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Ask HN: Looking for Email Service Recommendations
46 points by yeezyszn on Sept 25, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 80 comments
Hi all - with gmail recently instituting a storage limit, I'm starting to run into trouble with my usual gmail account. I'm recognizing the era of free everything is over, but I'd rather pay an organization that takes privacy seriously.

What is an email service you would recommend that will not be categorized as spam if I email the conventional gmail etc accounts?

Thanks




I've been using fastmail for the past 3+ years in an effort to de-google my life. It's been excellent, and I haven't had any issues with emails I've sent being classed as spam.


+1 Fastmail. Their 'masked email' feature is brilliant.


+1 Fastmail, though make sure you use a somewhat standard TLD if you go for you own domain (I had a .xyz one that turned out to be marked as spam too often, and switched to .nl later)

By the way, it is possible to sync the calendar and contacts with your Android phone using davx5 (available for free on F-Droid)


Fastmail makes an excellent email client, but there are significant privacy concerns that have not been adequately addressed in many people's eyes.

Namely, that Australia (where Fastmail is based) passed laws that require all Australian companies to give any/all data on their users to the Australian government, and are not allowed to publicly disclose what is given.

Not that Google is any better.

If you want a privacy-focused email that "just works" consider Protonmail or Tutanota. Alternatively, if you're feeling bold, you can self-host your own email like I do, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're in it for the fun of it!


+1 Fastmail. $3.88/month if you pay in advance for 3 years for their standard plan. Totally amazing.

Also in their web UI, you can select a professional font: Proxima Nova! The attention to detail is great.


I don't think I'd ever noticed this. Flipping between the system font option and Proxima Nova, there's not a huge difference (on a Mac). I do find it subtly easier to read however, so would agree that attention to detail is neat.


Yes, subtle difference. They didn't have to do it, but they did. That's the kind of thing that should be appreciated.


What is a "professional font"?


A font that they've licensed for use in their web app. It makes the web app look quite professional in a subtle way.


+1 FastMail


+1 FastMail


Most important is to use your own domain name for your email. That way you can switch providers as you like without having to change your address, and all the hassle that goes with that.

Personally, I like Migadu for mail hosting. The mail gets delivered, the price is reasonable, and there’s good tech support


Migadu are great - I was with them for a long time, but I outgrew their cheapest plan, and went over to MXRoute, bought a lifetime plan, and haven't looked back.


Migadu is great and their Support is very responsive.


Would like to second this. My recommendation would be just pick a decent domain, register it for 10 years, and set up Fastmail.


Like several other commenters I find Fastmail to be a good email host. They support custom domains, have support for email aliasing, is easy to set up and provide a very good web UI. Unlike gmail you are actually able to select all emails in an inbox and apply actions to them.

They also have support people if you ever get problems, and unlike gmail they actually care about customers. Their first line of support are not super technical though.

I’ve had no problems using them so far. Email deliverability seems great and their service has not had any serious downtime the years I’ve used them.


Do fastmail terms say they don't require a warrant to hand all history over, like the other providers?

(Edit: they are Australian, I'm not sure if the third party doctrine applies there https://fastmail.blog/historical/security-confidentiality/ )


Not sure how relevant, but was no Australia where glassdoor had to inform which users posted negative reviews of some companies?


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/19/glassdoor-orde...

New Zealand!


I can highly recommend mailbox.org. I have been using their service for multiple years with my own domain and never had any problems sending or recieving mails from the big providers. They also take the privacy of their users data really seriously.


Can their contacts and calendar be synced with Android?


Yes, at least CardDav and CalDav are supported[0]

[0]: https://mailbox.org/en/your-personal-office


Yes CalDav, CarDAV and ActiveSync are supported[1]. On Android you could use DAVx5 to integrate it seamlessly into the system.

[1]https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/account-article/data-synch...


I recommend ProtonMail. Or you can buy your own domain name and config a email to Zoho Mail. but personally, I think proton mail is more secure and private. But the free version only has 1GB as I remember.


ProtonMail is an interesting case. It does not provide SMTP or IMAP servers, except via a weird proxy service that runs on your local machine, and obviously isn't compatible with smartphones.

It may still class as an "email service", but only just, since it is effectively limited to webmail and their custom apps.


I have a protonmail app on my iPhone. Works great.


>ProtonMail is an interesting case. It does not provide SMTP or IMAP servers,

Just half-true..

https://proton.me/support/imap-smtp-and-pop3-setup


...that says exactly what I said in my comment. I'm not sure why I deserve a "half true".


+1 to ProtonMail. I've been using it for several years and was recently grandfathered into their Proton Unlimited plan that allows for additional domains, extra storage, etc. They have had technical issues a couple of times since I started using them, but support was always responsive and it's been overall a nice experience mail-wise.

In terms of their other products, I think they have quite a bit to go with Proton Drive (no widely available Android app is preventing me from switching from Google Drive) and Proton Calendar (unable to import large calendars, won't let you just import future events and ignore past entries to decrease space requirements).


You can setup ProtonMail on a private domain as well.


They cooperate with EuroPol extensively tho


If you're a paid iCloud user or an MS365 user, both have ways to use a custom domain and tap into the storage you're already paying for at no extra cost. MS365 locks you in to GoDaddy as a registrar and I'm on Cloudflare, so I use iCloud. I'm not sure what your threat model is, so you may not be willing to consider either of these options. For me, email privacy is an oxymoron and I prefer communication methods with forward secrecy like Signal. For email, I'm mainly just looking for a vanity domain I can share with my wife for spam and mailing lists.

Growing past the above suggestions, at the cheap tier, I'd recommend Migadu, MXRoute, or Zoho.

If you're willing to pay what I consider to be Too Much For Email, then my favorites are Proton Mail, StartMail, or Fastmail. You'll want to research these heavily before transitioning though, as they may be missing features you're used to from Gmail that you find you can't live without.


It’s only the personal plans that lock you into godaddy for custom domains not the business plans obvs.


Happy with Fastmail here as well - but if you're using your own domain name & are concerned about being flagged as spam, make sure you read up on how to add SPF and DKIM records into your domain DNS records. It's pretty much essential now for functional email. SPF & DKIM are basically a list of IP addresses you authorize to send mail in your name, and a public key for authenticating/signing your emails. Since you're here on HN, setting those up is definitely something you'll be able to understand & do.

The interesting side effect of having SPF/DKIM setup is I can receive reports from Google & other mail providers when someone tries to send spam spoofing my domain name. Seems that China Unicom & ChinaNet are running an enormous botnet that continually sends phishing attacks to Japanese Amazon users, while using my domains in the From field.


I recommend Posteo https://posteo.de/en . Nothing special, just a simple, straightforward email provider that does what it says (including respecting your privacy). It’s cheap (1 Euro per month for 2 GB, and 25 cents for each additional GB.

I’ve been using Posteo for years and have never had any problem with spam filters.


will not be categorized as spam if I email the conventional gmail

There will be many recommendations here about affordable and reliable email providers. I can name a couple if you really want. As for not being categorized as spam, all bets are off. Based on a myriad of posts here over the past year about gmail it seems their spam filters/detection have been a moving target and highly unpredictable.

As for recommendations, I set up Fastmail and several custom domains for family members to create aliases email canaries and they have been happy with it and not been flagged as spam when emailing gmail thus far, but that could change. I also use it for specific use cases. They have good documentation and support. They integrate well with Thunderbird which also makes it easy to each non technical people how to encrypt their emails in my opinion, though others here have had bad experiences with this.

My own personal theory of which I have absolutely nothing to back this up with other than a gut feeling is that Google likely realized the benefits of gathering data from their free email service is not worth the cost and are likely instead focusing on b2b commercial products like corporate email, google docs, etc... Breaking the spam filtering could be a passive-aggressive way to get people to move off the product without having to outright cancel it and deal with the blow-back. But I could be wrong.


Delivering to gmail is unpredictable when you try to send from IP space with unmanaged or poorly-managed IP range reputation, like most low-cost VPSes or residential ISP IP space.

Incidentally, I'm pretty confident the same filtering engine runs both gmail and google workspaces spam filters. Perhaps with some minor differences.

If you're paying for an email service from a respected provider like Fastmail, they almost always have professionals managing IP range reputation, so gmail delivery ends up being significantly more predictable. Make sure you set up DKIM/SPF if you're sending from your own domain.

The reasons Gmail's filters tend to generate complaints that surface on HN is:

  1) IP range reputation can frequently be a stronger spam signal than individual IP reputation  
  2) Most people aren't aware how much of an impact IP range reputation can have on delivery  
  3) There's no way to publicly check IP range reputation with gmail
Some commenters here also significantly underestimate the challenges and complexity of running spam filters at scale.

Disclaimer: I don't work for google or fastmail.


I recommend Fastmail as well.


Gmail has always had a limit on free storage quota. At first it was 1GB, then it was 5GB, currently it is 15GB. So I'm curious how much data we are talking about and whether you have considered the $2/mo 100GB plan.

Personally, I am paying $17/mo for YouTube Premium that gives everyone in my family ad-free YouTube, unlimited music, and 100GB of storage for our gmail and other files. It seems like a pretty square deal considering.


I think the Google Apps for a work aka gmail for your own domain has recently put a limit that "free" legacy accounts can't buy storage. The regular @gmail, and paid domain gmail users can still buy any storage plan.


According to the email reminders that Google keeps sending me, they're flicking that switch in 7 days and moving everyone to "Google Workspace Business Starter" or oblivion. I thought it was called G Suite, I can't keep up.


Not everybody, I think only if one has themselves not opted for any new option (free non business use OR paid business use). I have 5-6 personal domains, for family, maybe a user or two on each. I have opted rightfully non business use, and I am not getting any reminders.


Purelymail [0].

$10/year, unlimited accounts, unlimited domains, unlimited everything. If you use unusually high amount of anything, your bill goes up accordingly.

[0]: purelymail.com/


Can’t recommend Migadu enough. Rock solid service with excellent support. Happy customer for about 3 years now—not once have I been sent to spam.


Completely agree. I've moved to using proton mail for my main address purely because of the new calendar and migadu for all my other domains and side projects. If they had a calendar I'd go back to them for everything, they're great.


Migadu do have calendar/contacts but it's a bit tricky setting up, FYI.

Edit: For example, take a look at https://www.migadu.com/guides/thunderbird/ and at the end of that page there's some instructions for setting up calendar.


I have been using Runbox - (www.runbox.com) and it seems to work well.

Based in Norway and claims to require using a Norwegian judge to sign a warrant before any info will be given to law enforcement etc. Not sure how you verify that though.


I'm becoming a broken record, but:

Just use Zoho Mail: https://www.zoho.com/mail/

Zoho has a history of being good: https://www.zoho.com/25/

Zoho's privacy policy: https://www.zoho.com/privacy.html

(Disclaimer: I work at Zoho).


Protonmail. I don’t see why people use fastmail (the privacy laws in Australia are among the worst in the world), when they can get the encrypted version from proton.

Recently proton has offered a combo package, bundling email, vpn and storage. With client apps for proton drive, and higher storage space, it would be a great option.


Because ProtonMail doesn't offer SMTP and IMAP except by running a local proxy server on your own machine. When people say they want an "email service", they usually mean they want SMTP and IMAP.


There is a Bridge if you want to download emails. I am not sure if it’s a full substitute for SMTP/IMAP though.


Protonmail collaborate with EuroPol extensively, I wouldn't reccomend it for EU users


Reference? Also if it’s end to end encrypted between two PM accounts, Anyone could have encrypted data.


I was pretty impressed with AWS's "workmail" product, and since I run all my DNS through Route53 it ended up being a very simple service to setup and run on my own.

It's a relatively well featured service and you can route your mail through lambdas and other advanced features if you want.. or you can just use the simple "alias table" it gives you and just have a basic mailbox.

It may not be the best choice if you're not already familiar with AWS, but if you are, I found it to be a reasonable and hassle free choice.


MXRoute is excellent for its price!


Fastmail, I've been using them for many years now. One of my favorite features is having catch-all email addresses, like whateveryouwant@domain.tld - you can get mails to your inbox for any address in your domain. Also, you can have multiple domains, you pay for the storage.


I've been using purelymail for some time and never had any problems with it


I would highly recommend protonmail.

I am surprised with the top comments recommending fastmail. Is there any offering or feature I should know about with fastmail compared to protonmail premium?


I was on Protonmail before switching to Fastmail. Happy with both, but I do have a couple issues with Protonmail:

1. I remember the webui being really slow. Maybe because it was hosted in Europe? This was a couple years ago. Fastmail has one of the best/fastest web apps I've ever used.

2. I'm still paying Protonmail because their export tool doesn't support Linux and so far I can't be bothered.

3. Not being able to use different clients is a bummer. Obviously it's because of their encryption which is nice but overkill for my needs.


Makes sense, thanks for explaining. I just use the webui so works for me fine.


the main issue I have with protonmail is that it locks you out, basically if you wanna move away from it, you can't just fwd the incoming emails


Perhaps using a custom domain would be best if you might need that.


What prevents you from forwarding mail?


Short answer: everything is encrypted. So they could forward it in theory, but it would be unusable downstream anyway. The way you'd have to do it is set up the decryption email bridge on a client and set up some manual forwarding after that on the client side.

Happy proton user that doesn't need this feature, but gets why it would be frustrating for others who want a clean way to move off if they decide to.


I thought their Sieve filter supported forwards, but it doesn't.


I really like tutanota been a great service, I turned off sending encrypted emails. But like the fact my email is encrypted in there servers. Also like they give you 1GB but since they compress emails its like 10GB. I also believe in giving back so i upgraded.


Take a look at https://www.openinbox.com


I've been using Postale for a for a few years now, it's been very solid and the pricing is reasonable!


Cheap VPS with your own setup. Only communicate theiremailadress@yourdomain. 0 spam.


Can you elaborate on how you would make your own set up? Always meant to do this for at least enquire how but never got around to doing it. Thanks! :)


I enjoy using HEY from 37signals. It's different than other services (more opinionated), but it keeps my inbox under control. They also take privacy seriously.

I was a paid subscriber for the first year, stopped for a year, and then went back because I realized how much it helped. It lacks a calendar, though, if that's important to you.


Happy HEY user here, too. It's quirky and opinionated, so definitely not for everybody. But give it a try and see if you like it. Other than that, you can't do anything wrong with Fastmail or Proton.


Hey has been well worth the $100/year, especially since they improved search. Curious how it worked when you returned after a year. Did you get your old address back?


Yup! My HEY address was forwarding to Gmail after I stopped my subscription. When I came back, I had to start over. All of the data is removed when you leave. HEY provides a backup when your subscription ends, so I can always take a look at that if there's something I need from that first year.


As I understand it you never lose your address after you pay once. They forward mail for you. But I am curious about the return aspect.


I like the offerings of pair.com, for what it's worth.


Migadu is quite good IMO


I use Hostinger and I'm generally happy with it.


privateemail.com is fine (it's run by namecheap).


Fastmail




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