5 ms·

Can you suggest a viable alternative to Google Mail? I'm feeling uncomfortable having all my mail in Google's hands but haven't found an alternative yet.

oliverhunt 14y ago
Fastmail (paid) or Zoho(free)
- GFischer 14y ago
  I use Zoho, but for my low-volume personal account. The main difference with Google is, I think they'd like to take my money :) and have customer support. If the need arises (hopefully some of my plans take off), I'll gladly pay them.
cseelus 14y ago
Same here. I guess there is no alternative that can match GMail in terms of abailability/reliability, features, spamprotection, 3rd-party support etc. Would be nice if there was some community-driven, non-profit alternative available for such basic, albeit important things like email though.
- DaddyDuck 14y ago
  While playing around with gmail, I found out that you can send from any smtp server emails to gmail pretending you are someone else's gmail account. There is no way of seeing from gmail that it isn't the trusted sender. The fake email is associated with social details from the real account. Weird right?
  - nikbackm 14y ago
    Better watch out so you don't violate the TOS and get locked out too.
drchaos 14y ago
Dovecot + Roundcube hosted on a cheap VPS, with Thunderbird (on the Desktop) and K9Mail (on Android) as client works pretty well for me. Dovecot 2.2 implements several new IMAP extensions, so you can do serverside fulltext search, threading and push of incoming mail, and with some work[1] it should also be possible to sync your contacts and even a calendar with your server (I must admit though that I haven't tried that yet). The only thing left to be desired is support for tagging in Roundcube. Thunderbird has it, but it would be nice to have it in the web interface, too. There's a ticket for it in the Roundcube tracker[2] but it doesn't seem to receive much attention yet. Personally I hope that with the recent closures of Google services more people choose to run their own services with free/open source software. With VPSes and modern tools this is cheaper and easier than ever, and if we want the web to remain free and open, it's much better to have some diversity and decentralization, instead of placing everything in the hands of Google and Facebook. [1] https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/389 https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/389 [2] http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1485799 http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1485799
- damncabbage 14y ago
  What do you use for spam filtering? I've had terrible trouble with SpamAssassin in the past; can you share an effective config, and are there pre-built spam/ham databases around so you don't need to go through the entire training process? Are you checking RBLs on a regular basis, or is an SPF record and a reputable VPS provider enough to keep you off blacklists? Any other tips for someone wanting to try their hand with a VPS + Dovecot + Postfix setup (assuming a Linux sysadmin background)?
  - vizzah 14y ago
    Anti-Spam-SMTP-Proxy (ASSP) (written in Perl) does wonders for me with a minimal tweaking. My own account`s Inbox has less spam than Gmail`s "Spam" folder. And that's considering my e-mail is scattered all over the net (thanks to the WHOIS).
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    DSpam.
oulipo 14y ago
Start by simply backing up your emails regularly with BaGoMa
- ableal 14y ago
  "BaGoMa - A script to Backup Google Mail." http://sourceforge.net/p/bagoma/home/BaGoMa/ http://sourceforge.net/p/bagoma/home/BaGoMa/ Thanks
- tripzilch 14y ago
  I was going to suggest GMVault, which I use with success. Anybody got experience to tell me how they compare? OTOH GMVault does the job fine, which I guess is most important.
rplnt 14y ago
I use Google Mail, just with my own domain (via Google Apps). It's a painless setup and if anything had happened to my Google account I can host the email anywhere else in seconds. But for now I don't have to worry about setting up VPSs, mail daemons and whatnot... (Of course I have to keep a backup of all the mail, but that's as easy as having some client download it.)
- DaddyDuck 14y ago
  Way to go! At Cozy cloud(https://www.cozycloud.cc/ https://www.cozycloud.cc/) we are developing an open source personal cloud platform that you can self-host and assign your own domain. Right now we already offer backup of your email address but we would like to offer a good web-mail alternative. Have you got suggestion for a Node.js mail client we could cook in?
Spooky23 14y ago
Office 365. $50/year.
jjuliano 14y ago
get one of those Seagate GoFlex NAS and just install Arch Linux ARM and setup your domain and mail servers with it. Your data is saved with you portably.

oliverhunt 14y ago

Fastmail (paid) or Zoho(free)

GFischer 14y ago
I use Zoho, but for my low-volume personal account. The main difference with Google is, I think they'd like to take my money :) and have customer support. If the need arises (hopefully some of my plans take off), I'll gladly pay them.

cseelus 14y ago

Same here. I guess there is no alternative that can match GMail in terms of abailability/reliability, features, spamprotection, 3rd-party support etc. Would be nice if there was some community-driven, non-profit alternative available for such basic, albeit important things like email though.

DaddyDuck 14y ago
While playing around with gmail, I found out that you can send from any smtp server emails to gmail pretending you are someone else's gmail account. There is no way of seeing from gmail that it isn't the trusted sender. The fake email is associated with social details from the real account. Weird right?
- nikbackm 14y ago
  Better watch out so you don't violate the TOS and get locked out too.

drchaos 14y ago

Dovecot + Roundcube hosted on a cheap VPS, with Thunderbird (on the Desktop) and K9Mail (on Android) as client works pretty well for me. Dovecot 2.2 implements several new IMAP extensions, so you can do serverside fulltext search, threading and push of incoming mail, and with some work[1] it should also be possible to sync your contacts and even a calendar with your server (I must admit though that I haven't tried that yet). The only thing left to be desired is support for tagging in Roundcube. Thunderbird has it, but it would be nice to have it in the web interface, too. There's a ticket for it in the Roundcube tracker[2] but it doesn't seem to receive much attention yet. Personally I hope that with the recent closures of Google services more people choose to run their own services with free/open source software. With VPSes and modern tools this is cheaper and easier than ever, and if we want the web to remain free and open, it's much better to have some diversity and decentralization, instead of placing everything in the hands of Google and Facebook. [1] https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/389 https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/389 [2] http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1485799 http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1485799

damncabbage 14y ago
What do you use for spam filtering? I've had terrible trouble with SpamAssassin in the past; can you share an effective config, and are there pre-built spam/ham databases around so you don't need to go through the entire training process? Are you checking RBLs on a regular basis, or is an SPF record and a reputable VPS provider enough to keep you off blacklists? Any other tips for someone wanting to try their hand with a VPS + Dovecot + Postfix setup (assuming a Linux sysadmin background)?
- vizzah 14y ago
  Anti-Spam-SMTP-Proxy (ASSP) (written in Perl) does wonders for me with a minimal tweaking. My own account`s Inbox has less spam than Gmail`s "Spam" folder. And that's considering my e-mail is scattered all over the net (thanks to the WHOIS).
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  DSpam.

oulipo 14y ago

Start by simply backing up your emails regularly with BaGoMa

ableal 14y ago
"BaGoMa - A script to Backup Google Mail." http://sourceforge.net/p/bagoma/home/BaGoMa/ http://sourceforge.net/p/bagoma/home/BaGoMa/ Thanks
tripzilch 14y ago
I was going to suggest GMVault, which I use with success. Anybody got experience to tell me how they compare? OTOH GMVault does the job fine, which I guess is most important.

rplnt 14y ago

I use Google Mail, just with my own domain (via Google Apps). It's a painless setup and if anything had happened to my Google account I can host the email anywhere else in seconds. But for now I don't have to worry about setting up VPSs, mail daemons and whatnot... (Of course I have to keep a backup of all the mail, but that's as easy as having some client download it.)

DaddyDuck 14y ago
Way to go! At Cozy cloud(https://www.cozycloud.cc/ https://www.cozycloud.cc/) we are developing an open source personal cloud platform that you can self-host and assign your own domain. Right now we already offer backup of your email address but we would like to offer a good web-mail alternative. Have you got suggestion for a Node.js mail client we could cook in?

Spooky23 14y ago

Office 365. $50/year.

jjuliano 14y ago

get one of those Seagate GoFlex NAS and just install Arch Linux ARM and setup your domain and mail servers with it. Your data is saved with you portably.