Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best alternative to Gmail?

867 pointsegonschiele568 comments

With the recent thread on privacy in Chrome, I'm thinking of switching off Gmail. What email service is best for privacy? Or if you self-host, what email client do you like best?

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FastMail. It's one of the few third party hosts to support push email on iOS with the native Mail app (it's a custom protocol based on APNS), since Mail doesn't implement IMAP IDLE [1].

They are also the main sponsors behind the JMAP protocol [2] and some open source projects such as the Cyrus IMAP server.

[1]: https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when-we-... [2]: https://jmap.io

One thing to keep in mind about Fastmail is that all their servers are hosted in the US and they have no plan about changing this (I asked). Post-Snowden this means you can be quite sure that all mails will end up being analysed by the US authorities

I'm an European, but I don't mind.

First of all when making such a choice, you have to identify who the enemy is.

If you're talking about global enemies, like the NSA, then IMO without end-to-end encryption you're screwed. And if you're targeted directly, you're screwed regardless, given they have the capability to use whatever vulnerabilities they can find in your router, your phone, your OS, your browser, etc. If it's connected to the Internet, especially if you're being targeted, you're screwed.

Also many European countries have signed on joint cooperation agreements with US intelligence agencies. If for example you're using servers in the UK, it's in no way safer, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

So back to who is the enemy?

For me it's not the NSA or our local intelligence agencies. If I'm being wronged, I've got legal ways to fight back and I don't really care about the NSA.

What I care about is being _profiled_ by unscrupulous companies that may end up selling that data to other actors that may harm my well being. For example insurance companies could deny insurance if they discovered you smoked cigarettes 10 years ago. Or banks changing your credit score based on who your friends are. Or supermarket chains discovering that your daughter is pregnant before everybody else does. This shit is already happening!

I think the general discourse doesn't go in the direction that it should go. Organizations like EFF have been historically anti-government, but very pro corporate and private companies. Which is why I don't trust them fully.

Identify that enemy. If you're an European for example, that enemy is probably not the NSA.

I do prefer non-US alternatives btw, whenever I get that choice. I do so out of a desire to encourage competition and to reward EU companies that do well, as a "voting with your wallet" thing.

But choosing to reject non-US companies for the reason that some of their servers are located in the US, that's frankly childish. Servers located in the US are cost effective. Either provide better alternatives, or otherwise these services will not be able to compete on the global market from a price or latency perspective.

While you're absolutely right, details that are sensitive in nature should be encrypted using end-to-end encryption. Otherwise you won't be safe regardless of email provider, as the other correspondents will often be using a US email provider anyway.

If your threat model includes an actual threat from organizations like the NSA, then I'd say you have bigger problems than the choice of email provider.

EDIT: I self host.

> all their servers are hosted in the US

Not true, they have a lot of servers in Europe (Amsterdam).

That doesn't make the issue less valid though, since I think they have a full copy of all the data on both sides of the ocean.

I dont think this is true. I don’t believe there is any evidence that the US government is analysing all emails hosted by all US companies.

Rather, if the US government asks for a particular individuals emails the provider must grant the request provided there is a valid (possibly secret) warrant.

> mails will end up being analysed by the US authorities

I read somewhere that servers located in the US are actually safer from drag net eavesdropping b/c a judicial order is required.

I build a privacy-first minimalist Google Inbox, located at https://inboxzeroemail.com

It's hosted on Linode and our servers are load balanced across the world.

Please let me know if you have any questions :)

How is their security? Maybe people like to forget, but security breaches are a thing, and when they occur you get the privilege of opening up your data to the entire world, not just to the NSA.

Google, for whatever else you want to say about them, have first-class security.

Yeah, but on the other hand it's also a feature of Gmail. So it's not strictly worse.

My problem with FastMail is that if you stop paying for your email address, they recycle it. This means that someone else could potentially buy your old email address (if you migrate away) and use it for nefarious purposes.

You should be using your own domain anyways.

Huh I haven't even thought about that. That's really bad, especially since I have a popular fastmail.com address where every other month I get an email asking for the account

Switched to Fastmail many years ago when self hosting became too time consuming for me. Never looked back. I had to use their support only very occasionally and even then their reaction time and competence were outstanding.

They do just one thing - email - and do that very, very well.

They do another thing: calendar. And I find it at least as good as Sunrise Calendar was before Microsoft shut it down.

Does Fastmail provide any kind of "bundling" or "priority inbox" features?

Since using Inbox on Android, I can't imagine going back to being notified about every single email. Automatic bundling of messages and the custom rules that you can then set on those bundles is a killer feature. If nobody comes along with a decent alternative before Inbox is shutdown then I don't know what I'll do!

I don't know if fast mail provides it out of the box but I have started to test out spark: https://sparkmailapp.com/ as a replacement for Inbox. While it is a bit from as good as Inbox it can get the job done, and has bundling.

I simply set it up to archive when swiping (which is what Inbox seems to be doing). However, it's notifications are far from as good and you can't archive straight from the notification, which, to me, is a let down.

Furthermore, on iPhone 8 there is an actual loading screen when opening the app. Like, why? Everything is already stored in the phone and it should just look for new mail in the background?

So far from perfect, but what can one do when Google is killing stuff off.

One issue though: you have to be in the apple ecosystem as they do not support, anything but iOS/Mac OS.

Note: I'm not associated with spark in any way.

This would be my complaint having had a quick look at Fastmail. Their mail client provides only the most basic of email functionality - folders, filters, contacts etc. It seems like you're paying a monthly subscription for privacy when you may as well host your own if you don't need any features beyond what IMAP offers as standard.

I've been using https://www.sanebox.com which does a pretty good job of the bundling, leaving you with just the important stuff in your inbox. It's not as well integrated as Inbox could be, but I find it very usable, and even better in some ways as the 'bundles' don't end up back in your inbox, they are always in other folders by default.

I use Aquamail and it's smart folder features merges inboxes pretty decently.

I manually set up a bunch of rules that move inessential mail to a folder called "Bacn".

My rules list is about three screens tall now.

Just to provide some balance to the feedback: I've been using FastMail for 2 years and am mostly "meh" on it. My issues are with the web interface (which is largely why I use them instead of running my own server):

- No delay send/undo send. Allegedly in the works for ages

- Very buggy editor. Randomly slows to a crawl while composing, scrolls up and down erratically

- Cannot handle very long threads very well. (since unfortunately the business world uses top replies with Html email) E.g., undo can pin a core and crash the page.

- Notifications randomly show up twice and then freeze on screen

Thanks for the feedback - I've passed that to the product team. We're busy working on the JMAP replacement web interface, which has a fair bit rewritten.

Good to know, thanks. Can you say how is the search functionality and indexing on the inbox on Fastmail?

I second this. Their service was exceptional for 3+ years I've been with FastMail. Got many small businesses I've worked with to migrate.

Only thing which annoys me is that their push-enabled iOS app does not support multiple accounts. It has been like that for years, I've heard that a new app was in the making, but nothing came out yet.

You don't need to use their app for push on iOS. They worked with Apple to enable push in the built-in client.

I use Airmail as my client (both on iOS and Mac OS) specifically for the push.

+1 for FastMail — I've been using it for the last 2 years and I've got nothing but praise for them.

ProtonMail seems to be another popular alternative, but their E2E encryption claims sound like snake oil to me, but snake oily as it is, it's still a better choice than Gmail.

I'm a Protonmail user. E2E isn't snake oil but it does assume you have an alternative secure channel for password exchange.

I like the fact that my mail archive is encrypted even though I don't send encrypted mail to others.

FastMail IMO are one of the best email providers, by far. Their web GUI is fantastic and support teams are responsive and well versed.

It's surprisingly responsive for large email accounts too. I had ~100K emails imported and marking all as read would take about 10 seconds. I can't complain with that all things considered.

We switched our company to fastmail recently, largely on the strength of recommendations here. No regrets.

FastMail is good, but it's very expensive. I'm waiting for more competition in this space. I think, as people turn away from Google (and thus Gmail), more competition will arise and we'll finally see fair prices.

I don't feel like FastMail is that expensive for most people.

Obviously, compared to free, it's expensive. But in real terms, I pay $70 every 2 years for it - works out about £25 a year for me, which is about the price of a meal out. I think that's worth it for secure and powerful email. I've never found it to be expensive.

Fastmail is on par or cheaper than Google's equivalent G Suite email service to business.

I’ve been using Fastmail for my personal email for the past four years, and love it. Really reliable, fast, and allows me to keep a personal email without all of the Google Apps stuff.

Protonmail?

Based in Switzerland, client-side encryption

https://protonmail.com/blog/switzerland/

Same here. FastMail with a custom domain name. First I was planning to self host. But I thing mails are quite touchy and doing it myself may be a risk.

Fastmail is paid and very costly while Gmail is free, not very good alternative for me.

Gmail is not free, you just pay in non-monetary terms. It's up to you to decide how you want to weight your priorities.

For the privacy, quality, and features it offers at the reasonable price of $50/year, I would say that it's a fantastic alternative. It'd be hard-pressed to find anything free that is on par.

$3 per month is very costly?

For the self-hosted folks there are:

https://mailcow.email/ - dockerized, works with multiple domains, sogo for groupware. Compared to mailinabox's single disk, it has 6 docker volumes to keep track of.

https://mailu.io/ - dockerized, it has a section on kubernetes deployments, which i find weird, but I guess could make sense for companies

https://mailinabox.email/ - no docker, no multiple domains, roundcube, nextcloud for groupware. Main disadvantage or advantage, depending on your perspective is that you need a mailinabox server per domain.

And then this is the more hands on version, which I guess would be sovereign as ansible deployment.

https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign

IMHO sovereign puts too many attack vectors on a single machine.

This might be obvious and not need to be mentioned, but if you're self-hosting, don't forget the obvious and often most flexible option: A Linux box directly running plain old Exim (or Postfix, etc.), Dovecot (or Courier, etc.), Spamassassin. No containers, no abstractions, no meta-configuration.

I've had this setup for a couple of years now and it's not failed me. Support TLS, SPF, spam checking, DKIM, can support multiple domains and aliases. Basically anything you can imagine. And, despite the FUD you might hear about not using a cloud service, my mails don't get magically lost into people's spam filters. The initial configuration/learning is steep, but I pretty much never have to touch it once it was working.

Do you recommend any guide or book on the subject?

Also, what's your monthly cost?

> https://mailinabox.email/ - no docker, no multiple domains, roundcube, nextcloud for groupware. Main disadvantage or advantage, depending on your perspective is that you need a mailinabox server per domain.

Are you sure? I am running mailinabox and have multiple domains and accounts with no issue.

Same here. Ran many domains on a single server for a long time

> And then this is the more hands on version, which I guess would be sovereign as ansible deployment.

I used to run a Sovereign box.

It served me well for 2-3 years, but it got too cumbersome to maintain: they changed their approach to various configuation things (for the better, I'm sure), and threatened to break my setup in the process.

All told, it felt like it had missed the sweet spot between pre-configuration and flexibility, in the end not quite giving you either.

> IMHO sovereign puts too many attack vectors on a single machine.

I turned off most of the attack vectors (I didn't need all the bells and whistles). But yes, they tried too hard, and over-complicated the setup as a result.

There is also https://cloudron.io/ to self-host, which provides a complete email solution based on dovecot and haraka plus a couple of webmail apps to use, like rainloop and roundcube.

I currently use mailinabox for several domains on one server. Works like a charm for me.

You can have multiple domains in mailinabox. Its not clear from the UI but you just add a user with a different domain name and it adds it.

I would like to add to this list iRedmail: https://www.iredmail.org/

It deploys mail server based on modern software stack on your box and you can customize it to fit your demands using recipes suitable for well-known software.

Most important thing is to buy a domain so you can port your email address from provider to provider. I’ve had the same email address and several hosts over the years.

I’m currently on Fastmail and find the service good.

Fastmail has worked well for me with custom domains. It's nice being able to create custom aliases for when an address is publicly visible e.g. GitHub so I know through what funnel emails are coming from.

Like others have said, the Android app is not worth installing unless you're okay with limited and, in some cases, poor functionality.

I suppose you can set it up with the Gmail or Outlook Android apps? I've never tried, as this defeats the purpose of not having those companies as your email provider :)

Still searching for a good Android mail app...

> Still searching for a good Android mail app...

K-9 Mail has served me very well over the years!

https://k9mail.github.io/about.html

Edit: Highlights for me:

- IMAP Idle support: e-mails appear instantly, configurable on a by-folder basis.

- Mature and stable: it's been around forever, updates are infrequent, it just works.

- Free software: apache license

- No fanciness: it is very traditional-email oriented. The only "fancy" feature is a unified inbox (showing mails from all your folders), and it can be turned off.

If your e-mail is "complicated" you'll have to spend a bit of time setting everything up. For instance, my server classifies e-mail as it arrives, and I setup different synchronization schedules and notification preferences for different folders. Best time investment of my life.

> Still searching for a good Android mail app...

Give AquaMail a try.

I find it efficient, fast and featureful. I've never noticed any bugs.

The user interface is perhaps not fancy, but IMO not ugly either, and certainly functional.

I've been using it for years, and they keep updating it diligently.

You can funnel mail with Gmail, too using extensions. Although some online forms incorrectly reject this. Looks like this: notmyaddress+github@gmail.com

What do you miss in the Android app?

I thought the same for a while, until I noticed tapping the body of an email changed the top bar options...

BlueMail is a pretty decent Android email client. :)

+1 nice having your own domain so you can port to different providers.

Used fastmail for a few years and it is fine although their android app isn't great and hangs a fair bit needing to be restarted.

I agree fastmail's service is good but the Android app is very poor in comparison.

I eventually paid for the aquamail app which is a significant improvement

I think fastmail app on browser still the best native browser experience.

Another vote for fastmail. They even do a pretty decent job being a DNS host as well. Simple setup to add subdomains if you're already using them as your primary/sec NS.

Their static file hosting is great too. Automatic Let’s Encrypt support!

This is exactly what I did a few years back. And exactly for the same reason — so I can easily migrate to different provider with low cost of swiching. So far I’ve used gmail as provider but I’m considering switching now.

Although I like the control and portability of having my own domain, as a less technologically-proficient user on a shoestring budget, I've found it more challenging to set up and configure on shared hosting services. There's a need to get your head around things like DNS records, reverse DNS, DKIM, SPF, SpamAssassin, cPanel etc. to stand a reasonable chance of successful delivery and low-maintenance inboxes. I've been through a few hosts and fortunately seem to have settled with a reliable provider now (Squidix), but it's not always been so easy.

Fastmail allows you to set them as the DNS provider and they take care of all DNS records for you. Just buy a domain, set their nameservers, and you're good to go.

+1 for Fastmail with my own domain, I've used it for 4 years.

There are so many threads like this and the answers usually boil down to the self hosting group and the other group who believes that paying someone to do the job is the right thing to do. I’m in the latter group and always recommend Fastmail. I migrated all of my families accounts there with multiple domains and couldn’t be happier. For something I use hours every day it’s well worth paying someone to keep it secure and online.

Fastmail has been also flawless for me since signing up. Highly recommended.

I'd like to switch to Fastmail, but I have a handful of seldom-used secondary accounts (e.g., for family members), and it doesn't make sense to pay $5/mo/each when they're free on G Suite. Their pricing structure is designed for organizations or single users, but somehow my use case falls in between.

It seems a bit off that my household can stream as many movies as we want for $11/mo, or have unlimited access to an enormous music catalog for $15/mo, but e-mail service costs more.

ProtonMail looks about the same, actually more expensive, though they have a more attractive $30/mo plan for 6 users that it includes VPN access.

I had the exact same problem. Then I found https://www.migadu.com/

"Have as many email addresses on as many domains you need, anytime. No extra costs. All your projects, ideas, employees, family members and IoT devices are welcome. Pets too.

Migadu is a radically different, independent email hosting from Switzerland. We do not count your domains, mailboxes, gigabytes or teeth."

> and it doesn't make sense to pay $5/mo/each when they're free on G Suite.

It is a matter of perception. Your family members probably pay that $5 for a random coffee at starbucks. If you value your time and privacy, you'll be able to put that $5/month aside.

maybe https://posteo.de/en (Berlin based) would make sense for you or your family accounts ? It's just 1 EUR/mo for basic accounts and they focus on privacy, security and being sustainable.

I would recommend Posteo, like kayoone did. Another alternative that may be even cheaper for you would be Runbox, which has lower prices for secondary accounts.

I had the same problem and I recently switch to Runbox.com, migration was frictionless and their service is solid

Netflix and Spotify are huge, so it’s normal if a company is not big VC funded that they ask a normal price. This price is usually more.

I'd love to switch away from Gmail, but its security is so compelling that, afaik, nobody else comes close. How many other companies have Tavis Ormandy's on staff to do security audits for their users, let alone free users? Is there a single other email provider that gets security right to the extent Google does?

Yeah I completely agree this is something that needs consideration. I do have an email address with my own domain but for security reasons any accounts I create are tied to my gmail address. I've known too many people who have had personal domain email addresses intercepted, particularly through compromised domain/DNS settings. One simple MX record adjustment could mean every single bank account, social media profile, etc. all can be taken over.

> I do have an email address with my own domain but for security reasons any accounts I create are tied to my gmail address. I've known too many people who have had personal domain email addresses intercepted, particularly through compromised domain/DNS settings.

If your Gmail account is lost or compromised, good luck getting any help from Google; while G Suite support is decent, free Gmail account users are basically on their own.

Ask HN: Lost $400k USD in a deleted email, how contact a Gmail engineer? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14452969

Ask HN: What to do about a wrongly shut down GMail account? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2033474

Another account lost in the Google void – how many are there? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17745761

Professor who refused to use other genders pronouns, was banned by Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14905384

How does using gmail address compromised DNS? I mean if they compromise your DNS it doesn't matter who is hosting your email, they just point the MX at a different service.

Are you able to link to some info on how email could be compromised this way? I'd be interested to learn how to secure my domain.

> One simple MX record adjustment

Not sure if it's simple but how do you intend to protect against DNS record hacks?

ProtonMail's security is formidable, but the messages are encrypted in such a way as to not be searchable.

If security is your concern and long-term search isn't, consider giving them a go. Great mobile app, too.

Their "end-to-end" encryption claims as well as their schtick about being hosted in Switzerland make it abundantly clear that I will never trust their security. I would go so far as to use almost any other major email provider over ProtonMail.

Well, you could argue that your mail is safe from everyone except one.

I’m not really sure if Google is more likely to fuck me over than any external actor, but it doesn’t feel right.

What's the point of having great security if you don't own the data?

Neither Tavis Ormandy nor Google have a good track record when it comes to pragmatic security. Google's business model is incompatible with proper security. Chances are that you know Tavis from him being arrogant on project zero so everyone who runs old versions of something, like all the millions of insecure android handsets, can get owned by script kiddies. People have been listing alternatives, but the whole point of giving something like gmail away for free is so there won't be any real alternatives. It isn't like it is going to make a difference either way, since Google's position in the market mean most people won't switch.

Zoho Mail is a strong option. Comes with mobile apps, supports all standard protocols (IMAP/POP/ActiveSync), includes Calendar and many other modules. Zero tracking. Zero ads.

Beyond Mail, Zoho offers several apps that can replace most of what Google offers. From Docs to office suite, note-taking to chat and many more.

(Disclosure: I am with Zoho)

To be honest, I would stay away from Zoho.

I know a couple of friends who work there and they frequently mention having access to raw email contents with minimal supervision. That's now how I want my email to be treated by the company hosting my email services.

I am Radha Vembu, the product manager for Zoho Mail and would like to clarify the process we follow:

For troubleshooting issues, we generally refer to email delivery status and activity logs of the user to help us understand the sequence of steps involved for a reported issue.

There are special cases related to spam/abuse for which we request the user to share the email headers/content whichever is applicable to the issue.

There are even rare instances of issues with mail parsing and to debug those cases, we ask our users for the complete original content of the email to simulate the problem.

You can also see our support team asking the users to share the original content of the email for debugging some of the issues, as seen in the links below.

https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/disable-blue-li...

https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/emails-going-as...

https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/emails-forwarde...

https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/my-incoming-ema...

We take the privacy and safeguarding of customer data extremely seriously, and adhere to the strict policies that govern access to user data.

Sorry for making you feel that we access our user's data without permission. That is far from the truth.

I will add that we use Zoho at work and have issues with emails about weekly. Their web interfaces are not very well designed although they do work OK.

I can also second Zoho. It's primary target is small business and they have a massive suite of features but I'm just using their email and calendar.

Their web interface is a bit annoying as you need to make a couple of clicks to get to the email but they provide mobile apps as well as IMAP access.

So far I have not had any issues so I cannot say what their support is like.

+1 for Zoho.

I use their completely free service for all my custom domains and I find the webmail pretty good. The web applications, in general, are pretty actively maintained, with new features every few months. Only had one bigger issue over the years and they resolved it within 24 hours.

They also have a native dark theme on webmail that is pretty decent.

Zoho is great for two more reasons:

1. Their free offering comes with support for custom domains, which is pretty unique.

2. There's Zoho.com and Zoho.eu. You can open your account on Zoho.eu if you prefer having your email hosted in the EU.

Can anyone expliain why G Suite (the paid version of Gmail) is not considered safe for data privacy? From the site it says they are encrypted, regularly audited by 3rd parties and not used for ads.

https://gsuite.google.com/faq/security/

copy & paste from that link:

" This encryption happens as it is written to disk, without the customer having to take any action. Google encrypts data with distinct encryption keys, even if they belong to the same customer. Data is encrypted using 128-bit or stronger Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Google encrypts core G Suite data while it is “in transit” as well, whether it is traveling over the Internet between the customer and Google, or moving within Google as it shifts from one data center to another. We encrypt this data between Google and our customers using HTTPS with forward secrecy. "

The truth nobody knows but it seems that they encrypt with their own keys so that means they can open the data and read it.

G Suite isn't private because Google isn't in the privacy or productivity business. It's an advertising company that happens to have a product line which looks like a productivity suite. Charging money for it is just a nifty way to defray the costs of collecting data for advertising purposes.

My recommendation is posteo.de. It’s a lot cheaper than Fastmail if you need multiple mailboxes. Browse through the site and read through the company’s values. A bonus is its focus on being better for the environment.

One point to note about Posteo is that it doesn’t allow custom domains (but there are plenty of Posteo domains to choose from). I don’t see this as a disadvantage for my use though.

Other recommendations are Runbox and mailbox.org, both being near the price of Posteo while also allowing custom domains for certain plans.

Posteo, Runbox and Mailbox.org provide IMAP support. So you’re not stuck with the provider if you want to move your mails out (unlike ProtonMail, which has an IMAP bridge only for paid accounts and is a bit more cumbersome to install/use than the alternative of just picking any email client of your preference).

I second posteo. Happy customer. Also, you can stay anonymous as a user, as you can pay the yearly fee of 12 Euros in cash via postal mail.

> What email service is best for privacy?

There's no simple answer, because it comes down to your threat model.

What do you want to keep private? Just content? Or also metadata, including your identity and the identities of your correspondents?

And who are your adversaries? Random cybercriminals? Competitors? The email provider? Criminal investigators? Foreign intelligence agencies? Your government's intelligence agencies?

> With the recent thread on privacy in Chrome, I'm thinking of switching off Gmail.

OK, so the email provider is considered an adversary.

If that's the case, the only prudent option is end-to-end encryption, done locally, and not using the provider's services. But that's barely workable. Most correspondents won't cooperate. Configuring clients correctly is nontrivial, to avoid attacks like Efail. Also, there's no forward secrecy, and metadata is not encrypted.

For privacy at that level, you ought to be using something with forward secrecy, like Signal. And if anonymity really matters, you ought to be using something that does P2P via Tor .onion services, such as Briar or Ricochet.

But anyway, you could use email with end-to-end encryption, use pseudonyms, and minimize metadata with some mix of VPN services and Tor. And then use providers with better reputations about privacy and security. Such as Autistici, CounterMail, Posteo, ProtonMail, Riseup, ScryptMail, Tutanota or VFEmail.

However, there's no guarantee that any of them will refuse "lawful" access. For example, Autistici acknowledges that they might "lose control" over their servers, perhaps through seizure by police, or that their servers could "run into accidents that could undermine [their] security".[0] And Riseup redefined their warrant canary policy to exclude investigations of individual users, or groups of users, that don't put Riseup users generally at risk.[1]

Even so, you're arguably OK as long as they can't decrypt messages, don't know who you or your correspondents are, or where y'all are located.

0) https://www.autistici.org/faq

1) https://riseup.net/about-us/press/canary-statement

edit: alphabetized provider list

> > With the recent thread on privacy in Chrome, I'm thinking of switching off Gmail.

> OK, so the email provider is considered an adversary.

I don't think Gmail is considered an adversary, it's just that you can now no longer log in to Gmail without also logging in to the same account in Chrome, which is a stupid non-user-friendly feature.

Why is that an issue if you trust Google? Indeed, in that case, they're doing something that is user-friendly. Because stuff arguably works more reliably if you're logged in to both Google and Chrome.

And if you don't trust Google, they're at least effectively an adversary. In the most favorable light, that they're doing something that might compromise your privacy.

Outlook.com (free) and Office365 (a few $/month/user on your own domain) are both great options. I personally much prefer both the web client and the various app clients to gmail's equivalents.

I personally use hosted Exchange for $4/month¹ and think it's the best option out there. What matters to me is support is good, your email won't get detected as spam, they support push on iOS and they have datacenters in Europe, USA and Asia.

[1] https://products.office.com/en-us/exchange/exchange-online

i doubt that MS is an improvement over Google when it comes to privacy concerns.

MSFT doesn't read your email to target you with ads.

https://protonmail.com privacy first https://posteo.de/en secure and green

https://dismail.de/serverlist.html

I still have a hotmail account from like 20 years ago and like it. Good thing is you can convert it to an @outlook.com alias if wanted, as that might look cooler. But I don't mind the hotmail name. Who knows, maybe one day it might be cool again. I pretty much skipped gmail entirely because of the personalized ad business. I also have a protonmail account which is good, but am not using it as much.

I had one of their email account but after chaning my Skype profile, it somehow released it and had to register @outlook.com address and I had no way of getting back the old address which made a few web accounts inaccessible including Google which asked me to check my email for accessing it from a new device. All previous emails are inaccessible too. Unbelievable.

Does anyone know a (preferably self-hosted, but can be commercial) mail client that is as as good Gmail for power users? I always found it rather straightforward have a custom domain and even operate my own mail server, but haven't been able to do the same for the client.

The features most important to me are:

- Gmails speed and accuracy in search, especially on large mailboxes (100k+ emails) - this one is usually the deal breaker

- easy & powerful automatic filter rules

- web client

- calendar integration (optional)

- app for easy access to emails and search on mobile (optional)

How about Zoho mail

I like fastmail personally because aside from being a fast experience, I like their well written guides and articles. It helps me set stuff up without feeling like I'm just following instructions and helps me understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

I can't recommend them because they recycle email addresses when you stop paying for them. Not really something I can take seriously. They should just hold your email hostage until you start paying them again. Instead, they leave money on the table and create an amateur security failure.

We do have plans to stop recycling email addresses quite so quickly. Having said that, if you have your own domain (recommended by most people so you can move providers) you also don't get the namespace reserved forever if you stop paying. Domains get recycled too.

On this matter, Runbox is clear that it will not release/recycle the email address ever. Posteo, which I like and use, has a policy of recycling addresses after six months, which is quite harmful.

What is with everyone here recommending Yandex?

It's not secure and its not private https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13274443

Don't use Yandex!

Please, read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055514

Your comment says — essentially — “every email company shares with their host country”. If I take that at face value, I would take the USs and Australia’s rule of law and due process and concern for my privacy many many times over Russia’s current government’s.

ProtonMail. Definitely ProtonMail. You can live off it for free as long as you delete old stuff but paying better for I think $5 a month (maybe more or less). Free is perfectly adequate for me personally though, I made the switch a couple months ago and haven't looked back. Might wanna set up auto forwarding though: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en

Posteo [1]

They are based in Germany, are very privacy conscious (anonymous payments and registration) and offer full encryption support. With k9mail as mobile app I've been very happy so far

[1]: https://posteo.de/en

I had contact with Posteo support and can confirm they are very helpful.

I'm self-hosting my mail server using mailcow[0] for little over a year now and everything works fine. It comes with a admin interface to manage accounts and the SoGo webmail client[1].

Getting it up and running was also pretty easy. Create some DNS records as described in the documentation, cloning the repository and starting everything using docker-compose.

[0]: https://mailcow.email/

[1]: https://github.com/inverse-inc/sogo

I'd much prefer it if there was just 1 docker container and not a whole compose stack. I much prefer 1 docker container == 1 service.

For self-host:

- iredmail if you want it simple

- dovecot + postfix + opendkim + opendmarc + bogofilter + rainloop if you like tinkering and you have a small/personal setup. Drop in radicale with imap auth for calendar/contacts, and prosody with imap auth for jabber, and you're good for life, unless people want shiny web interfaces, in which case consider nextcloud for contacts/calendar.

- zimbra as an all-in-one solution

- exim + cyrus if you want mail only for a large company and you want it open source

I purchase Office through Office 365, so Exchange Online is just about free at that point.

It runs a lot of the enterprise and I think it's been quite underrated in a lot of the Gmail discussions here.

I've been with Zoho Mail for a few months now and have had a great experience with them so far! Great security features, calendar support, as well as DNS management. I've also heard good things about FastMail and Proton mail.

Compare and find out which service best suites your needs/budget.

https://www.zoho.com/mail/?zmc=zoho-fa

Same here! I moved my company email from google apps to Zoho a couple of months ago, and I'm not coming back. Reasonable pricing, plenty of features, quick (and human!) responses to support tickets.

Will do the same with personal email soon.

Proton Mail uses angular1 though https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient, pretty old

If you need strong privacy, then go to ProtonMail.

Otherwise, try https://yandex.com. For personal domains you can use https://connect.yandex.com, which is free (with ads) for unlimited users or $3 per user per month (available in several countries) without ads.

I've been using Yandex Connect for quite long time (free and paid). They are very good.

Yandex Connect goes with Email (fully unlimited), Cloud Storage, Wiki and Simple Messenger. There is also an option to control domain's DNS, but it's optional.

> Otherwise, try https://yandex.com.

Hahah. Left google for KGB - 100% profit.

Yandex offers an excellent free email service indeed.

What I really like is their free support for custom domains which you need if you later want to move to another email provider later or if you want to create many user email accounts within your domain (say, info@mydomain.com and user@mydomain.com): https://connect.yandex.com/

I tried signing up for yandex a few months ago. I made an account, and I was able to gain access to their email service. However, I couldn't actually receive mail or send mail that went anywhere. From what I can tell, there's no guarantee they will actually activate your account when you sign up.

Yandex is a Russian mail-service. I wouldn't trust them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13274443

Be careful, Russian secret services have an official access to all communication on their servers. If your threat model includes bad actors from Russia — it's a no go.

Regardless of which provider you choose, consider getting your own domain name. Then your email address its not linked to the provider, and you can easily change again in the future.

I didn't see https://kolabnow.com/ mentioned anywhere. It's more than email, it's a groupware based on FOSS with a pretty good track record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolab_Now#Kolab). Hosted in Switzerland with 2FA and strict privacy guidelines https://kolabnow.com/privacy - No end-to-end encryption, though, but as everybody knows https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...

Check out https://posteo.de/en. 12EUR/yr and comes recommended by the fsf[1].

[1]https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems

Threads about email providers seem to be a prime target for astro turfers on HN. There are so many different providers, yet weirdly its always the same company with the most comments.

This seems pretty easy to prove or disprove based on the comment history of said accounts. The few I've checked out seem perfectly legitimate.

Unless FastMail are paying people to spend all day maintaining perfectly normal HN accounts for the odd occasions that a discussion about email comes up... dons tinfoil hat

This has been going on for over a year now. A lot of astroturfing coupled with misinformation criticizing predominantly US-based incumbents. I think there are a few mods with a political agenda who are pushing this. Often the advertised replacement is an inferior product that doesn't even provide better privacy or securty than Google or whatever is being criticized. Interesting time to live in.

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but it's true that there are rather weird voting patterns in this thread. I self-host my email so I don't really have a horse in that race but I don't quite understand why all mentions of protonmail are downvoted while everything about Fastmail is at the top. Is there some context I'm missing?

This is not a recommendation but rather an inquiry.

I’m currently using roundcube [1] on my server but have no clue if that’s the right choice for me. It works but I only use it because my hosting company recommended it and I just stuck with it. It seems to be open source so that’s a big plus imo.

If anyone here has some experience with roundcube I’d like to know what you think about the software. Are there any flaws I should be aware of? Anything other projects are doing better? I value privacy over functionality and am willing to try out something new.

[1] - https://roundcube.net

I went with Outlook 365. I've been using it for the last 2 years at my office and really like the rules options. It's been really pleasant and the Office web compatibility is nice.

I use ProtonMail and I am quite satisfied so far. Servers being in Switzerland is a huge plus in my book, compared to Gmail and fastmail which seems to be suggested so often.

I use Mail-in-a-Box on my own server. It's free, open source, and well maintained.

[1]: https://mailinabox.email

I set this up for a client a while back and it was a very painless experience. They've been happily using it for a few years now with no complaints.

(usually I sign people up with GSuite and roll it into the hosting charges but this client was very insistent on it being self hosted)

Can definitely recommend FastMail - I migrated from Gmail around 4 years ago and haven't looked back

It has a clean, powerful UI with good shortcuts. DNS management and basic site hosting (with automatic Let's Encrypt support), great calendar and contacts support.

Had some problems with some senders getting rate limited a while back, but worked with support to get it fixed up.

Surprised Migadu isn't on here. Cheap, use your own domains, IMAP. I can't recall the security/privacy provisions off hand, but my threat model doesn't include nation states or warrants. As long as I keep my domain and I have offline backups of my email, I'm happy.

Oh, and it works! Never had emails get lost due to bad mail server configs.

Fastmail have worked great for me and my family, mail, calendar and contacts just like gmail.

Is there an open source email client which supports a conversation view similar to Gmail's? I find that to be an amazingly useful feature.

The other thing Gmail does which has a lot of potential is message labeling (e.g., newsletters automatically go into a separate tab/folder).

Thunderbird + Conversations addon: https://addons.thunderbird.net/fr/thunderbird/addon/gmail-co...

Filters for putting emails in folders are pretty common. I use sieve[1] since I run my own server, but many clients and hosted services have their own mechanisms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language...

Mutt, threading.

Most mailers, actually, including basic ones such as Sylpheed.

I use Protonmail. Its cool that you will not served any Ads. Currently i am using their paid version which costs me 5 euros a month. Give it a try.

I'm on Exchange online (~5$ per user/month) and rather happy. The Outlook Web App online interface is regularly updated, I can use a custom domain, have plenty of storage and adding my wife as well as alternate domains was rather easy. Add to that support for shared calendars and great support for push features (using Exchange Active Sync) on almost all systems.

The main problem is that it is Microsoft and thus rather complicated: I now have a private Microsoft 'work' account for Exchange Online + a private Microsoft 'home' account for Office 365 Home Edition. So when I want to log into the online services (Mail, OneDrive, etc) I always have to think twice about which login to use :-(

Get your own domain at Gandi. Free Email included.

Or buy a domain and Email as a service here: http://infomaniak.com/

If you are disappointed about the search capabilities of Thunderbird, install recoll for search

My company uses Gandi for email and I don't think I'd recommend them. They often have outages and as ngrilly points out they don't implement all the best practices when it comes to anti-spam. I don't have a lot of experience with competing services (I self-host myself) but surely there are better alternatives out there.

I love Gandi, but their email service is still unable to sign outgoing emails with DKIM, which is almost mandatory nowadays to avoid being flagged as spam.

I saw that too, but they add the following on their FAQ page

`If you use Gandi’s DNS however, you are free to add the TXT zone file record needed to add the necessary “_domainkey” TXT entry for your domain. You would then need to see with your outgoing email provider concerning the configuration of their mail server for the service.`

source: https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/faq/index.html

I administer all my domains on eurodns.com. They offer a decent service for a good price. Bonus: They use open-xchange as their mail backend, so you profit from a great web client.

An account with 10GB for mail plus 10GB for cloud storage with unlimited aliases costs about 3€ per month.

I mainly use their service for family mail. The only downside is that passwords of mail accounts cannot be changed individually in the web client i.e., I -- who has the account at eurodns -- as administrator have to set the passwords.

I'm not affiliated with them. While the solution is not perfect, pricing is OK and domain service provider plus email hosting is done in the EU, which is the most important point for me.

I use mailbox.org. It’s sligtly cheaper than FastMail but there’s probably not much in it.

It’s been a good service so far. I have no complaints.

Another happy user here, but I think they deserve much more credit than simply being a cheap offer.

They're big on both security and privacy (you can even sign up anonymously and send them cash through the mail), have some pretty cool PGP features, they strip the IP address from outgoing mail (underrated feature) AND they run a fairly updated XMPP server along with a Tor exit.

For €1 a month you get 2GB of storage, 3 aliases (includes catch-all for custom domains), CalDAV/CardDAV sync, along with 100MB WebDAV storage for their office suite (which I've admittedly never used.)

Good service, great price, pretty cool company. More people should check them out.

Tried that. However, because they refuse to let their spam filter look at mail contents, it’s worthless. Other than that, it’s acceptable and custom domains are possible, too.

Many of my mail addresses have been around for decades and receive substantial amounts of spam. Google correctly deals with that. Mailbox.org does not. In fact, during the week I experimented with it, their filter didn’t clear away a single spam mail.

I'd like to add I've been using Mailbox.org for about two years now and haven't personally had a problem with spam, although I actually didn't know they had a policy to not look at the content of the email.

I've not had a spam problem with them, but I did set up a new domain at the same time so the addresses I'm using have only been around a year or so.

I switched from Gmail too a few months ago, setting up my own domain as well. I went with Mailfence, it's slightly cheaper than proton mail (€2.50 per month, but there's also a free tier), and still privacy focused. I think a few things could be improved (no catch all email address available, for example), but for that price I don't think I can complain.

Edit: forgot to add that I used this website to compare different email providers: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/email-section/

I use both ProtonMail and Zoho Mail. - If you go for better security, ProtonMail. I use this for my personal email. - If you need better UI/UX & some other utilities, use Zoho Mail. It's free though.

I've been using mailbox.org with a custom domain for over two years now. Although it's not free, the plans are quite cheap(starting from EUR 1/month). Have not had a single issue with it.

https://tutanota.com/

https://protonmail.com/

Port to your own domain name

I’ve been using https://runbox.com with my own domain for 5 years now, and have only good things to say about them. Excellent service.

I moved to Runbox from GMail earlier this year after the AMP-in-mail debacle. I wrote up my criteria and a bunch of different suppliers[1] and Runbox was the pick. I’ve been mostly happy with them, although their uptime hasn’t been brilliant recently.

[1] https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-suite/

I've been using GMail/Google Inbox for awhile and thinking about switching. Now that Google's announced they'll be shutting down Inbox next year, I want to finally make the switch.

It seems like there's some consensus around FastMail for email. How's the calendar functionality with FastMail? Is there another good non-Google calendar alternative?

I also made heavy use of the task/notification/snooze feature in Inbox. Is there anything like that in FastMail? Is there another good task management app that anyone would recommend?

https://www.migadu.com/

Since yours is a new account here, I have to ask. Are you part of the team there or are you just a user? How’s the support? Whenever I, as a non-customer, contacted Migadu, it seemed like nobody read the emails.

I also find the pricing logic a bit like it’s too good to be true, and am wary of providers who cannot sustain themselves.

I'm just a user and I'm pretty happy with Migadu as well. I only contacted them once, and got a reply within a few hours. And a real reply, with technical details, written by someone who obviously understood the question very well.

The webmail is really basic though: it's basically Rainloop (https://www.rainloop.net/) without any plugin.

I like the way that you can have regex based email address filters, so for example you could have name.youtube.com@example.com forwarding to name's inbox, this is similar to gmail's "+" feature.

Without evidence, just observation, can someone here explain to me why it seems every top comment and their child comments have sort of a corporate shill objective?

https://forwardemail.net if you are just forwarding domain aliases and want to switch off

I recently switched from GSuite to MXRoute.com after being recommended the service here on HN. Unlimited accounts/subdomains and 5GB space for $30/year.

I also use MxRoute. No problems so far. I would recommend it too, if you don't want to run you own email server. Also push works with macOS and iOS.

I’m using ProtonMail with the free plan for more than 6 month now, still have some husk from Gmail being auto fowrorded to it. And for work I use gsuite for now.

ProtonMail only did one thing wrong lately. They’ve added a payers feature a @pm.me short domain and allowing for the free users to only receive emails with this address. That was irritating and absurd, so I’m still thing if I want to move to move completely.

Fastmail recycling makes them irrelevant.

Does anyone know about managed (free or paid) email servers without any web client? Only with IMAP, POP3, etc activated and storage space.

The hardest part is changing the email addresses for all of your accounts.

Good opportunity to adopt a password manager and make your passwords strong.

I found that what’s even harder is dealing with commercial entities who can’t propagate the email address change throughout all their systems. So don’t release your existing accounts soon.

Google Inbox - best thing ever to happen to email. Unfortunately they have announced that they plan to shut it down in March. GMail really is a horrible experience in comparison.

Please sign here if you want to try and save Inbox: http://is.gd/save_google_inbox

Using FastMail on my own domains. One account covers all the domains. Having more domains costs the same as one. They support several different kinds of address aliasing/wildcarding (including Gmail style '+' wildcards and multiple recipient). Their DNS is absolutely great with useful defaults.

Never looked back.

How competitive is iCloud? since it already comes for "free" with the paid iCloud storage account...

It does not have a custom domain, sadly.

Other than supporting the company that is the reason you are leaving gmail (free), what are the thoughts on just paying for gsuite for $5/$10 a month since the privacy statement on gsuite is clearly stated?

I'd like to avoid google, but the email service is pretty damn good (spam filter especially)

I'll leave this here - it's a chunky read and might need tailoring to your situation, but it's an excellent walkthrough:

https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/mail-server-guide/

I've been very happy with Fastmail.

Another happy customer of Fastmail here, and these are my opinions why you should give it a try:

1. They often express their opinions on topics like security and privacy. Like how things impact their users, where they stand, and how they plan to do. As a user I am happy to see a company actively talk about hard topics like these.

2. While they are not the most stable software service I ever use, but they always provide timely update. They also write postmortem to explain what happened technically, what did they do, and their future plans. As a developer, I am appreciated when a software company spent extra effort to acknowledge and explain issues of their service.

3. Their business model is simple. I pay money, they provide service.

I use AWS WorkMail and I'm moderately happy with it. It's pretty barebones, but works and hasn't given me any problems. I went with it because I use Route53 for my domains, and host most of my stuff on AWS anyway, so it was one less account/service to manage. The web interface is really basic, but I mostly access it through emacs/gnus or the android email client. My only complaint is that some of the documentation is wrong. It tells you to use an exchange setup for android, but that breaks. The plain IMAP setup works fine though.

I can't really speak to privacy aspects, but I'm assuming that since I'm actually paying for the service, it's a little better than if I were using a free service like gmail.

I'm super happy with mailbox.org, it has a feature that I've never seen in other place which is disposable addresses so that you can make accounts wherever you want without fear of spam! You just deactivate that email when you want or it will expire in 30 days.

I’ve been paying for a Mini account at Runbox for 2 years.

I think they’re hosted in Norway or some other “safe(r)” location. The UI definitely needs some polish, including their marketing pages.

Functionality-wise it’s top notch. I’ve no complaints to log so far. I also use them for CalDAV, CardDAV, and host a domain with a sub-account my wife uses.

I’ve needed their customer support twice, and it was the best possible service in both accounts. This last time it was about 2FA after I locked myself out of my account. Really good service.

That’s that. I’ve used Proton and Tutanota before. A long way back I was a very happy customer of Lavabit. All of these are privacy-conscious.

Read the privacy policies, try to make sense of them. I would avoid Gmail like the plague, but I’m morally opposed to Google.

Which service is best? The one you roll out on your own, in your rack, on your own servers in the basement. Unfortunately, configuring a complete end-to-end e-mail solution in 2018 is an incredibly complex affair. The hardest part is the SPAM filtering.

On the command line, I use pine with the maildir patch; in the browser, I recommend the open source version of "eGroupware", a complete replacement for Microsoft Outlook:

https://github.com/EGroupware/egroupware/blob/master/README....

https://www.egroupware.org/

Is there a good turnkey solution for this, and other services? I mean not with my own physical servers, but I'd pay to have an image with mail all set up and other services, like remote storage, etc, all ready to go and plop it on ec2 or something.

I don't like how this question is phrased. It should be

"Good alternativeS to Gmail?"

Yeah. Please be it to multiple choices, for availability reasons and monopoly concerns. Sadly there aren't many good competitors in this arena (anymore), which always makes me nervous.

If you want to get your hands dirty https://mailinabox.email/ - The downside being no iOS push email as long you can put up with with that or you jerry-rig something else for push (say a simple a simple Slack bot to say "Hey you got mail from XYZ" and you then open mail.app yourself) or just live with the 15 min pull you will be fine. Have auto updates enabled and hosted on AWS with an RDNS record and not had any issues with it since.

If you don't want to get your hands dirty or you can't live without iOS push email then FastMail - Downside being $50/year (if you want to use your own domain).

I'm doing the same thing, and I chose FastMail. It was easy to set up with a custom domain, and I've been making heavy use of aliases and plus addressing which I like. At least for my purposes, the web client is every bit as capable as the Gmail interface. I haven't tried to import mail from Gmail yet, but it looks straightforward.

The big drawback I think is that Gmail was the interface for Hangouts/Voice, so I either need to find good alternatives for those things, or keep my Gmail account around for that purpose.

I guess it feels a little weird to be paying for a personal email account, but for a single user it's not awful, and I end up owning the entire address. I think it's worth it.

The most important thing is having your own domain. Then whatever provider you choose, the address is easily portable.

I've no idea what your requirements are, but I've used office 365 small business premimum plan for years (£9.40 per month). It comes with a hosted exchange server which gives you loads of flexibility for very little effort. And for my purposes, I really like outlook as a desktop client. Not everyone agrees though. And as I want the desktop office apps anyway, the extra money for the plan with exchange included is minimal.

There is also a cheaper 'essentials' plan which gives you the server stuff without the desktop office apps if you don't need/want/like them.

Check protonmail.com and tutanota.de as alternatives

It is worth noting that these don't support IMAP and Contacts/Calendar like most email services do. (They say that it has to do with how they handle their encryption)

If you have your own domain, and self-host or have a small reliable provider host for you, client doesn't matter so much. You can pick your mix of clients for various devices. This is how I've done it for over 20 years now.

Posteo may be best for privacy as third party provider: https://posteo.de

Other resources on webmail: https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems

For your self-hosted email, I recommend Courier MTA with Courier IMAP which is available on Debian GNU/Linux and other VPS/Server solutions: http://courier-mta.org/

It also offers pretty nice, secure webmail SQWebMail system.

I generally recommend against setting up your own email server.

Most people just want to use it and not maintain it.

However, in circumstances like this where you want to escape a crappy solution, I have been recommending "Mail In A Box"

https://mailinabox.email

It's as close to a turnkey solution as I've found. I've been using it for one of my domains for a few years now.

You'll need to be comfy with the CLI to set it up. You'll also need a VPS.

EDIT: didn't realize other folks had already recommended it. It's worked great here. :)

I self host using hMailServer (open source) and Thunderbird. It's so user friendly, if you are capable of installing software generally, you'll also manage this with no problems (maybe some reading up if you don't know the difference between IMAP and POP3, but that's about it).

The issue is that HMS is Windows-only, but the ease of use is superb compared to anything I've seen on Linux. And it's open source so I'm moderately happy keeping this legacy system running in a VM until it's ported or a manageable alternative comes along.

+1 hMailServer; Deployed it for a few clients who needed it to work with SQL Server. It was rock solid and hosted hundreds of domains and a ton of email accessed over various devices.

It's not glamorous software as its pretty basic but if all you need is basic, it will not disappoint you, and usually most of the needs of many folks is pretty simplistic.

Here it is a list with several Gmail Alternatives https://www.saashub.com/gmail-alternatives

Own server with https://mailinabox.email/. I don't use it but some friends use it successfully for years

Stay on GMail, but don't log-in to the web interface. Instead use Thunderbird. That way you can read your mail without being forced logged-in to search or video.

Google has been making this harder and harder though (now calling Thunderbird insecure, and requiring you to allow insecure app's in the options), but it is a good canary in the coal mine: Once I can't avoid this unified/universal log-in, I'll know Google turned me into an adversary.

With this setup I deem Gmail to be the best service for privacy and security.

I recently migrated to staying on GMail but using offlineimap and a program called notmuch to view and send mail. In this world I have all my mail locally, GMail is just an IMAP endpoint to store my mail.

You can use a standard email client hooked to Gmail to stop Google from getting your browsing data.

You can relay your Gmail to another account with read-only access, replying from a VM with only email use (I do this on my phone). Or, only get/send your email from a VM that does nothing else.

Because it seems like there's two issues here: Google gaining intel from your email itself, and Google gaining intel from your browsing data, gained from your use of Gmail in a browser. What I've suggested addresses browsing data.

I haven't seen more traditional email providers with lot of focus on privacy, such as :

- infomaniak : https://www.infomaniak.com/en/hosting/e-mail starting at 1.5€ a month

- myKolab

However I have recently switched to a self-hosted solution, after years on gmail, because I wanted to be in control of my personal data, and because I can't be a proponent for privacy while being on a service like gmail. Time will tell ;)

If you are willing to run your own, have a look at. https://poste.io/ I'm currently evaluating and running this myself for about 2 Months now. Really working great so far. The guys have very quick response to error reporting. Everything run via docker on a aws small instance.

An completely free version could also be: https://mailu.io/

I’ve had a very good experience with Fastmail (as others have commented as well I see) for heavy email use, calendaring & contact syncing across 7~ iOS and macOS devices.

Tutanota: https://tutanota.com/ (Germany)

Proton: https://protonmail.com/ (Switzerland)

Fastmail: https://www.fastmail.com/ (Australia)

I went from self-hosted to fastmail for personal emails and I'm pretty happy with them. I have a gmail account too.

Fastmail and ProtonMail

I haven't read all the comments but so far from what I have read I haven't found anyone mentioning Protonmail. Is it bad? Or not that known to people?

It is mentioned but does indeed not show up in the top comments. I use it now for a few weeks and I’m happy with it. It’s not cheap for having 3 custom domains: €90 or so, but I’m okay with paying for privacy.

In EU at least you can switch mobile operators and keep your number; also there is some bank account porting system (not sure if you keep your number). Same way E-mail porting should be also required, so I can keep my gmail address. If mobile operators could forced give up "their owned" number prefixes, and create (pretty expensive) technical solution, then why email domain holders cannot be forced to do same?

vfemail and protonmail are good mailbox, i have been using both for long and the are serving well. A trial of their will convince you.

https://protonmail.com https://www.vfemail.net https://gold2naira.com

I didn't find anything better than Yandex for custom domains. It's free, it works and made by a huge company with good reputation.

For the privacy savvy:

https://www.startmail.com/en/

Their servers are in Europe, and they cannot decrypt mail themselves. It's decrypted in your browser.

  10 GB personal vault
  IMAP support
  10 custom aliases
  Unlimited disposable aliases
  PGP email encryption

I have never tried it though.

It depends on why you are seeking an alternative service.

Since you mentioned privacy, Proton Mail is, in theory, good for those with privacy concerns. Why in theory? Well, can't really trust anyone these days, can we?

I mean, trusting a convicted perp or an unknown entity? Well, the unknown might be clean still, so it's better than nothing.

But in the end, for privacy, the best is definitely self hosting.

I've been wanting to switch from Gmail for a while, just to try something new.

I like the concept of ProtonMail (that my email is supposedly encrypted at rest and accessible only by me) but honestly the conversation here steers me away from it. Also the interface is fairly slow.

The top recommendation here seems to be FastMail, which I'm doing a trial run of now.

For personal mail, Zoho is hard to beat. Free up to 5GB and $36/year for up to 30GB. They also communicate very well about any downtimes, disruption, which is extremely rare. Also, there is real customer support. I've accidentally deleted spam messages and they recovered it within hours after shooting one email.

I agree. I have been hosting my mail on Zoho for almost 2 years now and it's been pretty solid. The cool thing is you can use your own domain with their free tier if you don't need a lot of space. Also, using exchange active sync protocol, you get push email on iOS.

Umm, aren't you worried that they're able to restore DELETED emails? Just curious.

I'm split between GMail, ProtonMail and Yandex. Each of them having upsides and shortcomings, I'm quite happy

If you do not need custom domains, I can remain posteo (https://www.posteo.de/). They charge one €uro per month for a 2GB mailbox, but on the upside, the servers are located in Germany, and they are completely ad-free.

I've just gone the other way. Having recently moved from macOS to Windows, I couldn't find a single mail client that I am willing to use daily. I'm now forwarding my hosted IMAP to a gmail account, simply in order to use the gmail web client. I do admit this is kind of sad.

Claws mail? Thunderbird? Outlook? Mailinabox? None of those work?

Never heard of Mailinabox, and I don't want to buy or subscribe to Office (AFAIK the only way to get Outlook). I've tried the others you mention, as well as a bunch of alternatives. Windows software in general is much poorer than that available for macOS, and this seems particularly true of mail clients. The built-in UWP one is particularly hilarious (does Microsoft really think anyone will use it?)

If I switch from gmail and I set up automatic forwarding of my emails to my new service, does Google still read my mail? Is there any easy migration path from gmail to another service that doesn't involve updating my email for every service I've ever used?

I'd like to add https://soverin.net/features here as well. It's similar to Posteo but offers unlimited aliases and more storage. Servers hosted in the Netherlands.

I was a Soverin customer for a year but recently made the switch to Fastmail. I really wanted to like them, but sadly it seems like Soverin is content with their product being in a (barely) beta state. During the year that I used them, there were no improvements to spam filtering (which is abysmal), single sign on (nonexistent), reliability (poor, particularly for caldav) or filtering rules, to name just a few pain points. Their customer service was super responsive, but usually just to tell me that whatever I was asking about (flagging false positives, filtering mail based on an address pattern) wasn't supported.

Soverin, please look at what Fastmail is doing and try to get at least 80% as good. The world needs more fastmails.

I'm the weird one, I use Yahoo.

I self-host SOGo on my own machine, it gives me mail + calendar + contact sync. Finally moving off from gmail feels so great.

For others I recommend office365--fairly inexpensive, excellent support, and available either in the EU or entirely within Germany.

https://sealmail.net is pretty good. I've used it for a couple years without any issues. It's imap based and I hear they're working on a web client.

i'm going to miss inbox so much.

1. Reminders together with emails in same inbox. 2. Can change Reminders text. 3. Bundling. 4. Snooze Repeat. 5. Snooze Location (RIP). 6. Google Keep Reminders.

Not sure how i'll manage my life back after March 2019.

Could the inbox features be implemented by a mail application for "non-gmail mail" (i.e. imap) or does it require some special gmail sauce?

I'd pay $20 for a smartphone mail app that works like inbox. A lot of people probably would.

I like to extend the question: Which online mail provider has many or just some third party integrations, in particular those offering mail merge and per recipient email tracking.

Gmail is here unfortunately by far the leading product.

As for email clients, the happiest I've ever been was using nmh with some scripts and aliases. Setup was sufficiently not out-of-the-box that I haven't replicated it very often over the years.

Protonmail. It is a free service from a company in Switzerland with end to end encryption. To add your own domain it charges few bucks a month. I used to self host but have moved to it completely.

Yandex mail is free and you can get it to work with your custom domain.

Does anyone have any experience with https://superhuman.com/ ? It is supposed to be very nice

What about ProtonMail? https://protonmail.com/! Secure Email Based in Switzerland.

Anyone know - If you download your gmail cache from Google, is there an easy way to convert that to Maildir or is OfflineIMAP still the way to go?

Runbox. Norway-based, privacy-focused, responsive support, reasonably priced and so far reliable. It checks all the boxes for me.

I would say ProtonMail:

https://protonmail.com/

I like https://soverin.net/

Being privacy concern i have stopped using email services. I would self host a server, how about that?

So either fastmail or host your own? Really? Any entrepreneurs present today? I sense opportunity..

I am switching to outlook.com + cock.li (for anonymous emails).

Keeping Gmail only for my Youtube addiction...

There are better alternatives out there, but outlook.com offers what I need for free.

I know it's not a very privacy friendly platform, but with many of my contacts on Gmail, there is no point in going full privacy like with Protonmail IMHO.

I'l go with proton mail. fast, secure(reasonably) and has a free version.

Zoho mail works well. Actually Zoho Docs and powerpoint are very good.

How about Amazon WorkMail?

I selfhost with iRedMail which has a docker. Has done me fine so far.

Tutanota is secure and can use domain Posteo is ethical and anonyme

iCloud mail. No issues, and I already use the native iOS client.

Buy a domain and use Thunderbird, or another email software!

You still need a mail server no ... ?

iCloud: free, no ads, privacy minded and push email in iOS

￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸￸

I use Thunderbird on desktop and K9-Mail on Android.

That doesn't actually provide an alternative, those are just clients.

Same. But what do you use for the mail server?

a true alternative has not to be hosted in a country of the Five Eyes group. I switched to mailbox.org and I am really happy.

+1 Protonmail

Good security practice and decent Android app.

Write and host your own SMTP server! ;)

Protonmail.ch

Protonmail is my choice.

What about protonmail?

Protonmail.com

posteo.de

Yes, this costs a small amount of money.

Protonmail

Fastmail

mailbox.org

Nowadays i recommend runbox.com.

The services are good and when needed support is also good. Clients have given good feedback.

In the past i have recommended protonmail and fastmail.

I am evaluating Runbox and Migadu right now; My only nitpick with Runbox is their pricing page, they need to clean it up and simplify it. Its information overload. I can always ask/click for more details but present me with the most basic info up front and centre.

+1 for Runbox. Good prices, multiple custom domains possible, and an option to configure separate passwords per device/app.

Do not just consider Google to release your data like that. The news may be broadcast that third parties will have access to your data now. Google had always been keeping data for long. Switching to another platform may not be the best because those ones too never secure data. Then why should switch, except you have another aim of switching.

Microsoft Outlook. Works great on-line and in the native app. Works with Apple's email client or Microsoft's on iOS.

Great pricing, can have it on your own domain, and the best calendaring I've ever seen.

https://outlook.live.com/owa/

https://prism-break.org/en/all/#email-accounts

None.

None come with $0/annum, spam filtering, deep search, state of the art 2FA, large amounts of storage, large collection of plugins, cross OS native clients, ....

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