Ask HN: Looking for Email Service Recommendations 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 |
By the way, it is possible to sync the calendar and contacts with your Android phone using davx5 (available for free on F-Droid)
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!
Also in their web UI, you can select a professional font: Proxima Nova! The attention to detail is great.
Personally, I like Migadu for mail hosting. The mail gets delivered, the price is reasonable, and there’s good tech support
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.
(Edit: they are Australian, I'm not sure if the third party doctrine applies there https://fastmail.blog/historical/security-confidentiality/ )
[1]https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/account-article/data-synch...
It may still class as an "email service", but only just, since it is effectively limited to webmail and their custom apps.
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).
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.
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’ve been using Posteo for years and have never had any problem with spam filters.
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.
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
Disclaimer: I don't work for google or fastmail.
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.
$10/year, unlimited accounts, unlimited domains, unlimited everything. If you use unusually high amount of anything, your bill goes up accordingly.
[0]: purelymail.com/
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.