What was your gmail alternative?

I tried to switch everything to Lavabit, but then a month later the Snowden thing happened...that didn't last (and I'm still out all that money)

I use Fastmail and absolutely love it. The interface is so much better than Gmail or anything else out there, and the additional services are awesome without being cumbersome. Their file storage isn't as easy to use as Google Drive, but it's fine for long-term storage of rarely accessed files, and you can even host simple web pages from your account.

The only downside I've found is you have to pay the full fee for each @fastmail.com account, though I get around that by hosting my other email addresses on my own VPS and using Fastmail as my IMAP client for them.

I switched to Fastmail. Note that my main concern was being banned by Google, so security/privacy wasn't my focus. I say that because I believe Fastmail is still in the US[1], which brings up privacy concerns imo.

Recently on HN I saw another email provider that offered fully encrypted email, perhaps end to end, but I've already committed to Fastmail so I didn't follow up with them too much.

I'm happy with Fastmail fwiw, and happily support them.

[1]: https://blog.fastmail.com/2013/10/07/fastmails-servers-are-i...

Fastmail is based in Australia.

https://www.fastmail.com/about/company.html

Hmm, I'll have to do more research, but I thought they used some American hosting. Perhaps I'm mistaken! I'll make a note in the comment, ty!

edit: I take that back, I'm not wrong, yay \o/.

https://blog.fastmail.com/2013/10/07/fastmails-servers-are-i...

They are in the US, it's just that the company itself isn't. So depending on your level of distrust of the US, that may or may not be an issue for you.

If you think you are safer from the NSA because a server is located outside the US, I've got some bad news for you: outside of the US, the NSA can do whatever they want as the US Constitution has no jurisdiction. Whether or not they are abusing the law within the US is up for debate, but outside the US there is nothing to stop them except technology.

That's fair - I wasn't raising it as a personal concern however, I was raising it because I've seen many other concerned about US involvements.

With that said, do you feel there's no difference in security when having servers in, or outside of the US?

A lot of people seem to distrust US involvement, and prefer out of US as much as possible. Do you think this is completely bunk, because the NSA is so unstoppable?

To me it just seems like being in the US just adds to possible problems. Thoughts?

I'm going through the same process, and am currently enjoying ProtonMail.

Ah yes, this is the encrypted email provider I saw on HN a while back (I mentioned in another comment of mine, but at the time forgot the name of ProtonMail).

When it's time for email renewal, 1 or 2 yrs down the line, I'll be looking at ProtonMail :)

If most people you email with use Gmail, what's the point of an "encrypted email" provider? Why not just use PGP and stay with your current provider? Thunderbird+enigmail is the way to do meaningful encryption and it is provider agnostic.

I have no idea, I'm not the one advertising the feature lol. I literally said that I've not even researched them, and that it is "perhaps end to 2 end". Beyond that, I know nothing about them.

I bought my own domain and have Zoho host my email. I have not had any hiccups at all. They support exchange, so I get push on my phone, which is nice. I set up my gmail to fwd any straggling emails to my new email.

outlook.com is excellent. I used the free version for years, now I have bought premium.

Their spam filter has been horrible lately. I've been on outlook.com ever since it was rebranded away from hotmail, and it was OK until recently. But the spam has gotten so horrible in the last few months, I'm trying to decide what to use next (given that I don't live in china anymore, I have choices).

It is also missing a lot of features compared to gmail, while the web UI is a bit clunky. These aren't real breakers for me (spam is); but it is hard to recommend. Is premium much better?

Owning the domain makes for great email address portability. If I hadn't read so many of your comments here over the years, I probably wouldn't suggest this, but I think a good strategy is to buy 2 domains, one for trusted entities (i.e.people you know or your bank/ credit union) and one for non-trusted entities (i.e. Amazon or commercial entities in general). Use your domain registrar's email hosting for trusted entities (add PGP for extra goodness), and use a commercial provider (e.g Google, Fastmail,etc.) for the non-trusted entities domain.

Strange, my spam filter is fine. Premium is just no ads + some extra space. I pay premium because I want microsoft to keep providing this excellent service without compromising my personal data

Fastmail is stupendous. The UI is great, and real humans reply pretty fast when you need support (and this hasn't been often, fortunately).

Plus, they work with SMTP/IMAP/CalDav/CardDav, so if you like the tools you're using, you can keep using them. Personally, I use third party tools on my phone, but their web UI on PC.

If you are using a your own domain, if you use gandi.net or transfer there you get pretty decent basic email for free with the ability to add to it for reasonable prices. If I were to ever tire of self-hosting my email, I'd probably switch to them.

Fastmail has been wonderful for me.

I use Zoho Mail without any issues.

I use Fastmail, personally.

Could you share your email transition strategy? Any tips? Do you still end up checking the account?

I forwarded email in Gmail, and move over forwarded emails as I can. Note that it's not been an easy process, it's still a massive undertaking changing all those emails.

I did think about switching to my own domain for emails though. I have previously avoided it because it adds a new vector of attack - i.e. if an attacker gets my domain, they have my email. With that said however, I can still keep a handful of important sites hooked up to my real email. Eg, my bank can go directly to fastmail, but randomsite.com would send emails to [email protected].

That would give me freedom to move my email where ever I see fit, with minimal changes. It seems tempting.

Thanks for your detailed response. You mentioned:

>"I forwarded email in Gmail, and move over forwarded emails as I can."

I didn't understand what you meant by moving over forwarded emails. Once you forwarded them aren't they available on Fastmail's IMPAP server? Or is there some other cleaning process you go through? Thanks.

(Not OP) OP probably means as emails are forwarded and appear in Fastmail, OP goes to the sender of the email and lets them know about the new email address (so they aren't sent to gmail in the future).

You can easily set up email forwarding in Gmail to forward all messages to your new address. After that it's just a matter of switching everything over to email your new address directly.

Generally it’s better to fetch email as not to trip additional spam filters. Many email providers support this, ex https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/fetchotheremail.html. If moving from gmail you may need to adjust security settings, which is probably another indication that Google isn’t a great teammate in this.

fastmail.fm is what I went to, years ago, for e-mail redundancy.

Fortunately I have two major, long-standing e-mail addresses, so I put one of them on fastmail.