Ask HN: What email service should I use instead of Gmail? I’m looking for a secure and stable service, I do not mind if there are any fees involved but the service most support custom domains, and preferably allow me to migrate my gmail inbox. Any suggestions? |
Besides that I use Protonmail as well for non-important stuff.
jk Spamhaus cartel would bury it in seconds.
Source: experience in hosting my own mail since before the dawn of time, or at least since before the dawn of spam (and spamhaus).
The screener keeps new senders out of your inbox. A rich set of keyboard shortcuts helps triage new senders into one of a few categories including simply blocking them. You can choose to block at the address or the domain level.
And the lack of SMTP makes migrating off their service slightly less clean as well.
I will list some:
- http://mailbox.org (I use it; this is my main provider and my personal domain is setup with them and that is “personal/public mail”. They are decent and private. Their spam filter is not the best but much better than Gmail’s which isn’t really a compliment. Other services on their suite - like doc, notes, storage are nothing to write home about. Though their new pricing tiers is not much less than non-cheap providers. I am on the old pricing tier and I don’t see myself moving to anything else unless they enforce it. Pathetic support - they simply don’t respond most of the times. Well, I guess you get what you pay for.)
- https://tutanota.com (I use it, not on the domain though - and not really for “public” usage. Please know that you just can’t have IMAP access - either use their app, or the web app, no other client - or at least that is how it was last I checked. They are extremely responsible, really good team, keep releasing new features - both for usability and privacy; much better than Mailbox on many aspects. They are really good!)
- https://fastmail.com/ (It’s the “HN Exclusive Favourite”. Too expansive for my usage and that too their first paid tier, which is very limited in features aawy. People swear by their mail client - I have never used it and I doubt I will. I secretly suspect HN has a shill/fan/etc following of these folks here just like Apple has :-D)
- https://protonmail.com (I might move to them if I ever leave mailbox.org. They are good. Because none of these providers are good if you get into the discussion of 5 eyes, 14 eyes, and 7 ears etc; I am not saying you should not but then you would end up with zero providers or just one like riseup.net or so or maybe not even that. RiseUp is great though, I donate to them and have a “non-public” email with them which I barely use.)
- Zoho (I’d say stay away; I’ve reasons, some of those reasons might be off-topic for hn)
- https://purelymail.com (If it wasn’t a one-person setup, I’d have definitely tried them; a friend uses them and he says it’s excellent; very good/transparent pricing and he is happy with help/support)
- Migadu (has very questionable daily email quota on their base plan. I would not want to deal with that and hoping for an exception or that it is not really enforced)
My use-case is not hiding from state actors, because I can’t. I am not that skilled or motivated. If yours is similar, I highly recommend pick one of mailbox, protonmail, fastmail.
Finalise a domain now (preferably something that lets you keep your whois data private) and never renew for less than 2 years at once. Have different kinds of backup email with your domain registrar e.g. gmail, icloud.com (if you have one) etc; 2FA; your phone number (in my country it’s easier to kidnap someone and torture for few hours to days to get the password than SIM hijacking/sppfing, you mileage might vary),
Also they have a good support, always answering within hours.
Supports custom domains and I believe has a tool to migrate emails away from Gmail
Embarrassingly, I found one of my ex colleague’s company selling my data
I wonder if that's ever happened yet. I do the same with Firefox Relay, it's only $1/month to keep using my existing email. I have probably hundreds of accounts that haven't had their emails updated yet.
Is it just that you can manage your own spam rules? Or can you do some near tricks with them?
My one gripe is the spam filtering. Plenty of block rules but it can’t be trained terribly well. That or it’s long given up on a mailbox my size.
If you lose access to eg gmail or they ban you, nobody you care about will access your email.
If your domain gets hijacked or you fail to renew, now a bad actor could receive all your email forever.
(I use my own domain for email)
The few things I dislike about ProtonMail is the search and the fact they don't have the email client app on F-Droid. If you decide to move to Proton, I would advise against importing all your emails (maybe just the last X months). Keep a local backup of all your emails to search them, that worked the best for me and avoided cluttering my new email box.
irs.djt@example.org
johndoe-twitter@example.org
scammycompany-jrrt@example.org
Source: I've been doing this for about 26 years without major problems
When he tried to forward these mails to the email address they provide for reporting spam, he got an automated mail delivery system email, that he was blocked from sending mails to that address...
I use it with my own domain and its been stellar.
Also, I'm paying for Apple One and it could host my email... but should I? Its private relay system is pretty cool... but I really don't want to get locked in again.
I really want a self-hosted IMAP server, but to have decent spam filtering and deliverability. I'll set all the domain keys and stuff, but I need a trusted IP for the mail server or some path to make mine trusted.
My Google account still exists at name@lastname.com, I can still OAuth with that account. My Gmail inbox is just not updated anymore since the emails are actually going to Apple's servers. I requested a Google Takeout (basically all the files and emails associated to your account" so if I ever lose access to that account, I don't lose the files.
In Apple, you can change the login details for your account to your custom domain.
Sounds like a project though - I also have a paid Bitwarden account which I use for my 2FA codes. Works well for me
Mailinabox supports exchange activesync and comes with an install of nextcloud for syncing my contacts/calendar/notes and some specific files like a keypass db across devices.
My only issue is, I need to still use something like a gmail account as a recovery email for my domain registration and Linode account. A major fear of mine is for some reason being locked out of the domain, or VPS, or a credit card that pays for it, and having no email since the recovery email relies on that domain. I have been considering fastmail or zoho.
I am founder for a new startup and we decided to go for Office 365 as our email service because it just made most sense for our business. And those who knows me, know that I prefer to avoid Microsoft solutions most of the time.
Simple and privacy focused. I pay 3 euro/month for 10 GB email storage and 25 email aliases which are very nice. I haven't had a problem with them so far since 2015.
So if you are going self-hosted, I can really recommend MailCow (https://mailcow.email/)
I was able to migrate all my GMail mail using imapsync.
I also self-host Postfix, Dovecot and OpenDKIM on my VPS, but that's mostly for sending automated emails (notifications etc) from the subdomains.
$4/user/month for a 50GB inbox
multiple domains + multiple aliases that you can also send as; us-east, us-west, eu-west regions
cheaper than fastmail, protonmail, tutanota, ...
- custom domain support
- wildcard redirections
- "hide my email"
If you have an iPhone, you can tweak the configuration directly from the Settings app, it's very convenient.
Mailbox.org
Runbox.com
Mailfence.com
Migadu.com
If price is not a big concern but privacy is, consider the following:
ProtonMail (supports IMAP on paid plans)
Tutanota (no IMAP support)
Alternatively I had a one seat Exchange Online license for a few years that went pretty well reputation and anti spam wise
Other than that, I set up SPF and DMARC.