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Ask HN: I want to divorce Google for mail. Recommendations on hosting providers?

13 points by akulbe ↗ HN
I'm starting to have second thoughts about leaving all my data with Google. I'm looking for another email provider.

I need something that is "plus addressing" friendly (because I don't want a bunch of accounts)

I also need something that will sync calendars.

I've looked at Rackspace, so far, and while their Exchange service is good, it doesn't support the "plus addressing" feature that would allow for easy organization of mail.

Do you guys have any recommendations / advice?

26 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 40.1 ms ] thread
kylemaxwell
I hadn't thought about the "plus addressing", but I'd been considering Hushmail for similar motivations. It does have a catch-all feature, which probably would do the same thing for you.
jabo
I've been using google apps for hosting my personal email and I've been looking to move away from it. I would like some recommendations too.
akulbe
Have you looked at anything else yet?

I'd stick with Rackspace if it weren't for the fact that Exchange doesn't support the plus addressing.

jabo
I haven't looked into anything yet. It's one of those projects that I'll embark on when I'm relatively free.

Personally, I would need the ability to add email aliases. I use plus addressing rarely.

read_wharf
pair.com has very generous limits on how many addresses you can have per account.
wmf
fastmail.fm

I don't know about calendars, though.

tillk
http://fastmail.fm and http://pobox.com/ are the services people keep recommending (for IMAP, SMTP, etc.).

Check out this blog post about fastmail.fm: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2012/03/from-gmail-to-fast...

I'm not sure how well either of the services does address books and most importantly sync'ing it to multiple devices. It could be as simple as LDAP – but then again, that's not trivial but probably still doable. :)

Personally, I also like google docs a lot. Something like Zoho Office wasn't an alternative for myself primarily because I didn't like the UI at all.

Sander_Marechal
Why not host yourself? There's little sense in leaving one silo just to go into another one. I have set up Postfix + Dovecot for my e-mail needs and DAViCal for my calendar. Works like a charm!
url2png
Someone should create (or link to) a turnkey AWS EC2 hosted solution that mimics the gmail/calendar suite. I'd spin up a micro instance in a heart beat. Funded by selling managed registration and dns.
akulbe
No way. Email is one of those things I can't stand to admin on my own. I just want it to work, and don't even want to think about the administration piece. That's why I'm willing to pay someone else to take care of that.

Gmail does this beautifully.... but there's this creepy privacy policy thing, you know. :)

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NeutronBoy
I did a similar thing, and ended up going with Zoho. My main reason was that they offered push email through their Exchange service, meaning push email on my phone. I've been super happy with them so far (about 2 months)
dirkdeman
Have you thought of Yahoo mail? It offers plus addresses and calendars, it's actually pretty good. I've used it since the late 90's, Gmail still can't convince me enough to swith.
read_wharf
How long is Yahoo going to be in business?
rachelbythebay
fastmail.fm is fine for mail, but think twice before using them for XMPP. You will be disconnected multiple times per hour once you get going at a fairly good pace. They are aware of it and it has been going on like this for a long time.
pcvarmint
hostgator. I control my own procmail recipes, and prevent 99% of spam. If one slips through, I edit the recipes and voila.
go_ghoti
Fastmail, Fastmail, Fastmail. I'd happily pay double what they charge.
ayers
Addressing is a big issue as people(me) who use Android phones have all their contacts tied to their Google account. I guess upon switching to another email provider I could keep my Gmail account just for my contacts on my phone.
ksec
Email From Mediatemple, (mt) mail, which itself is based on Atmail

You could get a Cloud Based version of Atmail from atmailcloud.com/

tillk
This looks pretty interesting though I had to sign-up to figure out what they offer exactly (for 2 USD/user/month):

* 10GB storage * Webmail * POP3/IMAP * Calendaring * Groupware * Mobile Sync

read_wharf
I migrated from fastmail.fm, very happy with it. I don't know what plus addressing is.

I have also used pair.com for my email in the past, they do a very good job of that.

I'm not aware of an email provider, other than google, that also does calendar synch. That's frustrating because it's such a natural fit, even though the two techs are different.

You could consider a shared hosting account on pair.com, and install/run your own calendar.

Edit: I think google must be fastmail's best source of new customers.

akulbe
Plus addressing is as follows: assume your email address is read_wharf@fastmail.fm.

If you send an email to read_wharf+list@fastmail.fm, you'll still get the email in your Inbox, but you can make rules that allow you to send stuff addressed to +something to specific folders. It's great.

I thought it was just a Gmail thing, but it's part of one of the email RFCs.

read_wharf
Cool. I just tested that on my fastmail address and it works. read_wharf+hey@fastmail.fm

Even cooler, I don't use my fastmail address, I use my own domain and point it at fastmail, and that still works. real_name+hey@mydomain.com

Edit: none of those are real addresses. :)

akulbe
Any of you fastmail.fm customers, can you tell me whether or not they support calendar sync/sharing? If so, how well does it work for you?