 5mo ago
      Why is it an issue? I don't care what other people do with their email.
      - okanat 5mo ago
        Democracy is the style of ruling where majority's ignorance dominates over the vulnerable. You will be eventually forced to use internet and forced to use the way your government wants you to use it.
        AstroBen 5mo ago
        Yeah, fair point. They're certainly trying to push it in that direction but so far there are still alternatives. I've seen age verification get a hell of a lot of pushback so that's encouraging.
      - catlikesshrimp 5mo ago
        Because when most people use the one email host, they neglect all other users. Even my yahoo email is regarded as second grade citizen now. A hospital straight told me they refuse all yahoo addresses.
        bigstrat2003 5mo ago
        I mean, that's certainly retarded, but most businesses aren't that stupid in how they choose to run things. I've never, not even once, run into a business who cares what your email is. They will use any address you want, whether you have a known provider, or self host.
      - lenerdenator 5mo ago
        I can set up all of the personal services I want. The average person does not want to do that. They do not have the skills, and it does not add value for them to do so 99.999999% of the time. The tools and offerings we're given are built to fulfill the needs of the greatest number of people. For better or worse, those people are not people who want to mess with the infrastructure around their email.
    - hedora 5mo ago
      Even if your time is worth $0, you're paying far more than a few dollars a month to have a google account. Price discrimination from third party vendors is probably running you 5-10% of your credit card bill every month.
      - lenerdenator 5mo ago
        That's opaque to most users. If it weren't, then Google's business model would not be viable.
- xp84 5mo ago
  I know this ^ seems unreasonable, but I know you’re right. Mostly because of conditioning: it’s been 25 years now that free webmail is the way Gen-X, Y, Z, and future generations do email. Boomers and the older Gen-Xers may still be hanging onto an ISP address, if they haven’t moved too much since the 1990s. After all that, plus with their email addresses being the opposite of portable, there is no limit to how much crap people will take, when the alternative is learning a little bit about domain registration and DNS, and paying $60 a year for Fastmail or whatever. Email, they believe, is supposed to be free as in beer. Sad but true. Also, confession: I used to use first name @ full name . com and got tired of the confused looks and typos when I had to give it out, so now I use a six-character Gmail with numbers so that it’s just like people expect.
pavel_lishin 5mo ago
But what do you actually use as the email host? If you just set up your own mail server, you're almost certainly going to have everything you send go straight to spam. You still need to register with someone like google, or Proton, etc.
- AstroBen 5mo ago
  Yeah, but you're not beholden to them. There are 100 different hosts you can use if you own your own domain. If a host changes in a way you don't like, just move your domain elsewhere. If you're using Gmail, you're stuck with Google. Being independent of any one host is the important part to me. Personally I have my own mail server and use smtp2go for sending which handles the deliverability issue. I'm not sure it's worth it going this way but I found it fun and its been 0 maintenance
- tomjen3 5mo ago
  I have done as OP suggested and the main benefit is that I can move my email elsewhere. For now my email is with Apple, since they offers email hosting as part of the icloud+ (or whatever its called). If they decide to die/enshittify, then I can move to another host without having to change any contacts. One the other hand, since I did use my bare gmail for some years, I am still stuck with it, in case I have some service that depends on it.
  - kstrauser 5mo ago
    I switched from self-hosting to Apple’s servers a year or so ago and it’s been splendid. No issues sending to other servers, decent spam filtering, and no nickel-and-dining for having more than one domain, or more than one user, or adding email aliases. If you’re already paying for iCloud+, there’s no extra charge for it. I don’t wanna sound like a salesman. It’s just that it’s been a surprising good experience for my family, especially for the price tag of $0. And if it ever does start to suck, I can point our domains at a different server.
- grayhatter 5mo ago
  > you're almost certainly going to have everything you send go straight to spam. I run my own email server on DO, nothing I send goes to spam. (I normally follow up on nearly all emails in case you're assuming some flavors of sample bias.)
ColonelBlimp 5mo ago
While I agree with your suggestion (that's what I've doing for years), I'm not sure the "almost not effort" point is helpful or realistic when it comes to a huge majority of users. Apart from people who are knowledgeable or at least curious enough to search for alternative options, I suspect many people don't even know what a domain is or that they could register one for them to use. The jump from "why pay for email if Gmail/Outlook is free?" to "register a personal domain and use it for your emails" is too big. I don't have the ideal solution but what I've suggested to friends and relatives is they should consider paying for their personal email accounts. Most of them don't care but some do and, as a result, at least try to understand what they want or need and are willing to pay for.

Register your own domain and use that for your email, and you'll no longer be held hostage by Google. Takes almost no effort and will cost you a few dollars a month.

lenerdenator 5mo ago

> and will cost you a few dollars a month Dead on arrival.

AstroBen 5mo ago
If you don't feel that's worth it you can use Gmail, yeah.
- lenerdenator 5mo ago
  It's not just me; most people won't. That's the issue.
  - AstroBen 5mo ago
    Why is it an issue? I don't care what other people do with their email.
    - okanat 5mo ago
      Democracy is the style of ruling where majority's ignorance dominates over the vulnerable. You will be eventually forced to use internet and forced to use the way your government wants you to use it.
      - AstroBen 5mo ago
        Yeah, fair point. They're certainly trying to push it in that direction but so far there are still alternatives. I've seen age verification get a hell of a lot of pushback so that's encouraging.
    - catlikesshrimp 5mo ago
      Because when most people use the one email host, they neglect all other users. Even my yahoo email is regarded as second grade citizen now. A hospital straight told me they refuse all yahoo addresses.
      - bigstrat2003 5mo ago
        I mean, that's certainly retarded, but most businesses aren't that stupid in how they choose to run things. I've never, not even once, run into a business who cares what your email is. They will use any address you want, whether you have a known provider, or self host.
    - lenerdenator 5mo ago
      I can set up all of the personal services I want. The average person does not want to do that. They do not have the skills, and it does not add value for them to do so 99.999999% of the time. The tools and offerings we're given are built to fulfill the needs of the greatest number of people. For better or worse, those people are not people who want to mess with the infrastructure around their email.
  - hedora 5mo ago
    Even if your time is worth $0, you're paying far more than a few dollars a month to have a google account. Price discrimination from third party vendors is probably running you 5-10% of your credit card bill every month.
    - lenerdenator 5mo ago
      That's opaque to most users. If it weren't, then Google's business model would not be viable.
xp84 5mo ago
I know this ^ seems unreasonable, but I know you’re right. Mostly because of conditioning: it’s been 25 years now that free webmail is the way Gen-X, Y, Z, and future generations do email. Boomers and the older Gen-Xers may still be hanging onto an ISP address, if they haven’t moved too much since the 1990s. After all that, plus with their email addresses being the opposite of portable, there is no limit to how much crap people will take, when the alternative is learning a little bit about domain registration and DNS, and paying $60 a year for Fastmail or whatever. Email, they believe, is supposed to be free as in beer. Sad but true. Also, confession: I used to use first name @ full name . com and got tired of the confused looks and typos when I had to give it out, so now I use a six-character Gmail with numbers so that it’s just like people expect.

pavel_lishin 5mo ago

But what do you actually use as the email host? If you just set up your own mail server, you're almost certainly going to have everything you send go straight to spam. You still need to register with someone like google, or Proton, etc.

AstroBen 5mo ago
Yeah, but you're not beholden to them. There are 100 different hosts you can use if you own your own domain. If a host changes in a way you don't like, just move your domain elsewhere. If you're using Gmail, you're stuck with Google. Being independent of any one host is the important part to me. Personally I have my own mail server and use smtp2go for sending which handles the deliverability issue. I'm not sure it's worth it going this way but I found it fun and its been 0 maintenance
tomjen3 5mo ago
I have done as OP suggested and the main benefit is that I can move my email elsewhere. For now my email is with Apple, since they offers email hosting as part of the icloud+ (or whatever its called). If they decide to die/enshittify, then I can move to another host without having to change any contacts. One the other hand, since I did use my bare gmail for some years, I am still stuck with it, in case I have some service that depends on it.
- kstrauser 5mo ago
  I switched from self-hosting to Apple’s servers a year or so ago and it’s been splendid. No issues sending to other servers, decent spam filtering, and no nickel-and-dining for having more than one domain, or more than one user, or adding email aliases. If you’re already paying for iCloud+, there’s no extra charge for it. I don’t wanna sound like a salesman. It’s just that it’s been a surprising good experience for my family, especially for the price tag of $0. And if it ever does start to suck, I can point our domains at a different server.
grayhatter 5mo ago
> you're almost certainly going to have everything you send go straight to spam. I run my own email server on DO, nothing I send goes to spam. (I normally follow up on nearly all emails in case you're assuming some flavors of sample bias.)

ColonelBlimp 5mo ago

While I agree with your suggestion (that's what I've doing for years), I'm not sure the "almost not effort" point is helpful or realistic when it comes to a huge majority of users. Apart from people who are knowledgeable or at least curious enough to search for alternative options, I suspect many people don't even know what a domain is or that they could register one for them to use. The jump from "why pay for email if Gmail/Outlook is free?" to "register a personal domain and use it for your emails" is too big. I don't have the ideal solution but what I've suggested to friends and relatives is they should consider paying for their personal email accounts. Most of them don't care but some do and, as a result, at least try to understand what they want or need and are willing to pay for.