4 ms·

Ask HN: What is your favorite gmail alternative?

12 points by washedup 13y ago

Looking for a light and simple email host as an alternative to the now bulky gmail/google complex.

dangrossman 13y ago
Thunderbird on desktop, K-9 Mail on Android. Rackspace Mail hosts the mailboxes on all my domains. $2/mo/mailbox, 25GB storage, 100% uptime SLA, 24/7/365 phone/chat/email support, configurable backups. They have a webmail client but I don't use it; I prefer native apps. http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/ http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/
skram 13y ago
This has been asked a gazillion times, but my personal pick is Fastmail.fm. I like both their web interface and their IMAP compatibility has never failed me.
- a3n 13y ago
  Exactly. Thunderbird/IMAP from home, web from work. They also have read-only LDAP access to the addressbook. If it allowed writes, I'd have thunderbird save contacts to it, but it's a step.
gmuslera 13y ago
My main gmail alternative would be going back and have a self-hosted one. For personal mail installing a mail server and if you want a web interface (plenty of good ones) to access it is not hard, and can be made pretty secure. But would miss excellent gmail spam filtering (not hard to add a spam filtering, what is hard is adding one as good as gmail one) and search (didn't tried any self-hosted mail search engine yet to judge). If what worries you about gmail is privacy, then yahoo won't be an alternative. There are a few alternatives suggested in http://prism-break.org http://prism-break.org (including guidelines to install your own one)
nailer 13y ago
I don't know of any gmail alternatives that exist. Gmail is primarily a search based inbox. If you (like the person earlier) are making something based around IMAP then you're doing a 90's era web mail app. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not gmail.
mknits 13y ago
I use http://rediffmail.com http://rediffmail.com
Strategist 13y ago
I've personally found Opera's Fastmail & Zoho Mail to be pretty good. During the start of the whole NSA/Prism spying thing, many people mentioned that those were two they were switching to.
- workhere-io 13y ago
  FastMail, while an Australian company, is hosted in the US.
  - whichdan 13y ago
    Also, they've recently branched back off from Opera and are now an independent company.
woutervdb 13y ago
A domain for a project of mine uses GMail for e-mail (I don't trust my server with hosting a 99.99% up mail server: it's too cheap to be able to), while my personal website uses Microsoft Window Live Domains. My WLD is then used inside GMail though, so for the client I can't really give any good recommendation. The server for WLD seems fine, not good.
workhere-io 13y ago
http://www.gandi.net/ http://www.gandi.net/ : 1 GB IMAP account included with domains - hosted in France. Another alternative (hosted in the US) is FastMail (see my review here: http://blog.workhere.io/my-experience-with-fastmail-as-a-gmail-replacement/ http://blog.workhere.io/my-experience-with-fastmail-as-a-gma...). As for IMAP clients, I like http://airmailapp.com/ http://airmailapp.com/.
grandpoobah 13y ago
Outlook seems to be the only worthy competetor, but if your main goal is to get away from Google then I wouldn't say Microsoft is a much better option. Personally I use Gmail with my own domain and try to keep regular backups of all mail so that in the event things go south I can quickly move to another provider.

12 points by washedup 13y ago

Looking for a light and simple email host as an alternative to the now bulky gmail/google complex.

Thunderbird on desktop, K-9 Mail on Android. Rackspace Mail hosts the mailboxes on all my domains. $2/mo/mailbox, 25GB storage, 100% uptime SLA, 24/7/365 phone/chat/email support, configurable backups. They have a webmail client but I don't use it; I prefer native apps. http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/ http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/

skram 13y ago

This has been asked a gazillion times, but my personal pick is Fastmail.fm. I like both their web interface and their IMAP compatibility has never failed me.

a3n 13y ago
Exactly. Thunderbird/IMAP from home, web from work. They also have read-only LDAP access to the addressbook. If it allowed writes, I'd have thunderbird save contacts to it, but it's a step.

gmuslera 13y ago

My main gmail alternative would be going back and have a self-hosted one. For personal mail installing a mail server and if you want a web interface (plenty of good ones) to access it is not hard, and can be made pretty secure. But would miss excellent gmail spam filtering (not hard to add a spam filtering, what is hard is adding one as good as gmail one) and search (didn't tried any self-hosted mail search engine yet to judge). If what worries you about gmail is privacy, then yahoo won't be an alternative. There are a few alternatives suggested in http://prism-break.org http://prism-break.org (including guidelines to install your own one)

nailer 13y ago

I don't know of any gmail alternatives that exist. Gmail is primarily a search based inbox. If you (like the person earlier) are making something based around IMAP then you're doing a 90's era web mail app. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not gmail.

mknits 13y ago

I use http://rediffmail.com http://rediffmail.com

Strategist 13y ago

I've personally found Opera's Fastmail & Zoho Mail to be pretty good. During the start of the whole NSA/Prism spying thing, many people mentioned that those were two they were switching to.

workhere-io 13y ago
FastMail, while an Australian company, is hosted in the US.
- whichdan 13y ago
  Also, they've recently branched back off from Opera and are now an independent company.

woutervdb 13y ago

A domain for a project of mine uses GMail for e-mail (I don't trust my server with hosting a 99.99% up mail server: it's too cheap to be able to), while my personal website uses Microsoft Window Live Domains. My WLD is then used inside GMail though, so for the client I can't really give any good recommendation. The server for WLD seems fine, not good.

workhere-io 13y ago

http://www.gandi.net/ http://www.gandi.net/ : 1 GB IMAP account included with domains - hosted in France. Another alternative (hosted in the US) is FastMail (see my review here: http://blog.workhere.io/my-experience-with-fastmail-as-a-gmail-replacement/ http://blog.workhere.io/my-experience-with-fastmail-as-a-gma...). As for IMAP clients, I like http://airmailapp.com/ http://airmailapp.com/.

grandpoobah 13y ago

Outlook seems to be the only worthy competetor, but if your main goal is to get away from Google then I wouldn't say Microsoft is a much better option. Personally I use Gmail with my own domain and try to keep regular backups of all mail so that in the event things go south I can quickly move to another provider.