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I would switch to Fastmail in a heartbeat if they let me pay for storage (say in 5 gig intervals) and let me mount as many domains and create as many inbox as I

by pan69 12y ago

I would switch to Fastmail in a heartbeat if they let me pay for storage (say in 5 gig intervals) and let me mount as many domains and create as many inbox as I want. Other than that, I see no point in paying for email. Sorry. I'm a snob.

ldite 12y ago
I pay for email because it's the keystone to my online 'identity' - pretty much the single point of failure for recovering all sorts of accounts, and the thing in the way of theft of many accounts. Technical merits aside, by using a small but well run non-gmail provider for a mere £25 pa I get (i) near instantaneous tech support in my time zone, from people who know more about email & admin than I do. They even have a phone number. (ii) out of the monoculture, thus vastly diminished risk from various canned account theft problems
- toothbrush 12y ago
  Would you mind sharing who you use as a provider?
  - ldite 12y ago
    https://www.mythic-beasts.com/ https://www.mythic-beasts.com/ - having looked, it turns out they don't have a telephone number, but as all my support emails have been answered within minutes I'd never felt the need :)
evook 12y ago
I don't see the problem to rent a small server and host open xchange, zimbra or something similiar yourself? Even postfix isn't that hard to configure and will likely run forever. The same goes for the author. I don't get how gmail is even considered as a mail provider for more than a spam oder mandatory account. The list of better and serious mail providers is tremendous. For my family and me, I am hosting a small exchange server, with a synchronous replica in a datacenter, at home. It's safe, has nearly unlimited disk space and I know where my backups are.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Postfix will run forever, but other hosts won't accept your emails forever unless you keep up with the latest spam techniques (DANE nowadays, isn't it?) Personally, I just use a free smarthost, but that loses some of the privacy advantages.
  - evook 12y ago
    Personally I don't use Postfix, I am going with Zimbra. Postfix was just an example. As well as DANE would require exactly 4 commands to be enabled. For myself I am going with a major commercial antispam solution, which is hosted in two of our datacenters. Since I am working with the developers and admins on regular basis there's no reason not to trust them.
- pjc50 12y ago
  Antispam and security updates are a pain. I ran exim in a colo for years, including handing out free accounts to friends (rookie mistake, yes), and eventually decided to stop bothering after it hit some critical problem while I was on holiday.
- colanderman 12y ago
  Because then I have to manage that server. I'm suddenly responsible for security, rebooting if there's an outage, keeping things up-to-date, etc. I've had both a small personal Linux server (for web hosting) and Fastmail (for everything else) for several years, and I've easily spent 2-3 times the cost of my Fastmail account in time spent fiddling with my web server over that time period.

by pan69 12y ago

ldite 12y ago

I pay for email because it's the keystone to my online 'identity' - pretty much the single point of failure for recovering all sorts of accounts, and the thing in the way of theft of many accounts. Technical merits aside, by using a small but well run non-gmail provider for a mere £25 pa I get (i) near instantaneous tech support in my time zone, from people who know more about email & admin than I do. They even have a phone number. (ii) out of the monoculture, thus vastly diminished risk from various canned account theft problems

toothbrush 12y ago
Would you mind sharing who you use as a provider?
- ldite 12y ago
  https://www.mythic-beasts.com/ https://www.mythic-beasts.com/ - having looked, it turns out they don't have a telephone number, but as all my support emails have been answered within minutes I'd never felt the need :)

evook 12y ago

I don't see the problem to rent a small server and host open xchange, zimbra or something similiar yourself? Even postfix isn't that hard to configure and will likely run forever. The same goes for the author. I don't get how gmail is even considered as a mail provider for more than a spam oder mandatory account. The list of better and serious mail providers is tremendous. For my family and me, I am hosting a small exchange server, with a synchronous replica in a datacenter, at home. It's safe, has nearly unlimited disk space and I know where my backups are.

icebraining 12y ago
Postfix will run forever, but other hosts won't accept your emails forever unless you keep up with the latest spam techniques (DANE nowadays, isn't it?) Personally, I just use a free smarthost, but that loses some of the privacy advantages.
- evook 12y ago
  Personally I don't use Postfix, I am going with Zimbra. Postfix was just an example. As well as DANE would require exactly 4 commands to be enabled. For myself I am going with a major commercial antispam solution, which is hosted in two of our datacenters. Since I am working with the developers and admins on regular basis there's no reason not to trust them.
pjc50 12y ago
Antispam and security updates are a pain. I ran exim in a colo for years, including handing out free accounts to friends (rookie mistake, yes), and eventually decided to stop bothering after it hit some critical problem while I was on holiday.
colanderman 12y ago
Because then I have to manage that server. I'm suddenly responsible for security, rebooting if there's an outage, keeping things up-to-date, etc. I've had both a small personal Linux server (for web hosting) and Fastmail (for everything else) for several years, and I've easily spent 2-3 times the cost of my Fastmail account in time spent fiddling with my web server over that time period.