
Ask HN: What do you use instead of Gmail? - rayalez
I&#x27;m looking for a good  alternative.
======
ocdtrekkie
I (and a lot of other people around here) are enthusiastic FastMail customers.
Hit any of us up off-site if you are interested in a referral code (10% off).
It costs money, but you get a really solid webmail experience with real human
customer support. The CEO is active here on HN and posts pretty solid things
like this: [https://blog.fastmail.com/2018/02/14/email-is-your-
electroni...](https://blog.fastmail.com/2018/02/14/email-is-your-electronic-
memory/)

I have a strong belief that FastMail's business model is aligned with my
interests/values, and they're a strong open source community member with
initiatives like JMAP.

~~~
vivan
One issue I have with FastMail is the reuse of email addresses. It is possible
to "hack" accounts on websites which were registered to expired email
addresses by simply registering that email address anew and doing a password
reset. This is very common in the domain space, where email addresses are
publicly listed.

~~~
_rknLA
Does this affect custom domains, or is it only an issue with @fastmail.com
accounts?

~~~
vivan
Well, with custom domain email addresses this is always true regardless of
service provider.

If you ever abandon the domain, someone else could come along and buy the
domain and create the same email address. They could then receive any mail
intended for that email address (e.g. password resets). This is why I consider
any domains purchased for email purposes to be lifetime investments.

------
PuffinBlue
Zoho Mail and RunBox. Zoho has dedicated EU branch if you want that:

[https://www.zoho.eu/](https://www.zoho.eu/)
[https://www.zoho.com/](https://www.zoho.com/)
[https://runbox.com/](https://runbox.com/)

FastMail gets a lot of love here but I think Zoho has more to offer in the
ecosystem if you are willing to pay. It's a pretty decent drop in
functionality replacement for a lot of Google (docs etc).

RunBox is kind of simple and and old school but it's solid and works.

Zoho Mail is also available free too and it's extremely generous for ad free
hosting:

[https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html?src=zmail](https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html?src=zmail)

Scroll down the page a bit under the paid for price listings and it's headed
'free plan'. Includes hosting your own domain too.

~~~
Retr0spectrum
I'm also using Zoho, since it was the only provider I could find that let me
use my own domain for free. It's been working great so far.

Up until fairly recently, I was using Pawnmail
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8548307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8548307)),
but it became very unreliable. Half of my sent mail bounced, and then it just
stopped working altogether.

I use Thunderbird as a client.

~~~
PuffinBlue
I started off free, still have a couple accounts there free I think, but moved
to paid because it was worth it to me.

Without the free offering i probably wouldn't have ended up on a paid plan so
I'm glad they do it!

------
mysterypie
If anyone is setting up email for elderly relatives, take a tip from me: don't
use Gmail. Google is constantly changing (allegedly improving) the interface,
gratuitously moving buttons from one weird location to another, and monkeying
around with the UI. Certainly no problem for Hacker News techies, but once
you've trained an elderly person on how to attach an image, print, forward, or
reply, all your training goes out the window. The smaller paid mail services
rarely fiddle with their UI. The $30-60 per year is a life saver for your time
and your relative's frustration.

It would be nice if Gmail had a setting for _simple mode_ : very limited
operations, minimal UI that almost never changes, and looks identical on any
device, app, or browser.

~~~
gt2
That's strange to hear, I thought it hadn't changed in ages.

------
dsr_
I have run my own mailserver for not quite 20 years. My preferred mail client
is mutt, but I use K9 on Android several times a day and I set up rainloop, a
web mail client.

When people ask me for advice and they are not in a position to run their own
mail server, I generally recommend Fastmail.

~~~
badkangaroo
ya, i used to run webstar on a mac in the 90s.

------
webartifex
Gmail's labeling system is hard to beat. In particular, any given email can be
in several "folders" (a.k.a. labels) at the same time.

All other services I have tried out so far do not replicate this approach so
that an email can only be in one folder at a time. Of course, you can copy an
email into several folders but then they are physically different emails on
the mail server.

Despite this, I switched to the German provider www.mailbox.org as they do not
index or process your emails in any other way. And in Germany, the authorities
still have a hard time getting access behind the scenes. Further, mailbox.org
allows the creation of mail aliases and also temporary addresses. The service
is 3 € per month which is totally acceptable.

I see mailbox.org as a main competitor of Protonmail and Posteo.

EDIT: additionally, I am using my own domains that are redirected to my
mailbox.org account.

------
robin_reala
I moved to Runbox a week ago and am happy (so far at least). Before I switched
from Gmail I worked out what my requirements were and evaluated a few
services, wrote up my findings at
[http://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-
suite/](http://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/) .
Fastmail is the obvious competitor, but I wanted a mail service that didn’t
have servers in the US (Fastmail have US and Amsterdam, but replicate across
then instead of letting one pick a region as far as I can see).

------
coconut_crab
I have been using Posteo for a few year ( [https://posteo.de/en/help?tag=end-
to-end](https://posteo.de/en/help?tag=end-to-end) ). Pro:

    
    
      - Cheap: 1€/month for 2 GBs mailbox
      - Basic functionalities such as Web interface, SMTP, POP3, CalDav, CardDav are all included.
      - They seem to take privacy and security seriously, including email encryption, 2FA signin or recently Autocrypt[1]
      - The warm fuzzy feeling of using 100% renewable energy for your email.
    

Cons:

    
    
      - No custom domain
      - Might have less features than other providers[2]
    

[1] I am not a security expert nor I have validated their claim

[2] I use notmuch with emacs for reading email, it works great and very fast
so I don't really need any other features.

EDIT: I also run my own email server but the effort involved is just not worth
it, IMO.

EDIT2: Formatting

~~~
mcbetz
If you want custom domain but same high privacy quality as Posteo, try out
Mailbox.org - have been happily using both for years

------
mikebos
I've tried a lot of mail services over the years and every time come back to
gmail, well actually GSuite. Stuff I tried: \- Posteo.de: Great, but you can't
use your own domain or groups, which was a dealbreaker. \- Fastmail: Nice
enough, didn't really care for the web interface though. \- Postbox: Great,
after the merger with fastmail got the fastmail webinterface :-) \- Microsoft
hosted exchange: It was ok, S.O. wasn't a fan due to slow webinterface on a
tablet. Spam filtering was a weak point. \- MXRoute: Nice service, good
price/quality. In the end however I didn't liked that I couldn't control the
spam filter (you have some config options but mostly it's global).

------
jvannistelrooy
I've been trying out Protonmail which I'm happy with, but in practice I'm
still using Gmail.

I'm reluctant to move away from my @gmail address, and inform all my contacts
to use the new one. Besides that, I notice that orally communicating
[anything]@gmail.com is much easier than any other domain. I wish I could take
my gmail address to another service.

~~~
mysterypie
> _orally communicating [anything]@gmail.com is much easier than any other
> domain_

Sure, if you had the foresight to reserve your.name@gmail.com twelve years
ago, but today you'll have to use your.name772@gmail.com. Chances are that you
won't even get incredibly.obscure.name@gmail.com.

However, chances are better for your.name@fastmail.com,
your.name@protonmail.com, etc.

~~~
MrMember
I managed to get firstinitiallastname@gmail.com (account created in 2004ish)
but for my Proton Mail account I had to add in my middle initial.

~~~
eequah9L
Yep, that one was taken by the dude that couldn't use @gmail, because you
already had it ;)

------
larrysalibra
Very happy Fastmail customer here. Find the web interface more responsive than
gmail and the IMAP implementation seems to be play better with apple's mail
clients.

~~~
EnderMB
The web interface is fantastic, to the point where I use my Fastmail account
for most of my email because it's less of a pain in the ass to go through.

The mobile app is also fantastic, but I've had instances in the past where
I've received no notifications if an unread email is left in my inbox. I'm the
kind of person that won't check my email unless I get a notification, so there
have been times when a week has passed, and I've gone to wonder why I'm so
unpopular, only to find a hundred unread emails from people wondering where I
am.

~~~
gtirloni
The mobile app is pretty basic and doesn't support offline use. It's okay but
I wouldn't rate it as fantastic. Outlook seems much better.

------
softgrow
Office 365 Business Essentials. Costs money but get good support and 50GB
mailbox. I actually only needed the Exchange Product, but for only a $1.50 a
month more I get a whole bunch of things, like SharePoint to play with :)

------
justusw
I'm very happy with [https://mailbox.org/](https://mailbox.org/). They are
based in Berlin, Germany right here in my neighborhood. They offer:

* Caldav/Carddav

* Optional at rest encryption using your PGP public key

* Microsoft Exchange API

* Pretty decent web mail interface

* For iOS/macOS: Configuration profiles that make it really easy to start configuring new devices

* Easy domain aliases

* Cheap and affordable (< 20 Euro per year)

------
alexghr
I've been using Soverin for almost two years now
[https://soverin.net/](https://soverin.net/). I chose them because of the
their privacy focus and the fact that at the time I was looking for a bare-
bones email service.

For the most part it works well, the only (rare) problem I've had was with
Soverin rejecting emails from my Google forwarding rule. I've encountered ~10
instances of this error in nearly two years so I'm not that concerned about
it.

They use RoundCube for the web interface, which I don't use. I prefer
Thunderbird on the desktop and use the Gmail app on my phone.

------
jycallahan
Mail-in-a-box is AWESOME ... for 3+ years without a hitch!
[https://mailinabox.email/](https://mailinabox.email/)

------
pcora
Fastmail user here o/

Simple, cheap, secure and reliable. Offers a superior alternative to the
mainstream services. IMHO. ;)

------
hacalox
Privateemail works pretty well, 10€/y and I think it's like 3€ or 4€ per each
extra email address. As mail client I use thunderbird and K9. I very much
appreciate my privacy, so I would always use things that I can understand how
they are making revenue without selling my data.

------
Yetanfou
My own mail server of course, accessible through IMAP, a stand-alone web mail
client (Roundcube) and the mail app buily into Nextcloud. The server supports
Sieve filtering (which, for those who use Nextcloud or Owncloud, currently
interferes with the mail app necessitating a patch to get it to work). Spam is
filtered (through Spamassassin and greylistd) and moved to a separate folder
(through Sieve). Any spam which made it through can be moved manually to a
spam folder from where it will be used to train the filter through a cron job
which runs nightly.

------
remir
Fastmail is a great alternative, but I wish their mobile app was more native
instead of just a WebView. Not a big deal because the desktop UI is amazing
and the service is consistent.

------
kyoshiro
I use my own email server (Postfix + Dovecot + OpenLDAP + OpenDKIM + DMARC +
Spamassassin) and have SOGo on top of it for calendar / todo / contacts sync.

~~~
badkangaroo
very good sir, same here.

------
Rjevski
Office 365, with the native Mac Mail clients; though if you don't like it the
web interface (Outlook Web Access) is pretty good.

------
farnsworthy
I'm only using it as a throwaway, but ProtonMail seems okay.

(Scraped quickly after posting here in a hiring thread, too: "Good day to you
and your family. I apologize if the content here-under are contrary to your
moral ethics but please treat with absolute secrecy and personal as that is my
business proposal to you.")

------
HugoDaniel
Thunderbird here.

I am using dreamhost mail with a bunch of domains and a few addresses for
these domains that I regularly check.

------
pcglue
Any downsides to using the email service provided by your webhost, aside from
the pain of potentially switching webhosts in the future? I've been using
webfaction for hosting and email for 4 years now, and it's been great for
both.

------
lazyjones
Fastmail (since 2013) & pobox.com (since 1997). Now they're the same
company...

------
dovik
I'm trying ProtonMail [https://protonmail.com/](https://protonmail.com/)

Pro :

* There is free limited version (500MB, 150 messages per day).

* Web and mobile app

* Security

Cons :

* By design, the mail search is currently limited (wip)

* Currently no integration with calendar or other usefull app

------
tsjensen
ProtonMail [https://protonmail.com/](https://protonmail.com/) Very good
privacy, spam detection doesn't work on content afaik (as they can't read your
email)

------
velygotsky
I'm thinking of transferring to ProtonMail. They are insane about security.

------
adaline
I have built and have been using this for a few years now:
[https://github.com/adaline/dockermail](https://github.com/adaline/dockermail)

------
sandworm101
Hushmail. It is private, local (to me) and non-american which was a big deal
for many of my clients in recent years. Data not crossing that international
boarder is always a good thing.

------
noufalibrahim
I pay for an account on hcoop.net. This was back in 2001 or so and my personal
domain is hosted there. Hcoop has email. I fetch it to my local drive and read
it. This is my primary email.

------
newscracker
I evaluated a few different services on cost, privacy, access, etc., about a
year and a half ago and finally moved to Posteo. I have also been looking at
this space once in a while. Almost all the services I looked at focused on
privacy explicitly, with some being stronger than others.

I can talk more in detail about Posteo, while with the others I'll stop with
what I know from my evaluation and checking on their sites later. The services
I evaluated were:

1\. Posteo (posteo.de)

Pros:

* Cheap enough (could be cheaper), good privacy policies, has good help documentation on protecting privacy better, IMAP support.

* The company is highly focused on social good and social justice (this will be abundantly clear when reading through the website). This was another plus to make me switch.

Cons:

* Privacy wise, the location of the servers is a fourteen eyes country — Germany.

* No custom domains (this could be a pro, depending on one's outlook; as far as Posteo is concerned, this is a pro because Posteo tries hard to avoid collecting any kind of information that could tie an account to you as a person).

* Support is slow to respond.

* No spam folder, since spammy mails are rejected by the server before they even come to the mailbox. Side effect is that mails from authentic senders may bounce, and Posteo support may just report that nothing is wrong on its end after a few days. Posteo retains logs only for seven days. This makes inbound deliverability related troubleshooting highly difficult to handle.

\----------

2\. Mailbox.org

Pros:

* Cheap enough, and slightly similar to Posteo in pricing, IMAP support.

* Custom domain support.

* Provides a cloud office system on the web.

Cons:

* Privacy wise, the location of the servers is a fourteen eyes country — Germany.

* The pricing is in tiers, and not more like a proportionally scaled pay _as_ you _go kind that Posteo has.

_ Documentation could be improved. Linking a custom domain is a bit tedious to
do if one follows the documentation.

\----------

3\. ProtonMail (protonmail.ch)

Pros:

* Custom domains.

Cons:

* Privacy wise, the location of the servers is Switzerland (not a 5 eyes, 9 eyes or 14 eyes country).

* Pricing is expensive compared to Posteo or Mailbox if you need multiple mailboxes (and not just one mailbox with multiple aliases).

* A bit painful to move out of ProtonMail because the main options to access email are to use webmail or mobile apps. For more than two years, there was no IMAP support to mass download and keep a copy of emails. Recently an application called ProtonMail Bridge has been made available that will act as an IMAP/SMTP gateway to your email client. This means that there is still no direct IMAP access, and accessing mail using a client like Thunderbird requires installation of the ProtonMail Bridge (available on Windows and macOS).

\----------

4\. Tutanota (tutanota.com)

Pros:

* Custom domains.

Cons:

* Privacy wise, the location of the servers is a fourteen eyes country — Germany.

* Pricing is slightly similar to Posteo and Mailbox, but not as granular as those services. So when your needs grow, you may end up paying for a lot more, comparatively.

* Painful to move out of Tutanota since there is no support for IMAP/POP. Such support won't be coming in the near future either.

\----------

5\. Fastmail (fastmail.com)

Pros:

* Custom domains.

* IMAP support.

Cons:

* Privacy wise, the location of the servers is a five eyes country — USA.

* Pricing is expensive compared to Posteo or Mailbox if you need multiple mailboxes (and not just one mailbox with multiple aliases).

\----------

6\. Migadu (migadu.com)

Pros:

* Very cheap (or the cheapest) if you need multiple mailboxes since pricing is not based on that. If you need four mailboxes or more, none of the others can beat this one on price.

* Custom domains.

* IMAP support.

Cons:

* Privacy wise, the location of the servers is Switzerland (not a 5 eyes, 9 eyes or 14 eyes country).

* Privacy part is just ok. Could be a lot better.

* Most parts of the website were updated in September 2016. The copyright messages were also outdated, standing at 2016 till early this year. Doesn't look like anyone maintains the site regularly.

* Currently the site doesn't even load on the browser (confirmed as a multi-location problem through other services).

------
geokon
gmx.com

It's pretty straightforward, short URL and you can setup several aliases which
is very convenient. It also has cloud storage. I don't really get what they're
business model - so I'm not really sure what the deal is privacy-wise. I think
they're based in Germany, so that's probably a plus

------
arnaud12
OVH Exchange. Works pretty well, the anti spam could be better though.

------
mhfs
I’m surprised no one mentions iCloud as a viable alternative. Reasons?

~~~
robin_reala
It doesn’t let you use your own domain, which massively increases the
difficulty to move providers in the future.

------
detaro
Mailbox.org with own domain (so I can move if necessary)

------
badkangaroo
a static IP, and a home email server.

------
bitL
Tutamail + ProtonMail

------
moltar
FastMail

------
nothrabannosir
I'm in the process of migrating to mailinabox (mailinabox.email) right now!
Migrated last week, I'm currently in the evaluation period.

So far:

* imap search is inferior to gmail (slow, no "did you mean"), but I can live with it.

* greylisting is a pain, but I can live with it. Actually I'm on HN right now after alt-tabbing to wait for a "confirmation e-mail" to come through. Ironically, for an account on the mailinabox format to discuss spam issues :) which brings me to the real problem:

* SPAM. I assumed the spam filters would be worse, and I could live with that. The real problem is that it's a total black box. I have zero insight into how it works, or even IF it's working. Just drag into "junk" and hope for the best. It's very frustrating, and if this continues, I'm not sure if I can live with it :(

I'm getting ~10 messages per hour from _the same sender_ and they all get
through. I have dragged >100 of these to the junk folder, used some incredibly
obscure command on the box (from a 4y old github issue) to see if it's
actually being "counted" as spam at all: it is. Now what? Clearly something is
wrong; either this filter is as dumb as a bag of nails or it's not working
correctly. Good luck figuring it out. I have no idea where to start debugging.

Essentially, the promise of MIAB is that you shouldn't have to look under the
hood. Hosting e-mail is notoriously hard, and they're trying to abstract it
all away. The problem is: it's hard because the old tools have terrible UI.
Absolutely awful. Arcane unix commands, weird process names, no visibility
into nothing, incredibly unintuitive, config files all over the place, log
files all over. Sure, it's open source, it can all be learned. But the mental
overhead is equivalent to learning a new programming language. It's harder to
learn than something like Photoshop, which, honestly, is not OK for what it is
(messaging and spam filtering).

I'm weary of the direction this is going in. I'll give it another few weeks,
but I'm afraid I'm taking on a responsibility I don't have time for. I don't
_want_ to manage dovecot, spamassasin, and what not; they're a full-time job.
But with MIAB, at the end of the day, it's not really abstracting it away.
It's just a nice setup script. In the end, you're still managing all that
cruft, and when push comes to shove, you're on your own.

I advise against it :( Unfortunately.

Hopefully, one day, someone will make a holistic spam server for the new
generation. A holistic system which handles everything: outgoing and incoming,
SMTP and IMAP, TLS, spam filtering, storage, backups, user management,
attachments, greylisting, logging, catch-alls, domain forwarding, all of it in
one tool.

The danger of using different tools for everything is incompatibility. E.g.
I'm using a lot of forwarding rules, internally. It might very well turn out
that spamassasin has a hard time following those rules. Will it understand the
internal forwards are not to be marked as responsible for the spam? that the
first external received: line is the one to block? I have no idea. And I don't
want to worry about it :(

I'd love to pay for a piece of server software which took care of it all,
holistically.

~~~
newscracker
> I'm getting ~10 messages per hour from the same sender and they all get
> through. I have dragged >100 of these to the junk folder, used some
> incredibly obscure command on the box (from a 4y old github issue) to see if
> it's actually being "counted" as spam at all: it is. Now what? Clearly
> something is wrong; either this filter is as dumb as a bag of nails or it's
> not working correctly. Good luck figuring it out. I have no idea where to
> start debugging.

Well, if it's of any consolation, I have Outlook365 from work (of course, it's
paid), and I have a similar problem where the same sender has been sending
spam for several months and I have marked it as Junk (as well as sent a copy
to Microsoft for further use) all this while. It still gets through after all
these months. I have no idea what the Microsoft email team is working on and
how this is even a service for sale to enterprise customers!

------
navium
Yandex.

~~~
navium
I've used it for custom domain mailboxes as well. It's ok, has 2FA as well.

------
nkkollaw
Google Inbox

