Ask HN: Gmail alternatives?

Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by alaithea on Friday February 12, 2010 @01:40PM (#1121315)

I pay a small amount yearly for an account at FastMail (http://www.fastmail.fm) They have a very solid IMAP service, and a robust (though not Gmail-fancy) web interface. In the five years or so that I have had an account with them, I think I could total up about a half hour of downtime that I can recall, so they are very stable. I recommend them highly. (I'm not affiliated with them, just a satisfied customer.)

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by hga on Friday February 12, 2010 @01:47PM (#1121338)

I've only been a customer of FastMail since August, but I strongly echo alaithea's recommendation.

I use the web interface for preview and POP to Eudora for the real thing. Pretty much total satisfaction. You also get space for a static web site and file sharing. Pay enough (but not much) and you can use your own domains.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by DenisM on Friday February 12, 2010 @02:39PM (#1121557)

I'm using fastmail for 5 years now. It's good, but not that great. My two problems are:

1. Spam false positives. I get order confirmations or mail list subscriptions sent to spam folder occasionally.

2. Search is really bad. by default it only searches subjects, and I think only in the current folder.

Thinking about moving to gmail, provided those guys sort out privacy issues.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by robmueller on Saturday February 13, 2010 @02:38AM (#1122707)

(FYI, I'm one of the owners/developers of FastMail)

1. Just add addresses to your address book to whitelist. Also make sure you use Report Spam/Report non-spam on enough emails (200 of each) to activate your personal bayes db (see the Options -> Spam/Virus Protection near the bottom to see how many of each you've already learned)

2. At the moment, you do have to explicitly add body: to a term to do a body search. The first time might be slow as it indexes your email, after that it should be faster.

http://wiki.fastmail.fm/index.php?title=NewInterface#Enhance...

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by DenisM on Sunday February 14, 2010 @02:36AM (#1124283)

I'm making orders from all kinds of online stores, there is no way I will add them all to the address book. Especially so because I don't know their address before they send me something, and I don't care about it after their first order confirmation/tracking number email.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by vl on Friday February 12, 2010 @05:08PM (#1121929)

I'm using Fastmail to host email on my own domain (you can redirect MX records to them or just use their DNS servers). I read email mostly in Thunderbird via IMAP.

At the end of the day your own domain is what you really want - you can host it on Fastmail or Google, and if any of them screw up you can move on to other hosting provider or to your own server.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by robmueller on Saturday February 13, 2010 @02:42AM (#1122712)

(FYI, I'm one of the owners/developers of FastMail)

For people that are concerned about lock in, I highly recommend this as well. Get your own domain, and then you're not tied to any one service. We have 10,000's of domains hosted at FastMail.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by kmt on Friday February 12, 2010 @02:19PM (#1121466)

I've used FastMail for about 8 years now. It's an extremely solid service. They just do one thing and that's email. No spam issues.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by euroclydon on Friday February 12, 2010 @01:51PM (#1121357)

What about the SPAM filter?

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by alaithea on Friday February 12, 2010 @02:19PM (#1121465)

I find it to work pretty well, as long as I keep it trained by moving stuff that gets past it into the Junk folder. You can fine-tune lots of its settings (change thresholds, etc.) in the control panel.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by Maro on Friday February 12, 2010 @02:18PM (#1121461)

I must be getting old or sth, but I can't find a screenshot or a test login on the site.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by alaithea on Friday February 12, 2010 @02:24PM (#1121492)

I'm not sure they have any. Their marketing and communication tend to be pretty minimalist. I happen to like it that way.

You can always get a free guest account to try it out. Or if you ask nicely enough, one of us who have accounts might be able to post a screenshot. ;)

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by robmueller on Saturday February 13, 2010 @02:45AM (#1122717)

(FYI, I'm one of the owners/developers of FastMail)

Hmmm yes, we don't really have any screenshots do we, we should probably fix that!

Hopefully even without a screenshot, we can convince people it's worth trying us out (there is the free Guest account, minimal storage, but you can at least look around the interface, and then upgrade if you like it)

Quick links to the two biggest things people want to know, features and reliability.

http://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_features.html http://www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_reliability.html

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by Maro on Friday February 12, 2010 @02:28PM (#1121509)

Please do, I'm curious.

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by alaithea on Friday February 12, 2010 @04:44PM (#1121865)

Here's an interview with the founder, which includes a screenshot of a message view.

http://www.emailserviceguide.com/2009/10/interview-with-jere...

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Re:Ask HN: Gmail alternatives? by decode on Friday February 12, 2010 @02:47PM (#1121580)

Here's my junk mail folder: http://i.imgur.com/2IwpW.png

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