HN Explorer

Ask HN: To where should I migrate my email?

19 points by CapitalistCartr ↗ HN
Given Google's trend towards ever greater intrusiveness, I find their new privacy policy the last straw. I got burned by first attempt at social Web site, Wave, violating my email privacy rather badly. I should have switched already; now its definitely time to move. Google has several advantages, including uptime, handling large files and thousands of emails well, good search capabilities, and wide name recognition. I don't care about the name recognition, but the rest matters. I want a reliable, long-term hosting solution that I don't have to re-analyze and move every year. What solution have you found to be the best?

11 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 36.9 ms ] thread
envex
You could buy your own server and domain name to host your own email service

- OR -

You could maybe wait on jumping the gun to see what happens.

sp332
After being burned several times, I see no reason for OP to give Google the benefit of the doubt. While running a server yourself might seem ideal, keeping up with security flaws etc. in the packages you're using seems like a hassle. I would probably look into smallish hosted email services (not like yahoo or hotmail).
pcmyers
Google has excellent tools for taking your data elsewhere; services like the Data Liberation Front (http://www.dataliberation.org/) are pretty progressive.

That said, hosting your own email is what someone like RMS would recommend as it gives you, by far, the most control and privacy. All major webmail providers are not going to provide the stability you are looking for, especially if you are bothered by the current trend towards integration.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
mhd
Switching to another provider seems like postponing things. Yes, the other corporation/organization might not have the same range of products and thus not the incentive/benefit from cross-checking your content, but there's still room for abuse (employees), and even if your leave your mail underneath the wings of angels, they still might get hacked.

Sure, setting up your own mail server incurs that same risk, and the professionals at the corporation might know a bit more about security, but on the other hand you present a much smaller target, and the software tends to be pretty stable/secure.

So hosting your own seems to be a common option. I think that probably means a basic Linux/Postfix/Dovecot setup for IMAP access, and maybe some web frontend. I don't know anything really good for the latter (besides gmail, I don't know anything good commercially, either), and it probably means installing more software on the server, which adds security risks. (Is there a third party web-based IMAP client who doesn't store anything locally and basically does everything via JavaScript?)

If anyone got a good hosting recommendation, I think that would be helpful. Most VPS offers might run into storage limitations, so something as modular as AWS might be needed.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
lunarscape
I plan on hosting my own email with the help of CS friends. VPS's are getting cheaper. Other options include hosted email from a provider you trust.

As an aside- does anyone have a good guide for downloading all email from GMail to Thunderbird, including attachments? I won't use closed source tools and the guides/howto's out there contradict each other..

mozami
I am also on the look out for a decent alternative to gmail. So far I've come across the following:

Zoho Mail: https://www.zoho.com/mail

Rackspace: http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/rackspace_email

Fastmail.fm: http://fastmail.fm

I'm still looking around, but would love to hear if anyone uses and recommends any of the above.

whichdan
I've been using FastMail.fm for around 4 years now. It's absolutely worth the $40/yr. I manage a lot of email accounts, and FastMail lets me define rules to file emails from different accounts into different folders, and automatically set my from/reply-to address based on the folder I'm in. Their spam handling has been excellent and there are tons of other small features like one-time-passwords which are great.

That said, I do find GMail's interface "snappier" than FastMail's, and threaded conversations are definitely nice to have. I'm starting to see GMail's benefit in tagging messages instead of using a folder hierarchy, but for managing email from multiple accounts, FastMail is definitely easier.

cdvonstinkpot
I like Fastmail, too. Been with them for about 10 years now. Have my dns there, too for several domains.
skram
Fastmail is a great service for a modest price. Definitely worth it unless you want (or need) to spring for MS Hosted Exchange in which case I'd Rackspace.