

Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose? - comatory

I know i could go all nerdy and set up my own mail server but honestly I don&#x27;t want to deal with it. My main concern with Gmail&#x2F;Google in general is ad targeting and I&#x27;ve been slowly moving away from their services that I&#x27;ve been using since 2005.<p>I am looking for following: 
- IMAP based email. 
- Reasonable inbox size ( 5 GB or so)
- contact syncing ( Card DAV, LDAP )
- calendar sync
- nice little extra would be custom domain<p>I&#x27;ve heard good things about Fastmail but I&#x27;m not sure if $40 a year is too much. Maybe not I just don&#x27;t know other options. I&#x27;ve also heard about Rackspace but that seems more complex to setup plus I couldn&#x27;t find the pricing on their site.<p>Thanks for suggestions.
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duncan_bayne
I can't speak highly enough of Fastmail.

Great UI (nowadays, I've heard it has been rough in the past), they've just
added calendars with CalDAV sync and are working on contact sync with CardDAV.
My custom domain (bayne.id.au) was handled quickly and easily. Also, they have
excellent support - I've emailed them a few times and always wound up speaking
to a clueful developer (when it hasn't been PEBKAC on my part).

I do wonder what the software world is coming to, though, when $40 / year is
considered expensive. I saw a similar complaint about an Android app I use
(Tasker) which costs around $5 if I remember rightly. $5! That's less than the
price of a (good) hamburger, for an app that makes my life easier in a number
of significant ways.

Are we on some sort of doomed race to the bottom like budget airlines?

~~~
zachlatta
Going to second Fastmail. I've been a user of it for the past three months and
it's easily worth the cost, especially considering it's for something as vital
as email. Before Fastmail I hosted my own email server and used sup to access
my email. Switching to Fastmail was one of my biggest productivity boosts in
the past 6 months. Really wish they'd get CardDAV sync in though :-/.

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bluerail
I would recommend Outlook.com from MS.

I switched from all of my google services recently[1] for the same reason as
you, targeting. And for the email services, I picked outlook for its minimal
nature and the nice UI that gives a pleasant experience compared to the
cluttered Gmail interface(IMO).

I created a new email with Outlook and forwarded all my Gmail content to the
Outlook including contacts using their 'Gmail to Outlook' migration tool[2].
And along with it created some aliases for different purposes. The only thing
I miss from Gmail is their multiple email accounts using "+', but as said
Outlook provides a more or less alternative "aliases" feature.

One thing I really like about Outlook apart from its UI and manageability is
its ability on managing everything from my Twitter account to Gmail chat right
from the mailbox itself.

[1] - [http://blog.therth.com/blog/2014/09/23/my-new-
outlook/](http://blog.therth.com/blog/2014/09/23/my-new-outlook/) [2] -
[http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/outlook-
com/gmail/](http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/outlook-com/gmail/)

~~~
fuj
Upvoted for the courage of recommending a service that actually works fine but
is not welcome in the HN's hipster culture. Expect getting downvoted to
oblivion...

~~~
bluerail
So, that means I shouldn't post a service/product that even if suffices the
OP's question but didn't welcomed by community?

It's a matter of choice isn't it?

~~~
fuj
Hey I'm on your side, I was being sarcastic. I also switched from gmail to
outlook. But in HN everything "mainstream" gets downvoted. You like Outlook?
Enjoy the downvotes, You like MS Office instead of XYZ ? Downvoted, etc, etc

------
dangrossman
> I've also heard about Rackspace but that seems more complex to setup plus I
> couldn't find the pricing on their site

Rackspace Mail costs $2/mailbox/month. It comes with 24/7/365 phone/chat/email
support and a 100% uptime SLA. The product began as MailTrust, a separate
company Rackspace acquired, with over 2M users (now over 3M).

[http://www.rackspace.com/email-
hosting/webmail/pricing/](http://www.rackspace.com/email-
hosting/webmail/pricing/)

They host all the mailboxes on my domains for a couple bucks a month. I don't
use their webmail, just IMAP (Thunderbird/K9). There's nothing complex to set
up for e-mail; I don't know about calendar or contact syncing since I don't
use those things.

~~~
cgar
Minimum quantity of 5 though.

------
sreenadh
@comatory, think it this way. Google should be paying you $40/yr for using
their service. Fastmail's business is emails. But Google's business is ads not
search. That is a big difference. Considering that I have been using
Fastmail's free service since 19 Oct 2003. I can assure you that they are
doing a great job. The people at Fastmail need to live and their charges are
very nice for the service they provide. Their webmail is great and delivery is
good. But if your concern is staying away from PRISM, then I guess getting up
your own is the way to go. Hotmail(Outlook.com) is great but there is not
guarantee its going remain the same. Yahoo mail was great at one time, now its
just a pain. Good Luck. Do tell what is your final decision. I too am planning
to move away from Gmail.

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kumaresh
You may want to check the free mail from Zoho. They offer 5GB, ad-free email
service that is free of cost and can be configured in POP / IMAP as well. You
can configure your domain.

[https://mail.zoho.com/](https://mail.zoho.com/)

------
rawland
Some people are mentiong services like Fastmail here.

To me this sounds like replacing one "evil" with another. Can somebody please
prove me wrong! Right now, I'm walking the Postfix+Dovecot+Roundcube path.
Other options I'm looking into right now are:

[https://www.mailpile.is/](https://www.mailpile.is/) \- which look very
promising

[https://whiteout.io/](https://whiteout.io/) \- also interesting

~~~
zachlatta
In terms of ownership of data, Fastmail is definitely not ideal. However, I
trust a company that has a single paid product and employees committed to the
point of buying the company back from their acquirer
([http://blog.fastmail.com/2013/09/25/exciting-news-
fastmail-s...](http://blog.fastmail.com/2013/09/25/exciting-news-fastmail-
staff-purchase-the-business-from-opera/)) more than a company with a free
product committed to monetizing me and my data.

I recently switched from a setup similar to yours (Postfix+Dovecot+sup) to
Fastmail because I'll never have to worry about deliverability again and
Fastmail's web client is miles beyond anything else other there, especially
the open source offerings (Mailpile looks promising though! I'm hoping this
won't stay the case).

------
MalcolmDiggs
This might be besides the point, but if you pay for Gmail then the experience
is ad free. I've got no complaints with it so far.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/work/apps/business](https://www.google.com/work/apps/business)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/products/gmail/](https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/products/gmail/)

------
LogIN-
Postfix, dovecot, roundcube.. you'll figure something...

------
alienjr
Zimbra might help.

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monsterix
I've been using Zoho Mail [1] service for past one year. While it's not very
fancy it gets the job done for me well and is lightweight. Even got a custom
domain for free!

[https://www.zoho.com/mail/](https://www.zoho.com/mail/)

