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Ask HN: What email service should I use instead of Gmail?

34 points by katla ↗ HN
I’m looking for a secure and stable service, I do not mind if there are any fees involved but the service most support custom domains, and preferably allow me to migrate my gmail inbox. Any suggestions?

74 comments

[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] thread
chunkles
Having seen people argue about this here before, my guess is you're going to get one of three recommendations. Zoho (https://zoho.com), Fastmail (https://fastmail.com, Proton (https://proton.me)
dotcoma
Or Tutanota https://tutanota.com/
schappim
But not when you're placing e-commerce orders. Tutanota is often flagged because the same privacy-preserving features are also used for online fraud.
dotcoma
Really? I get PayPal alerts and train ticket alerts (in Italy) without any problems.
psychphysic
I use it with a custom domain and a catch all setup
vpaulus
+1 for Tutanota I never experienced any issue with any type of usage. (Using it with own domain.)

Also they have a good support, always answering within hours.

tarsinge
Between theses any one more suited for business (small/medium company)? Zoho?
silisili
I really enjoy Zoho with a custom domain. Unsure on migration, sorry.
gepardi
Fastmail

Supports custom domains and I believe has a tool to migrate emails away from Gmail

baliex
Second this. I switched recently and it’s been great. The tool to import all my email from gmail worked flawlessly.
katla
Thanks for letting me know, this is really one of my biggest concerns right now so it’s great hearing from someone who actually transferred their inbox in the same way I intend too :)
simonjgreen
Fastmail. Can't fault them. I particularly like the custom sieve filters
c0wb0yc0d3r
This is a feature I've recently discovered and never used. Could you provide an example of their use and why you like them so much?

Is it just that you can manage your own spam rules? Or can you do some near tricks with them?

atraac
I also use Fastmail with custom domain and I alias every single new account I make to know who sells my data. Through last two years I think there's been only one major incident that made me unable to see my emails and it lasted like an hour or two. Otherwise it works properly, it's fast, Calendar integrates nicely with everything else I have(like Apple and Google calendars), search is insanely quick, it's easy to save/browse through files. It's also not that expensive for what you get.
LoganDark
> I alias every single new account I make to know who sells my data.

I wonder if that's ever happened yet. I do the same with Firefox Relay, it's only $1/month to keep using my existing email. I have probably hundreds of accounts that haven't had their emails updated yet.

atraac
It did, I received unrelated spam onto aliases I used for major electronic chain(MediaExpert - polish MediaMarkt essentially) and two other minor services I don't remember anymore. It also happens that few of my aliases were leaked from data breaches so that also helps.
stranded22
I use custom email domain with apple and do the same catch all.

Embarrassingly, I found one of my ex colleague’s company selling my data

pupppet
I’ve been with Fastmail for about 20 years, they’re the absolute best.

My one gripe is the spam filtering. Plenty of block rules but it can’t be trained terribly well. That or it’s long given up on a mailbox my size.

katla
Thanks for pointing that put, I will look into this a bit more
katla
Thank you for the suggestion and info!
manfromearth
I have been using https://posteo.de/en from many years now. They are ad free, secure and an affordable alternative. Their web interface is poor but not a problem for me as I use email clients on all my devices.
cassianoleal
I've been with them for a couple years. Also very happy with the service. Quite cheap.

I use it with my own domain and its been stellar.

newscracker
Do you use a mail forwarding service along with Posteo, since it doesn’t support custom domains on the service?
newscracker
OP wants custom domain support, which Posteo explicitly does not support and will not support directly.
derN3rd
One of my colleagues was using it for ~3 years now and is considering switching, as their anti spam is less and less useful. Some days he wakes up to 30-40 spam/scam emails not being blocked, while he also did miss important mails being filtered as spam. (There is no spam folder on posteo, they just don't deliver spam emails to your inbox. Keep that in mind).

When he tried to forward these mails to the email address they provide for reporting spam, he got an automated mail delivery system email, that he was blocked from sending mails to that address...

SethKinast
I migrated from a legacy GSuite account to MXRoute. Quite DIY but very solid, and cheaper than many of the other popular options. (Black Friday deals appear to still be available for now: https://mxroute.blackfriday/ )

I was able to migrate all my GMail mail using imapsync.

danwee
I have my own domain and its associated email. I use Thunderbird as client.

Besides that I use Protonmail as well for non-important stuff.

jonathanberger
I love Hey (https://hey.com) for its "screener" feature. It supports custom domains but not Gmail migration.

The screener keeps new senders out of your inbox. A rich set of keyboard shortcuts helps triage new senders into one of a few categories including simply blocking them. You can choose to block at the address or the domain level.

alxlu
I used it for a year and liked the concept well enough at first. But the filtering by email addresses makes it difficult when many companies use the same email address to send both transactional and promotional emails.

And the lack of SMTP makes migrating off their service slightly less clean as well.

tsujamin
iCloud Mail with Custom Domains if you’re on iOS et al.

Alternatively I had a one seat Exchange Online license for a few years that went pretty well reputation and anti spam wise

thefounder
Why would you build a single point of failure? Not to mention feeding the monster even more.
olavgg
I would like to add Microsoft Office 365, most of you would like access to the Office applications. If not, that is fine as you can still pay less. You also get Azure Active Directory included for free, which you can use for single sign on applications you have(up to 10 applications).

I am founder for a new startup and we decided to go for Office 365 as our email service because it just made most sense for our business. And those who knows me, know that I prefer to avoid Microsoft solutions most of the time.

1letterunixname
Your own, hosted on a VPS in a non-US extradition country maintained by locals. Otherwise, you have no expectation of privacy or of durability, a-la Lavabit because a corporation in the reach of the US Gov can be squished and bullied whenever. That single company that runs an email service will always a SPoF. At least if you run your own on multiple machines on multiple providers and use a reputable domain registrar that can't be pushed around, you have HA.
bkishan
I can recommend both Zoho and Protonmail. User of both and each is great for its intended use, Zoho - commercial, multiple accounts with a custom domain, Protonmail for personal use and storage.
prashantsengar
Why not Zoho for personal use?
bkishan
Lots of integrations, like their Zoho suite I don't need for personal use. I just use Apple calendar, and the notes app for writing which get the job done. Zoho for personal use is either bloat/ overkill, depending on how you look at it.
lewo
First, you should own your domain, to own your email identity. With a domain, Gandi (my employer) includes two mail addresses: imap, roundcube, sogo, sieve filters, aliases,...

https://www.gandi.net/en/domain/email

the_third_wave
...or host your own server using your own domain. This is what I do, also using Gandi by the way (their API makes it easy to keep all the required DNS details up to date without manual intervention). As long as you make sure outgoing mail is handled by a smart host (question: does Gandi offer this service for those whose IAP does not offer smart host services?) and all the required DNS records are present and correct your mail should find its destination without more problems than when using one of the commercial providers. With Spamassassin and greylistd spam is no longer a problem as long as you take care not to drop your private mail address everywhere. Using your own mail server you can give every commercial/government organisation you communicate with a special address, e.g. firstname-companyname@example.org or companyname.your_initials@example.org:

   irs.djt@example.org
   johndoe-twitter@example.org
   scammycompany-jrrt@example.org
That way you can block any address which is being abused while knowing who leaked it. Just make sure not to use your private address - which you use with friends and family - to untrusted entities.

Source: I've been doing this for about 26 years without major problems

katla
Thank you for the advise!
robinhoodexe
mailbox.org

Simple and privacy focused. I pay 3 euro/month for 10 GB email storage and 25 email aliases which are very nice. I haven't had a problem with them so far since 2015.

intelVISA
Run your own mail server ;))

jk Spamhaus cartel would bury it in seconds.

the_third_wave
Not if you use a smarthost to relay outgoing mail which is more or less a must on most IAPs since they block outgoing TCP/25 for domestic connections. Contact your IAP to find out which smarthost to use, many if not most offer this service. Assuming you have all the correct DNS magic configured as needed - DKIM, SPF et al - and assuming your IAP is not known for hosting spammers your mail should be ac

Source: experience in hosting my own mail since before the dawn of time, or at least since before the dawn of spam (and spamhaus).

reilly3000
I'm soft-locked into Google Workspace/gSuite/Google Apps/??? with my primary account at a custom domain, and I really want out of my subscription but there isn't any way to convert that to a personal account. I have so many OAuth accounts, purchases, doc shares, etc associated with that Google account that it would be difficult to do without. Is there any way to keep that Google account without having an active subscription?

Also, I'm paying for Apple One and it could host my email... but should I? Its private relay system is pretty cool... but I really don't want to get locked in again.

I really want a self-hosted IMAP server, but to have decent spam filtering and deliverability. I'll set all the domain keys and stuff, but I need a trusted IP for the mail server or some path to make mine trusted.

SwiftyBug
I was in the exact situation as you are. I moved my custom domain to iCloud Mail. I'm not sure how complete the custom domain is with iCloud Mail. It basically uses the custom domain email to redirect to your @icloud.com email address. In email clients I have to login as username@icloud.com and set my name@lastname.com email as an alias. It works perfectly though, I'm very satisfied.

My Google account still exists at name@lastname.com, I can still OAuth with that account. My Gmail inbox is just not updated anymore since the emails are actually going to Apple's servers. I requested a Google Takeout (basically all the files and emails associated to your account" so if I ever lose access to that account, I don't lose the files.

stranded22
I migrated from Outlook’s custom email domain to Apple’s. It took a couple of changes with the DNS records and exporting the emails from Outlook.

In Apple, you can change the login details for your account to your custom domain.

Sounds like a project though - I also have a paid Bitwarden account which I use for my 2FA codes. Works well for me

urotsu
Criptext email service
Keloran
I quite like https://migadu.com mainly for its very easy to understand pricing system, when you have 5+ domains and domain aliases gmail becomes very very expensive and that’s before adding all the seats
keraf
I moved to ProtonMail (from G-Suite) and I'm pretty happy overall. Their Unlimited offering is interesting as it includes VPN, storage and calendar.

The few things I dislike about ProtonMail is the search and the fact they don't have the email client app on F-Droid. If you decide to move to Proton, I would advise against importing all your emails (maybe just the last X months). Keep a local backup of all your emails to search them, that worked the best for me and avoided cluttering my new email box.

katla
Thank you for the info, I will give Proton a closer look!
aapotahkola
I have been using tutanota for half a year. It was something like 10 euros for a year. It has pretty decent regex filters so I can write filter by subject and therefore I get zero spam. I do not even have to pay them to get the essential features but I kind of want to because of the low price. Not going to go back to free email that is for sure.
kfk
I think for email there are good alternatives, but for docs and sheets not so much?
switch007
Just a warning that owning your domain means also owning the security of the domain.

If you lose access to eg gmail or they ban you, nobody you care about will access your email.

If your domain gets hijacked or you fail to renew, now a bad actor could receive all your email forever.

(I use my own domain for email)

10729287
Can confirm about the security issues. After having a domain not secured enough being hijacked by wordpress exploit and then flooded by porn and blacklisted by Google and Facebook - happilly I didn't have email on it - I definitely got rid of the idea of having my @owndomain mail adress.
w-hn
How do you socure it better? I have mine on Porkbun.
10729287
Fastmail is my main provider for email. Sorry for misunderstanding. I never ran my own email server, but had a personal website on this domain (RIP).
katla
Thank you for the info! :)
jdmoreira
I used fastmail. Zero complaints and love it. I don't use their web client though, I just rely on the Mac / iOS mail app
BuckyBeaver
Get a domain and a proper hosting provider. I use HostGator, which is probably the bottom of the acceptable barrel. I'm sure others can come up with better hosting ideas.