

Ask HN: To where should I migrate my email? - CapitalistCartr

Given Google's trend towards ever greater intrusiveness, I find their new privacy policy the last straw.  I got burned by first attempt at social Web site, Wave, violating my email privacy rather badly.  I should have switched already; now its definitely time to move.   Google has several advantages, including uptime, handling large files and thousands of emails well, good search capabilities, and wide name recognition.  I don't care about the name recognition, but the rest matters. I want a reliable, long-term hosting solution that I don't have to re-analyze and move every year.  What solution have you found to be the best?
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mhd
Switching to another provider seems like postponing things. Yes, the other
corporation/organization might not have the same range of products and thus
not the incentive/benefit from cross-checking your content, but there's still
room for abuse (employees), and even if your leave your mail underneath the
wings of angels, they still might get hacked.

Sure, setting up your own mail server incurs that same risk, and the
professionals at the corporation might know a bit more about security, but on
the other hand you present a much smaller target, and the software tends to be
pretty stable/secure.

So hosting your own seems to be a common option. I think that probably means a
basic Linux/Postfix/Dovecot setup for IMAP access, and maybe some web
frontend. I don't know anything really good for the latter (besides gmail, I
don't know anything good commercially, either), and it probably means
installing more software on the server, which adds security risks. (Is there a
third party web-based IMAP client who doesn't store anything locally and
basically does everything via JavaScript?)

If anyone got a good hosting recommendation, I think that would be helpful.
Most VPS offers might run into storage limitations, so something as modular as
AWS might be needed.

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pcmyers
Google has excellent tools for taking your data elsewhere; services like the
Data Liberation Front (<http://www.dataliberation.org/>) are pretty
progressive.

That said, hosting your own email is what someone like RMS would recommend as
it gives you, by far, the most control and privacy. All major webmail
providers are not going to provide the stability you are looking for,
especially if you are bothered by the current trend towards integration.

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mozami
I am also on the look out for a decent alternative to gmail. So far I've come
across the following:

Zoho Mail: <https://www.zoho.com/mail>

Rackspace: <http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/rackspace_email>

Fastmail.fm: <http://fastmail.fm>

I'm still looking around, but would love to hear if anyone uses and recommends
any of the above.

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whichdan
I've been using FastMail.fm for around 4 years now. It's absolutely worth the
$40/yr. I manage a lot of email accounts, and FastMail lets me define rules to
file emails from different accounts into different folders, and automatically
set my from/reply-to address based on the folder I'm in. Their spam handling
has been excellent and there are tons of other small features like one-time-
passwords which are great.

That said, I do find GMail's interface "snappier" than FastMail's, and
threaded conversations are definitely nice to have. I'm starting to see
GMail's benefit in tagging messages instead of using a folder hierarchy, but
for managing email from multiple accounts, FastMail is definitely easier.

~~~
skram
Fastmail is a great service for a modest price. Definitely worth it unless you
want (or need) to spring for MS Hosted Exchange in which case I'd Rackspace.

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lunarscape
I plan on hosting my own email with the help of CS friends. VPS's are getting
cheaper. Other options include hosted email from a provider you trust.

As an aside- does anyone have a good guide for downloading all email from
GMail to Thunderbird, including attachments? I won't use closed source tools
and the guides/howto's out there contradict each other..

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envex
You could buy your own server and domain name to host your own email service

\- OR -

You could maybe wait on jumping the gun to see what happens.

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sp332
After being burned several times, I see no reason for OP to give Google the
benefit of the doubt. While running a server yourself might seem ideal,
keeping up with security flaws etc. in the packages you're using seems like a
hassle. I would probably look into smallish hosted email services (not like
yahoo or hotmail).

