Their support replies faster than google :)
2) Google is notorious for killing off services or changing their agreements at a moments notice like here so there is a chance they'll drop their offering or increase prices.
3) Google support is either terrible or nonexistent (unless you're lucky enough to get your complaint to the HN frontpage).
I'm an affected user and I plan to put in the effort to migrate -- I only use it for email on a custom domain and have been doing regular backups (using gmvault) in case Google changed their mind so moving to a new service should be a breeze.
2) Not paid business accounts.
3) Not for paid business accounts.
For 20 years people have complained of 1,2,3 for free accounts, and said that they'd prefer to pay to avoid these issues. Now that there's an option....
https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-wh...
----
Our philosophy Google Workspace customers own their customer data, not Google. Customer data that Google Workspace organizations put into our systems is theirs, and we do not scan it for advertisements. We offer our customers a detailed Data Processing Amendment that describes our commitment to protecting customer data. Furthermore, if customers delete their data, we commit to deleting it from our systems within 180 days.
No advertising in Google Workspace There is no advertising in the Google Workspace Core Services, and we have no plans to change this in the future. Google does not collect, scan or use data in Google Workspace Core Services for advertising purposes. Customer administrators can restrict access to Non-Core Services from the Google Workspace Admin console. Google indexes customer data to provide beneficial services, such as spam filtering, virus detection, spellcheck and the ability to search for emails and files within an individual account.
Limited data use
Google does not use any of your data for any purpose except to provide you with the relevant Google Workspace service. For example, when customers use the Cloud Translation API, Google will not make the content of the text that you send available to the public, or share it with anyone else, except as necessary to provide the Cloud Translation API service.
2) I don't agree with "moments notice" sentiment. 3 months are quite enough for most users (and they can buy more time for a relatively small price). The free lunch was off the menu for more than nine years, I am actually surprised they gave us so much time.
3) There are replies around this post that for paying users Google support is significantly better. Good opportunity to check if it is really so.
It is far more likely Google will decide to change the terms unilaterally on their customers or discontinue a service altogether - their business is advertising, not email.
I already deal with this enough at work. I don't like having to switch between g accounts all the time.
Fastmail does give you access to your 30GB via FTP or WebDAV. It also has a web-based file uploading tool. Then you can create links to share files or folders with others, like a picture album. I did this a little just to try it out, and it was very straightforward. Whereas I could never figure out how to do it with iCloud and gave up.
And I see they support custom domains too:
https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360058753394-Cus...
Ticks all our boxes (admittedly our needs are very basic).
Recently Cloudflare also started enabling email forwarding. I believe it's still in Beta, and with the sites I've got in Cloudflare I got approved 2 weeks-ish after applying.
As for sending emails, I think you can use something like how ImprovMX suggests https://improvmx.com/guides/send-emails-using-gmail/
I like simplelogin.io (also open source, so can be selfhosted) because the aliases can be used to send and receive, though you do have to set the domain up on their platform first.
We are not Opensource, but that doesn't mean we track user's email (we don't, we wrote about it: https://improvmx.com/are-you-reading-my-emails/). On the contrary, screaming to anyone that one uses Opensource doesn't mean they respect user's privacy (like Forwardemail does): take their way of forwarding for instance: you need to add your email in the DNS settings, publicly available... they have a odd definition of privacy.
And don't get me started on their homepage full of misleading messages ... ;)
Slightly more expensive than Fastmail but seems like better security / privacy considerations.
That said, the space per inbox seems far more limited.
Seems we have some interesting options here!
Which means, if you like to set up new domains for specific projects, there's no extra cost (other than registering the domain of course).
Have never had a spam problem, but they stress that they don't consider themselves mission critical.
I went with fastmail for my personal email, after a small-ish provider I had used (and liked very much!) between 2001 and 2018 was unable for a few month, in 2018, to avoid getting my mails sorted by gmail into spam -- no delivery problems since mail. Alas, despite wishing to support the smaller players, silent non-delivery of emails is a huge problem.
I'm new to shopping for email hosting and using your own domain. I know sending emails and not get flagged as spam is a hard, but is there any risks when it comes to receiving emails?
How hard it is depends on how many nines you want in the uptime guarantee.
I'd trust them not to pull the rug any further even less than Google.
For those that are reading this too and are curious:
I setup a trial with plan to use it long term but I got locked out of my own admin account with no way in (I use a password manager, yes) and the support page that was supposed to work kept crashing my browser.
Their Twitter account redirected me to that support page after explaining the situation to them.
The quality of the service itself is horrible for an individual to manage compared to gsuite or any other service I have touched.
It might feel simple and old, but I like it simple and old.
Have you had any issues with your outgoing mails being flagged as spam?
That's a (perhaps slightly paranoid) concern of ours, given Google's clout.
And to be clear, I'm not talking about spammy / bulk emails. I mean your standard day-to-day personalised emails (customer support etc.).
Some paranoid thread in me fears that Google will find a problem with Fastmail's IP range and credentials this spring (among others), in order to consolidate the Gmail upgrade cash avalanche, but I'm hoping that's just me with my tinfoil hat on too tight.
Could just be my experience, but I'm considering moving back to Google for my personal email just for that.
It's pretty basic in terms of webmail/core functionality but it receives and delivers mail well from the various IMAP clients I use, which is all I need.
And iCloud+ is $1/month for up to 5 users for 5 domains with up to 3 addresses per domain per user.
I haven't gone through the process yet, but it additionally looks like I will need to borrow a Mac or Windows machine to start up iCloud Email. Once it is enabled I should be able to use IMAP or their web client.
That said, if you don't have anyone in your family with an Apple product, this iCloud+ thing may not be right for you.
Context:
We're a small but relatively old SaaS company.
Been happily using G Suite's free tier since day 1 - only for email.
This announcement is a tad disappointing, but as other commenters have said, 10 years of a free product is pretty great.
We'll likely upgrade to Google's paid tier, but out of curiosity, since we're switching to a paid service, we may as well explore alternatives too.
Just need cloud email accounts for around 8 users, and with minimal risk of being flagged as spam.
Thanks!