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Poll: Do you use a gmail.com address for your primary personal email?
- yen223 14y agoMy primary email is tied to Google Apps, but it's not a gmail.com address.
- brianritchie 14y agoI have two depending on who I give it to - Newsletters and Signups or people I hardly want to hear from = GMail.com and a Google App one for those I actually want to hear from
- ch0wn 14y agoI have my own domain that I use as my primary email address, but it redirects everything to my GMail inbox. Just as a safety net if something goes horribly wrong.
- jensnockert 14y agoGoogle apps, but with my personal domain.
- yuvadam 14y agoYes, but not for long. Migrating to a self-hosted mail server is one of my top priorities [1] for 2013. [1] - http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_we...
- ashleyblackmore 14y agoAny ideas/plans for how you will do the migration?
- yuvadam 14y agoI don't really care about Gmail 'features' that I will be missing out on, spam detection is probably the thing I'll miss the most, but that's a tradeoff I can live with. Other than that, there's the thing that I need to trust my VM provider, but that much easier than trusting a data mining conglomerate with your private conversations. In the end, self hosting an email server isn't that big of a deal to set up and maintain.
- specto 14y agoSpam is really the only reason I haven't switched over to self-hosting at this point. Does anyone know of a good service or method to provide similar spam protection that google provides?
- oelmekki 14y agoSpamassassin does quite a good job at spam detection. And you can configure its aggressiveness to fit what you prefer.
- hosay123 14y agoI used to believe that spam detection was the critical component that would be difficult to replace, but going back about a year now I don't believe that's true any more. I've even seen Gmail mark its own address confirmation mails as spam, along with many mails from people I frequently converse with.
- cmsj 14y agoEmail isn't private unless it's encrypted :)
- nileshgr 14y agoYou can always setup block level encryption using dm-crypt/lvm in a Linux VM.
- antihero 14y agoI too want to do this but I haven't seen a self-hosted interface and spam filtering that really competes with Gmail :(
- Bjoern 14y agoGreylisting, Amavis with Spamassassin, SPF, DKIM works for me, but your mileage may vary.
- kibwen 14y agoI'm highly interested in doing the same, can you recommend any resources that describe the process of setting up a self-hosted mail server?
- Bjoern 14y agoDepends how much flexibility you want/need. Dovecot is pretty easy and straight forward. Here is one with virtual domains, etc. might be overkill for your usecase though. http://workaround.org/ispmail/squeeze http://workaround.org/ispmail/squeeze I personally run a stack over courier and some other hacks ontop of rdeliver, which works really nicely. Important: Please always make sure to check that you don't run an open relay.
- gabriel34 14y agoYes, but I am really bothered by the privacy issues
- kome 14y agoNo, I use yandex.mail. (for the curious: https://mail.yandex.com/ https://mail.yandex.com/ )
- ominous 14y agoCare to elaborate on the why?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- amoxibos 14y agoWhy?
- Achshar 14y agoIt's a gmail address I made when I started using internet (I am 20). But I also have google apps from my domain and every email goes back and forth b/w my gmail and apps account and then to a frequent local backup and obviously one on my website's servers. Just in case google decided to ban my account, no data will be lost.
- oelmekki 14y agoI've just switched to self-hosted one week ago. I do not want to wait until google decide mails are not profitable enough.
- Auguste 14y agoI switched to Fastmail.fm [1] around 2 years ago and haven't looked back. [1] http://www.fastmail.fm http://www.fastmail.fm
- fakeer 14y agoDid it start hosting mails and setting up my domains like Google apps or any other mail provider, with of course webmail and IMAP? What about the interface(webmail I mean)? Wasn't very encouraging at I had tried their service some time back.
- sirn 14y agoThey've reimplemented their web interface to be all AJAXy since few months ago with discussion view and all similar to the old Gmail. Although I'm IMAP user, I don't feel their new web interface is lacking anything. You can setup your own domain with Fastmail with the $39.95/yr plan.
- potem 14y agoSame goes for me.
- dsthode 14y agoLike many people here, I've my personal email address in my own domain, redirected to my gmail.com email address.
- casca 14y agoFor those that say yes, is there any reason that you don't get a personal domain, forward it to gmail.com and have Gmail send outbound with your domain?
- csmattryder 14y agoWell, that's what I currently have set up, my daily email is GMail, but I also have my domain's email forwarding to my Gmail. Just because my hosting providers ATMail Open service blows, ridiculously difficult to use on iOS, and a hell to setup in a mail client.
- geoffroy 14y agothat's what I'm doing, but people see both adresses (via mydomain.com)
- marios 14y agoGmail > Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as > Edit info Then untick 'Treat as an alias'. I remember having the same issue with 'via ...' and I think doing this did the trick.
- Kiro 14y agoYes, the lack of reason to switch.
- shared4you 14y agoMails forwarded to gmail.com are still on Google's servers, isn't it? And they can use it for their data mining if they want. So, I decided against forwarding.
- jpswade 14y agoI used to use a self hosted email address, but it just lead to confusion. It was much easier to pick a team and run with it. I picked Google.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago> I used to use a self hosted email address, but it just lead to confusion. Not sure what that means. How does a self-hosted email address lead to confusion? Confusion by who for what?
- jpswade 14y agoThere's a whole host of reasons, here's a handful: - Some sites will attempt to use the first part of your email address as your username. - Foreign domains are difficult to explain to people who don't understand. - People expect you to say a your username at a domain they have heard of. - Anything other than .com is confusing. eg: johnasmith@gmail.com is easier for humans to digest and computers to parse than john@johnsmith.net or john@smith.be or john@smith.me.uk
- sirn 14y agoNo. Using email with your own domain is very important, especially if you use it for contacting a real person: it unties your email address from a provider. The biggest benefit is that you could switch provider very easily without ever changing your email. Once you've done so, it no longer matters which email service you are using. If the service ever decided to shut down or shut you off, you can just switch to another service without ever worrying about losing contact.
- stelian 14y agoIt goes the same for websites. I used to have my blog on a tumblr subdomain until I wanted to move it to my own domain and hosting. You just can't do a 301 on a tumblr post.
- addandsubtract 14y agoWhat if you lose your domain?
- sirn 14y agoThat's another thing to consider, but depends on the case: if the domain is left expired, there's 45 days after expiration to renew and another 30 days Redemption Grace Period before it's actually deleted. If the domain is "hijacked" (unauthorized transfer), then the registrar is in violation of ICANN policy[1]. If the registrar decided to shut down for some reason, you can still always move your domain to another registrar. [1]: https://www.icann.org/en/help/dispute-resolution#unauthorized https://www.icann.org/en/help/dispute-resolution#unauthorize...
- AndrewDucker 14y agoNo, but it's a Google Apps domain. Free, too, from before they cancelled their free plans.
- vishaltelangre 14y agoYes, same here, using Google Apps. It was free that time.
- DanBC 14y agoYes. I don't care at all about the privacy. I do care, very much, that a lot of my digital life is tied to a Google account, and losing that account will effectively kill my online presence. (see, for example, people who've had their Google account hacked and then lost everything else.) There doesn't appear to be an easy way to export all of that stuff. I'd really like a way to export all my logins and passwords to a CSV file. Yes, I'm aware just how risky storing that file is - I can encrypt it and store it on a USB stick; print it out and keep it in my 'read on death' file with my will; etc.
- EugeneOZ 14y agoTry KeePass.
- cmsj 14y agoOr LastPass. Or if you're in the Apple ecosystem, 1Password.
- davewasthere 14y agoThey're pretty good at letting you export everything you store with google. http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/
- hhariri 14y agoNo, and here's why: http://hadihariri.com/2012/04/07/is-your-identity-in-your-own-hands/ http://hadihariri.com/2012/04/07/is-your-identity-in-your-ow...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ukandy 14y agoIt would be interesting to have seen how many people used their own personal domain with Google Apps. It's the best of both worlds.
- andyhmltn 14y agoYes I do... kind of. My personal email is everything that really is personal. Stuff like my twitter account and my github account. For everything else, I use another email address (@fine.io)
- mothersele 14y agoCan we have a third option? "I use the gmail service to read my email, but I either use Google Apps for my own domain or forward all my email to gmail."
- olgeni 14y agoSelf hosted postfix+dovecot - at least I see what's actually going on in /var/log/maillog.
- EugeneOZ 14y agoYes, but I'm going to change, because I don't trust "Google stability" anymore. And if account will be banned for some reasons or accidentally - it can be problem too.
- kaolinite 14y agoPersonal domain hosted by (free) Google Apps. I'm looking to move away but I don't want to host myself and I can't find anyone decent. I want to use Gandi email hosting as I've used them before and they seem pretty reliable - however to do that I'd need to transfer my domain from 123-reg and because it's a Spanish domain, it's a bit more difficult. I'd use 123-reg's email but I don't really trust them. If anyone knows any good email hosting providers, please reply with recommendations.
- ShaneOG 14y agoYes, but I am in the process of changing that. I'm moving to Fastmail.fm I'm starting fresh and will be filtering mail by address in future: Gmail for non-personal stuff, signups, mailing lists, etc. My personal domain(s) for friends and important things.
- lhnz 14y agoPrimary for me is interesting bullshit, listserve, note taking, spam, recruiters, etc. And yes Google can read all of this high-value information! Secondary is my quasi-professional front.
- micheljansen 14y agoI am using my own domain, but after trying self-hosting (downtime stress while I am on vacation) and paid hosting (lacks decent webmail), I now use Google Apps to actually host the email. My reasons for using my own domain are simple: * I want to be able to switch whenever I want, without having to email everyone telling me I changed address. * When I use it professionally, my domain is my "business card", where I host my website with portfolio etc.
- modernerd 14y agoI moved to http://atmailcloud.com http://atmailcloud.com and am really happy with the service. ($2/month/account; minimum $10/month; can host multiple domains under one control panel.)
- Terretta 14y agoNo, and yes. I use firstname@lastname.com for my primary personal email, hosted by Google Apps. I use lastname@gmail.com for my primary impersonal email.
- shared4you 14y agoI'm planning to move to Runbox [1], a Norwegian company. Norway arguably has the some tough privacy laws (than US) and being a European citizen, all the better for me. My friend is using it and the interface is not as polished as other providers,but definitely worth the money! [1]: http://runbox.com/ http://runbox.com/
- Kiro 14y agoYes and not bothered about privacy issues at all.
- tiemand 14y agoBut I use Google apps on a personal domain, so I am "kind of" using gmail as my primary email.
- shanelja 14y agoNo, I'm current split though, I mainly use shanea93@ho[]tmai`l.co.uk, but it feels impersonal when I email people, I'm thinking of swapping over to me@shane[]armstro`ng.co.uk (a domain I own.)
- mjhagen 14y agoDo I answer Yes because it's hosted by gmail.com or No because I'm using my own domain name?
- zoom 14y agoYes but I keep trying to slip tormail in.
- lake99 14y agoThanks for the name. I had not heard of it before.
- RexRollman 14y agoI recently moved to Hushmail. In fact, the only thing I use Google for anymore is search.
- octagonal 14y agoI use firstname@owndomain.com for business (admittedly through Google's Apps for Business) and fullname@gmail.com for friends.
- pilif 14y agoI am using gmail to host my mail, but I am not however using the @gmail address to receive mail on. The risk of losing access to my gmail account without any possible recourse is just too big. I'm not afraid of being hacked, but much more so of being wrongly identified as a spammer or whatever else gets you banned from google these days. I'm using addresses at my own domain as my primary address and I'll have my mail server just forward all mail to google. If I ever lose that google account, I can quickly change the alias and I can continue to receive mail without anybody else having to change anything. By the way - doing something like this is really, really easy - all of you guys with various VPS and/or EC2 accounts, install an MTA software and add your alias to /etc/aliases. This works out-of-the box with any MTA package out there. I prefer this over hosting my own mailbox or over any other mail provider because of the (still) unique user interface of gmail. I love the way how archiving mail works and the speed of the web based mail client. After trying to find good mail clients for years and years, gmail is the one that provides the (for me) best user experience. And I'm really, really picky about my mail client choices.
- masukomi 14y agowhat @pilif said.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- codva 14y agoI moved my mail to Webfaction a couple of weeks ago, and I'm in the process of moving my web sites there. Just using Spam Assassin set to delete anything scored 5 or higher, and send to the spam folder anything between 1-4 has more than good enough so far. Webmail is Roundcube, but I'm mostly using Thunderbird. Webfaction is technically shared hosting, but it's shared hosting unlike anything I've seen elsewhere. I can write my own procmail recipes, set up custom php.ini files for each app I host, and I have SSH access. You could probably install Pine or Mutt id you wanted to.
- coldarchon 14y agohttp://www.epost.de http://www.epost.de is my favorite email for personal use, but it's only in Germany. You have to identify yourself in one of their branch offices, so all their users are registered. Email for free, fax for free and you can send billable letters via web interface. You can even send a pdf, they print it out and send it in an envelope. Or upload a cd-rom, they will burn it and send afterwards. Encrypted messages, authenticator via mobile phone and when you are on holiday they can scan your letters if you want and send them to you as email.
- chimpoo 14y agoYes
- benn_88 14y agoI have my personal domain email forwarded to my gmail account, from which I can also reply via that personal account. Gmail rocks, I just prefer to use my own domain address.