
Ask HN: Proton Mail or Gmail? - brudgers
A friend of mine [no really] is ditching their cable ISP based account. They asked me about Proton Mail. My gut reaction was for most use cases it&#x27;s not worth fooling with due to everyone&#x27;s familiarity with Gmail and the higher blacklist potential for just about every other email domain.
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ocdtrekkie
Most commercial email services are not going to get blacklisted: Staying off
blacklists is their job. That concern largely only exists with "spin up your
own mail" type concerns.

I personally use FastMail, which is a paid provider that I highly recommend to
people who value good email service. ProtonMail is really good for privacy,
but there's challenges like the lack of normal IMAP support, that can
frustrate the average user.

I personally strongly recommend against giving an ad company your data, and
could not recommend Google, but it depends on what your friend's values and
concerns are.

Note that _regardless_ of the email provider they choose, they should consider
buying their own domain and using it as an email alias, so they can easily
switch email services later.

~~~
brudgers
Thanks. Since I've pointed my friend to this thread. It's probably worth
asking for a bit more detail what you mean by "good email service"...because
that can mean different things to different people depending on use cases.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I've heard all too many stories about people get their Google accounts locked
out, sometimes for unrelated events on other Google products/services, and
having no recourse unless they happen to know a Google employee who can
champion their cause internally: Google offers no customer support to Gmail
users, and help forums are often of little use.

IMHO, email is the _most important service you have_. Every other service you
use is tied to it, and your email is more often than not the master key to
your entire online identity. You'd be shocked how many other accounts you have
that you may just not be able to recover if your email account disappears.

One of the key things I get at FastMail is real, human support. I would
strongly discourage entrusting your email account to anyone who doesn't have
good customer service, and generally, that is something you do have to pay
for.

This is also why I feel owning your own domain and using it for your email
address is so key: Even if I were to have an issue with FastMail, I could
always redirect my email address to a different provider, and regain access to
my services.

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inetsee
I have three email addresses. One Gmail for financial stuff (because Google
Authenticator gives me easy 2 factor authentication) and two Yahoo addresses
I've had for years (one for family and friends, and the other for everything
else). Yahoo is changing their terms of service, and after trying to plow
through pages and pages of legalese, I'm planning to drop Yahoo, and replace
it with Proton Mail.

I doubt if I really need the level of security Proton Mail provides, but I've
just gotten tired of advertisers stalking me everywhere I go on the internet.
Proton Mail may not be as easy or convenient as the other email providers, but
I'd just like to get a little bit of my privacy back.

[edit] spelling.

