[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace ...
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       Ask HN: Best hosted alternative to Google Workspace for email?
        
       So with Google starting to charge previously-free users, I've
       decided that I'd rather give my money to someone else. I'd like a
       provider who is likely to be around in a decade or two. Tips on
       moving many years of Google email to a new provider are appreciated
       as well!
        
       Author : CharlesW
       Score  : 146 points
       Date   : 2022-02-05 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
       | aetherspawn wrote:
       | Office365, you get exchange email and Microsoft office included
       | in the basic plan which is about $80/yr.
       | 
       | You can BYO your own unlimited number of email domains.
        
       | Kerrick wrote:
       | I've been using Migadu ever since switching away from Google
       | Apps, and I've been happy with their service and pricing.
        
         | nacs wrote:
         | Also moved to Migadu after hearing about Google shutting down
         | the "legacy" accounts.
         | 
         | Moved 5 domains with wildcard support and 80k emails over and
         | been going great (and only $20 a _year_ for that).
         | 
         | I used imapsync (free / opensource) to move the emails from
         | Google to Migadu.
        
         | Fileformat wrote:
         | I use Migadu as well & recommend them: The ability to have
         | unlimited domains (even on the cheapest tier) is key for a
         | domain name hoarder like me.
        
         | captn3m0 wrote:
         | Been using Migadu for half a decade now. Only catch is that
         | there isn't a contact/calendar service. I've been told it's in
         | in the works multiple times over the years, and I'll welcome it
         | when it does release, but it might be a dealbreaker for some
         | workplaces.
        
       | rasulkireev wrote:
       | I love Zoho Mail.
       | 
       | I pay $12/year and can have as many emails as I want. For
       | example, I have set up an email for my personal domain, and 3 of
       | my projects. It is very easy to do with their docs.
       | 
       | You could stop there, but I redirect all those email to my GMail
       | address (I just prefer Gmail UI). Then I set up labels for each
       | email and now I have 5 different email in my GMail Account.
        
       | buro9 wrote:
       | Fastmail
       | 
       | I've just moved, and it's great. Import is fantastic (I migrated
       | 14GB of email) and I've used Dmarcian to monitor and confirm
       | everything is perfect on the SPF, DKIM front. Spam initially got
       | through, but once trained it's been flawless I've personally
       | abandoned labels for folders as I used barely 10 labels in Gmail
       | and seldom added more than one, but they do support labels if you
       | want that. It's great for wildcard email and aliases.
       | 
       | I've moved the calendar over too via Google takeout for the
       | individual .ics files. On Android I use DAVx5 to keep using the
       | Google calendar app (point it at your fastmail account and it
       | will display in Google calendar).
       | 
       | For Drive I've moved to syncthing and am using a Synology NAS as
       | my always online master copy, but each of my computers has a
       | copy. I also installed libre office on my laptop.
       | 
       | And I'm keeping a Gmail account just for Android backup and app
       | purchases, etc.
        
       | g8oz wrote:
       | Runbox.com out of Norway is rock solid.
        
       | tazjin wrote:
       | Yandex 360 is great and also has calendar support etc.
       | 
       | There are a few things that make moving your calendar away from
       | Google pretty hard. If a Google account invites you, the invite
       | still lands in your old calendar for example - even if that's not
       | where your domains MX records point. Lots of third-party software
       | also has mostly Google-specific integrations.
       | 
       | Moving away from them is hard, but overall probably worth it, iff
       | you move to a provider that has real support.
        
       | yannikyeo wrote:
       | Mxroute, migadu, purelymail (in beta). Can also consider
       | Gandi.net which gives two 3G email when you use them as domain
       | registrar, their domain pricing however is not the cheapest you
       | can find.
        
       | modeless wrote:
       | You can still use the Gmail UI with a custom domain for free. All
       | you need is a mail server. Once it's set up, configure a free
       | Gmail account to fetch your email with IMAP and send from your
       | domain with SMTP. Now you own your email but still get the Gmail
       | UI as long as you want to use it, for free, with the option to
       | use any other client you want as well.
        
         | hobo_mark wrote:
         | That's what I'm doing. Gandi provides two free mailboxes for
         | each domain hosted with them.
        
         | fire wrote:
         | Cloudflare's email routing offering seems to be a good fit for
         | this as far as I can tell.
        
       | troydavis wrote:
       | This question comes up a couple times every month. FastMail
       | always comes up as a recommendation, so if you search comments
       | for FastMail, you'll find every past thread (and relatively few
       | false positives):
       | 
       | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
       | 
       | Example from a week ago:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128198
        
         | vero2 wrote:
         | Every service has their haters and lovers. While people in
         | G-suite threads swear that moving to fast mail or MS is the
         | best options, in Microsoft threads people complain about clunky
         | MS interface. It is always full circle!
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30141192
        
           | hedgehog wrote:
           | I'm a happy Fastmail customer for e-mail but they don't do
           | everything Workspace does. Microsoft is a more direct
           | alternative with all the Office apps etc and personally I
           | like the web Outlook interface way better than GMail.
        
         | fy20 wrote:
         | How does FastMail handle tags? I tried Zoho but it's pretty
         | terrible compared to how Gmail works. What I'd like is:
         | 
         | 1) To be able to assign tags based on rules
         | 
         | 2) To be able to view those tags in IMAP clients (Gmail exposes
         | labels as IMAP folders)
         | 
         | 3) To be able to Archive mail so they are no longer in the
         | Inbox, but so the tag remains (in Gmail, 'Inbox' is just a tag
         | that is removed when you Archive mail)
         | 
         | Zoho fails because:
         | 
         | 1) Tags aren't anywhere near a first class citizen. You need to
         | hover over an icon to see what tags are assigned to an email.
         | 
         | 2) There's no way to search Archived mail (yes really) and it's
         | not available over IMAP
        
           | rasulkireev wrote:
           | I love Zoho for what they offer for $12/year. I agree that UI
           | is better on Gmail, which is why I redirect all email to my
           | GMail Dashboard.
        
           | nmjenkins wrote:
           | If you switch to labels mode, Fastmail handles them just like
           | Gmail.
        
           | depingus wrote:
           | FastMail doesn't have tags. What it does have? Let me
           | copy/paste my comment from another thread:
           | 
           | They have subdomain addressing, which is kind of like plus
           | addressing, but better (not all places let you sign up with
           | plus addressing).
           | 
           | I've got my own domain, for example: mydomain.com. So my
           | fastmail email address is depingus@mydomain.com. But with
           | subdomain addressing, I can sign up for services with unique
           | email addresses that look like:
           | 
           | social.hackernews@depingus.mydomain.com
           | 
           | I don't have to set up this alias ahead of time. Fastmail
           | will automatically route incoming messages arriving to this
           | email address to my "social" folder. If I start getting junk
           | to that address I can easily blacklist it.
           | 
           | It wasn't easy switching out my email address EVERYWHERE. And
           | there are places that won't even let me change it. But in the
           | end, it was so worth it. I don't even miss Google Inbox
           | anymore!
        
         | smoyer wrote:
         | It has definitely come up before but since Google just
         | announced that the legacy free plans will convert to a paid
         | service, there will probably be renewed interest.
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | > _This question comes up a couple times every month._
         | 
         | Thank you! I used HN search before posting but didn't find
         | anything helpful when searching for "google workspace", so I
         | appreciate the links.
        
       | TillE wrote:
       | I'm currently waiting for access to Cloudflare's email forwarding
       | beta. If that didn't exist, I'd use Namecheap, which I believe is
       | also free regardless of whether the domain is registered with
       | them.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | bilal4hmed wrote:
       | Office 365 is a great deal. For 1 user its $70 per year, up to 6
       | its $100 per year. You get a lot of storage and all of office.
       | 
       | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/outlook/outloo...
        
       | wiradikusuma wrote:
       | Google is not just email. It's the email client. It's the
       | calendar. It's the calendar integration with email. How do you
       | replace those?
        
         | tweetle_beetle wrote:
         | I don't mind losing out on bundled document editing apps, etc.
         | by not giving my email money to Google or Microsoft, but I do
         | wish the smaller providers saw email and calendars as two sides
         | of the same service as I do. I use Migadu for email, but their
         | calendar offering is still in beta and very primitive. So I use
         | Fruux, to support a small open source company. But i've had
         | support messages completely ignored by Fruux and the cost of
         | paying for 2 micro services feels disproportionately expensive.
        
         | josephg wrote:
         | > How do you replace those?
         | 
         | These days? Pretty easily!
         | 
         | Fastmail also has an email client, and a calendar. The calendar
         | is integrated into its email service too. And the calendar
         | integrates really well with iCal / CalDAV. I find fastmail
         | syncs calendar entries between my apple devices more reliably
         | than apple's own icloud.
         | 
         | The big hole in fastmail's offering is that they have no
         | replacement for google docs & spreadsheets.
         | 
         | Microsoft Outlook + 365 (as others have suggested) also does
         | pretty much everything gsuite does.
        
           | hn_version_0023 wrote:
           | One thing I like about Fastmail is the ability to serve
           | static web content directly from the "Files" section of their
           | apps/website.
           | 
           | Since they already manage the domain for email, spinning up
           | static sites at subdomains is really easy and really nice.
        
             | stn8188 wrote:
             | This is a huge feature for me. I had set up my EE
             | consultancy and even though I'm no longer doing any side
             | work the Fatmail hosting feature allows my to keep a
             | professional-looking static site for no extra cost with a
             | place to post periodic blog updates and even the beginnings
             | of a niche knowledge base. I love it!
        
             | prirun wrote:
             | I almost did this, but they don't have rsync access to the
             | Files space. It's really nice with a static site being able
             | to use rsync to just update the changed files.
        
               | hn_version_0023 wrote:
               | I use ncftp from a CI/CD job to push my files to
               | Fastmail; it has a sync option
               | 
               | Edit: I'm pretty sure the sync options are part of the
               | _put_ command
        
             | ipaddr wrote:
             | I'm a new fastmail customer. Fastmail doesn't control my
             | domain how does this feature work?
        
               | csande17 wrote:
               | Fastmail recommends setting them as the DNS nameserver
               | for your domain. If you do that, then they'll
               | automatically add any records needed to host websites
               | with them. (They'll also set up records for stuff like
               | DKIM and SPF for you, which helps your email stay out of
               | spam filters.)
        
           | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
           | > they have no replacement for google docs & spreadsheets
           | 
           | I'm happy about this. Those are really complicated apps to
           | support; they'd have to spend a ton of time and money and
           | dedicate new teams to them (even if they "just" hosted OSS
           | alternatives) which would raise the cost of my subscription
           | and take away from their core competency (e-mail). And it may
           | result in proprietary features, making it a lock-in device.
        
       | vmoore wrote:
       | I'm confused by all the branding. Google change the names to
       | things every week. Is it Google Docs, or Google One, or Google
       | Workspace, or GSuite? They need to stop this.
        
         | jldl805 wrote:
         | Google and confusing, misguided name changes for already-
         | effective products: name a more iconic duo.
        
           | MandieD wrote:
           | Microsoft comes close - my most personally irritating example
           | was them trading "Lync" (short, wonderfully searchable, very
           | little rubbish returned) for "Skype for Business" (impossible
           | to search for specific technical matters, and the site itself
           | was blocked by most corporate web filters for the first
           | several weeks)
        
         | guerrilla wrote:
         | Google Workspace is just your own instances of their services
         | running on their servers for you. You manage it as your own
         | domain and it has all the services you get with a with GMail
         | account, including Google Docs. It was called G Suite before. I
         | don't know what Google One is.
         | 
         | [edit: "Google One replaced the paid services of Google Drive."
         | Apparently Workspaces is for businesses and Google One is for
         | consumers. It seems that you can't use your own domain as a
         | consumer.]
        
           | mszcz wrote:
           | This is odd. When "migrating" from G-Suite to Workspaces a
           | couple of days ago I got the option to continue as not-a-
           | company. I migrated a company account but still have a
           | personal account with a domain to migrate. I'm sensing
           | problems ahead...
        
             | guerrilla wrote:
             | I don't know honestly. I tried asking about exactly this on
             | Community but they just wanted to gaslight me about it
             | being a valid question and then deleted the thread to hide
             | the evidence of that embarrassment. I did a Google Takeout
             | and moved all my stuff to Proton and whatnot.
        
       | bradgranath wrote:
       | Your ISP and a raspi running pine.
        
       | blakesterz wrote:
       | This was asked last week with some good answers:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128198
       | 
       | This monster thread about the original announcement is full of
       | them as well:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432
        
       | moedersmooiste wrote:
       | Also went looking for an alternative and moved everyting to
       | mailbox.org...
        
         | akvadrako wrote:
         | I'll second that. It's the best choice if you want an EU-based
         | company.
        
         | 15characterslon wrote:
         | Be aware that Mailbox.org allows any user to send emails as
         | ("from") any other user via SMTP and these emails will look
         | legit since they pass SPF and DKIM checks. Many consider this a
         | security issue.
         | 
         | There was a quite lengthy discussion about this in their forum
         | but they deleted it since. They refused to fix it. Archive.org
         | still has it. Content is in German (sorry):
         | 
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20210123192856/https://userforum...
        
           | mkdirp wrote:
           | I did not know this, I moved to mailbox.org in December.
           | 
           | Surely they'll only allow that if they pass the auth and the
           | domain belongs to your account?
        
           | brewmarche wrote:
           | Oh wow, do you perhaps have more details on the current
           | situation? The CEO's response is from 4 years ago.
           | 
           | I also don't fully understand the reasoning. Having an open
           | SMTP server that doesn't restrict senders is one thing, but
           | attaching DKIM without further checks is another.
        
           | upofadown wrote:
           | Anyone willing to spin up a mail server can do this. DKIM and
           | SPF are only intended to establish the identity of the
           | server. I don't know that there is any obligation on the part
           | of someone running a mail server to police the "From:"
           | address on an email in some specific way. Traditionally the
           | "From:" address was considered informational. It generally
           | represents the address that the sender considers "their"
           | email address. A actual user identity is established by
           | signing the email and is separate from the "From:" address.
           | 
           | Does mailbox.org even include the "From:" address in the DKIM
           | signature?
        
         | brewmarche wrote:
         | I like them as well, especially their catch-all feature. But
         | they increased prices for their cheapest custom domain plan
         | from 1 to 3 euros per moth not so long ago. While I'm still
         | grandfathered in, it doesn't feel good. I know it's not too
         | much in absolute terms but the relative increase is steep.
        
       | slig wrote:
       | Is there any good alternative to Google Docs/Sheets and Microsoft
       | Office 365?
        
         | rodolphoarruda wrote:
         | Zoho and OwnCloud.
        
           | slig wrote:
           | Thanks!
        
       | BoumTAC wrote:
       | I would recommend hey.com
        
         | mazugrin2 wrote:
         | I'm switching away from hey.com at the end of my term. It's not
         | a bad service, but the UI is absolutely inflexible. The
         | absolute worst feature for me is that the sorting of your inbox
         | (I guess I mean "Imbox") is based the time you first accessed
         | the email. There's no straightforward way to sort by the date
         | the email was actually sent. I asked the support group if there
         | was ever going to be an ability to sort by anything other than
         | the quirky default sorting they've chosen but my query received
         | no response.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | StreamBright wrote:
       | We just migrated to Fastmail.
        
       | thom wrote:
       | I migrated four separate Google accounts to a single Fastmail
       | account last year. I had put off migrating for _years_ because I
       | thought it would be painful, but I've had no issues at all. The
       | migration was automated with good progress updates as emails are
       | copied across. I had to do the DNS bits manually but they were
       | nevertheless well documented. I've had zero issues since with
       | mail, calendars, or their simple static site hosting. I think
       | about it so little I sometimes forget how happy I was with the
       | whole process.
        
       | temp8964 wrote:
       | How about free email plan from your web hosting? Many hosting
       | companies provide free email plan when you host your
       | domain/website with them. If you have a personal domain/website,
       | why don't use the free email hosting? If you need more features,
       | they also provide upgraded plans.
        
         | vanous wrote:
         | Exactly. Maybe not free but for a very small fee, compared to
         | the HN popular options. And you might even get caldav and
         | carddav (calendar and contact) sync included.
        
       | qwertyuiop_ wrote:
       | Fastmail
        
       | NetWorth16254 wrote:
       | As alternative I would suggest Office365, but If you used Google
       | workspace for so long, why not just pay Google? Why you have to
       | change. Just pay and do nothing... They invested billions for you
       | to use it for free so long. Its a good service.
        
         | mdasen wrote:
         | Google Workspace is expensive: $6/mo for 30GB. Microsoft will
         | give you 1TB plus the Microsoft Office apps (plus email) for
         | that price. If you have a family of 6 with a custom domain,
         | Google is going to charge you $36/mo while Microsoft will
         | charge you $8.33/mo - plus each person gets 1TB of storage and
         | the Microsoft Office apps.
         | 
         | I think the reason to switch is that Google decided to use the
         | same pricing that they want to get out of enterprises for
         | individuals/families. Sure, $6/user is nothing to a company
         | that is paying that worker $5,000+ per month, but it can be
         | annoying for a family (even if it's still relatively
         | affordable). But then you have to think about whether you want
         | to pay $12/user to upgrade their storage making it $72/mo for a
         | family of 6. And you still don't get the Microsoft Office apps.
         | They aren't strictly necessary in a lot of situations, but
         | they're still pretty commonly used.
         | 
         | It just seems like Google isn't offering great value for
         | individuals and other companies offer something better. In a
         | certain way, it feels like Google is charging $6/user/mo just
         | for the custom domain. With Microsoft 365, it at least feels
         | like you're getting something above a standard account with the
         | Microsoft Office apps and 1TB of storage.
        
           | fire wrote:
           | > I think the reason to switch is that Google decided to use
           | the same pricing that they want to get out of enterprises for
           | individuals/families. Sure, $6/user is nothing to a company
           | that is paying that worker $5,000+ per month, but it can be
           | annoying for a family (even if it's still relatively
           | affordable). But then you have to think about whether you
           | want to pay $12/user to upgrade their storage making it
           | $72/mo for a family of 6
           | 
           | And if you're like me who has already been paying $12/user/m
           | ( which is higher than it used to be! ) just for the
           | unlimited storage aspect... Congrats! That's going away in a
           | few months and the only equivalent is upgrading to an actual
           | _enterprise_ plan, which I _believe_ starts at $20
           | /user/month
           | 
           | I just want to store my raws without spending an arm and a
           | leg, god dammit
        
         | remram wrote:
         | Does paying them make you safe from their algorithms blocking
         | your access at any point with no appeal? If yes it's probably
         | the right answer, if no go with a company that is not primarily
         | dealing with free users and has real customer service.
        
       | Scarbutt wrote:
       | _I 've decided that I'd rather give my money to someone else_
       | 
       | Why? the less cumbersome route is to pay google.
        
         | guerrilla wrote:
         | Why would you pay a company with no support and who constantly
         | cancels features and products? Also, why would you want an ad
         | company reading your email to weaponize against you?
        
           | extra88 wrote:
           | They have some support, I recently read a G Suite legacy free
           | "customer's" chat with a Google Workspace Support person.
           | 
           | There is no danger of Google canceling the core services of
           | Google Workspace (email, calendar, Drive).
           | 
           | Google has never scanned G Suite/Workspace email for ad
           | targeting and stopped doing it for email entirely in 2017;
           | the ads in Gmail are targeted based on other information
           | Google has (e.g. search history).
           | 
           | There are good reasons to not pay for Google's service, the
           | above are not any of them.
           | 
           | Since Google has stated they're going to create an option for
           | small, non-business G Suite legacy free customers, there's no
           | rush for those people, who have been using it 10+ years, to
           | get off it before they see what that option is.
        
           | oauea wrote:
           | If you pay you do have support and they do not analyze your
           | email.
        
           | harel wrote:
           | I've paid, and have already accessed support three times
           | since with great success and good response times. I was quite
           | surprised actually considering all the horror stories I'm
           | reading here.
        
       | remram wrote:
       | How is self-hosted email these days? Are there web-based email
       | clients with search, filters, and labels?
        
       | devilkin wrote:
       | Fastmail.
        
       | dgavrilov wrote:
       | https://mxroute.com/
        
         | pkulak wrote:
         | Wow, looks pretty good. Never heard of those guys. Are they
         | new?
        
           | lbotos wrote:
           | I joined MXRoute at a suggestion in on hackernews and I'm...
           | probably gonna be moving away when my year is up.
           | 
           | Two issues I had:
           | 
           | 1. 3 times my emails to gmail will be "silently delivered" in
           | that they don't bounce but they don't land in the inbox. I
           | had it happen to me (sending to my test gmail), me sending to
           | a friend, and me sending to a business. It's a gmail problem,
           | but this never happened when I was on fastmail.
           | 
           | 2. Jarland is a solid admin, but he's "old school". Sometimes
           | he'll blanket ban _incoming_ mail, and you might miss
           | messages. For example, I was trying to sign up for mailjet
           | and I wasn 't getting the sign up email. When I opened a
           | ticket, it was because MXroute was seeing "a bunch of spam
           | from that provider" so it was blocked. I have no clue if I
           | missed any emails from sellers/senders that use the service
           | during that time...
        
             | bertman wrote:
             | Re. 2.:
             | https://accounts.mxroute.com/index.php?/news/view/18/don--
             | 03...
             | 
             | Looks like you were not the only one.
        
               | lbotos wrote:
               | Right. It's one thing to ask customers to choose a
               | different provider, and I'd happily consider. It's
               | another to blanket block receiving mail from mailjet. I
               | have no clue how many vendors that I've purchased from
               | that are using mailjet!
               | 
               | (Sure, if you wanna send it to spam, I'm open to that,
               | but it was dropped on the floor...)
        
           | dgavrilov wrote:
           | Domain Name: MXROUTE.COM
           | 
           | Creation Date: 2013-10-14T22:37:59Z
           | 
           |  _In 2019, MXroute became an official legal entity in the
           | state of Texas, MXroute LLC. MXroute remains a family
           | business managed by Jarland and Christine Donnell._
        
       | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
       | I have no idea what Google Workspace provides, but here's my
       | review of Fastmail:
       | 
       | - The web interface is good, the Android app is good. Relatively
       | fast and straightforward to use. Pretty good reliability aside
       | from the occasional DDoS.
       | 
       | - The calendar is functional but kinda lame. I don't think I've
       | ever noticed before an event happens, and trying to open new
       | events has poor UX. Typical Calendar features work fine.
       | 
       | - Haven't really used Contacts but they're all there from my
       | phone.
       | 
       | - There's a Notes feature which I find mostly useless since it
       | doesn't really sync with anything (though supposedly it can work
       | with Apple Notes' proprietary format?).
       | 
       | - They give you dedicated file storage and transfer quota just to
       | serve files on the web (unrelated to mail quotas). It's
       | accessible via normal browser and via WebDAV client. I guess it's
       | handy, I've used it once, but pulling attachments out of emails
       | is almost the same. If you had to send someone a large file and
       | couldn't send it via e-mail, there you go.
       | 
       | - They have all the mail features that I've used in Gmail. They
       | have some "team" features, I suppose they're helpful if you have
       | multiple users.
       | 
       | - You can connect your Google, Yahoo, Outlook, iCloud, and other
       | accounts in Fastmail so you can actually pull mail from all those
       | places. You can even send e-mail _through_ each of those
       | providers too. So this is pretty cool for consolidating accounts.
       | 
       | - They have their own e-mail masking service, and partnered with
       | 1Password so the masked e-mails have matching credentials in your
       | 1Password account.
       | 
       | - The people running it are using really old tech and don't chase
       | after the latest shiny thing, which I appreciate. Everything they
       | do seems sensible. These aren't tech bros gobbling up VC money to
       | become a Unicorn. And they don't seem to use any trackers or ads
       | at all. The only 3rd party domains I see are from Sentry (for
       | debugging app issues).
       | 
       | - My gripes: the Android app doesn't cache mail or calendar, the
       | Calendar is clunky and notifications don't grab my attention,
       | their new UI in beta will probably become more cramped soon.
        
       | mattlondon wrote:
       | I have used Zoho for my burner domain for a couple of years.
       | 
       | It's functional and works ok, but is not as slick as Gmail (both
       | web and app)
        
         | rasulkireev wrote:
         | I love Zoho for what they offer for $12/year. I agree that UI
         | is better on Gmail, which is why I redirect all email to my
         | GMail Dashboard.
        
         | jrmg wrote:
         | Also a Zoho user - been very happy for a few years now.
        
       | callesgg wrote:
       | I will keep the free version of "google cloud identity" so I kan
       | keep my google account and things connected to it; things like
       | drive documents, YouTube account, app purchases, and so on. But
       | then I intend to move my email domain to iCloud.
        
         | planb wrote:
         | How do you do this? I'm planning to keep my Gmail account and
         | pay for it, but my son does not need the mail address but wants
         | to keep his YouTube account.
        
           | callesgg wrote:
           | https://admin.google.com/ac/billing/catalog
           | 
           | Enable "Cloud Identity Free" then just go to his user in the
           | admin panel and remove the users "Google Workspace" license.
        
       | lexx wrote:
       | Fast mail is awesome. And fast.
        
       | croutonwagon wrote:
       | In their Q&A they have a link to a google form where they say
       | they will email you alternative options after April 1.
       | 
       | https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217#faq
       | 
       | May be worth the wait and just sign the form. Worst case, you
       | still upgrade. But it seems like they may offer some super
       | restricted free version for personal use.
       | 
       | I'll probably just upgrade at this point. I wish protonmail
       | supported contact syncing. That's the main issue, that and our
       | dakboard.
       | 
       | >What if I use G Suite legacy free edition for personal use and
       | don't want to upgrade to a Google Workspace subscription?
       | 
       | >Upgrading to a Google Workspace subscription is a seamless
       | transition for all customers currently on the G Suite legacy free
       | edition. However, we understand some customers may not use their
       | G Suite legacy free edition for business and may be interested in
       | other options. If you have 10 or fewer users in your group and do
       | not use your G Suite legacy free edition for business, please
       | sign in to your administrator account to provide more
       | information.
       | 
       | >Sign in to an administrator account (doesn't end in gmail.com).
       | 
       | >Note that even if you decide you don't want to upgrade to Google
       | Workspace, you'll still retain access to additional Google
       | services and paid content purchased though non-Google Workspace
       | services made with your legacy edition account (such as movies
       | purchased on Google Play). Learn more above.
        
       | goingindi wrote:
       | Regarding migadu, which I am now looking at, what verification
       | have you who've selected it done for this statement " Your emails
       | are your own business. We have no interest in them. We do not
       | access1, analyse2, scan or share any user data." from their site?
        
       | buttocks wrote:
       | HN is a hard place for people who like Microsoft but I'll tell
       | you that a single user Office 365 Business Essentials
       | subscription is a great deal. Along with e-mail you get a
       | terabyte of Sharepoint (OneDrive) storage, online versions of
       | office apps, and Teams. $5/mo. There's an IMAP migration tool.
       | Just turn on IMAP on your Gmail account if it's not already
       | enabled and let the O365/Exchange wizard suck all the e-mail
       | down.
        
         | jimnotgym wrote:
         | And Exchange online is a fully featured mail server. Fancy
         | adding 50 aliases, go ahead. Fancy adding 50 domains, go ahead.
         | Fancy adding your family, that too. Groups, distribution lists
         | etc. all included.
         | 
         | Plus you can set up Azure AD and use the SSO tools!
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | That's a pretty great deal. And I've previously tried to
         | replace the Office apps (with Google Docs, Apple's suite, and
         | LibreOffice) but just can't, so that's really appealing too.
         | 
         | EDIT: This plan appears to only support "Office apps for the
         | web", which are not good enough for serious use in my
         | experience.
        
           | easton wrote:
           | If it's for personal use, then the Microsoft 365 personal
           | plan is $70 per year and includes the full office suite and
           | mail. Otherwise, $12 per month will get you mail and Office.
        
         | mansandersson wrote:
         | I've been eyeing this as well but it looks like neither DMARC
         | or DKIM is supported on the family plan. Anyone know a way
         | around that issue?
        
           | jimnotgym wrote:
           | Yes, use an office 365 business essentials subscription
           | instead. You now get a fully featured online mail server
        
         | velcrovan wrote:
         | I've been considering this, but how good is the spam filtering
         | included with this plan? Do people often end up bolting on 3rd-
         | party spam filters in front of Business Essentials?
        
           | buttocks wrote:
           | I haven't adjusted the spam filter. I have been using it in
           | the default configuration since I signed up and it filters
           | out most. YMMV.
        
           | jimnotgym wrote:
           | I use it at work and the default spam filtering is fine
        
         | divbzero wrote:
         | A sibling comment also pointed out Microsoft 365 plans [1] that
         | run $70/year for 1 person and $100/year for up to 6 people.
         | 
         | [1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-
         | us/microsoft-365/outlook/outloo...
        
       | p0d wrote:
       | I'm trialling Fastmail at the moment. Some observations.
       | Excellent Google migration tool..Excellent support for domain
       | aliases. You can also forward domain aliases to an external
       | addresses...I raised a support query on A saturday evening and I
       | had a resolution on Sunday morning.
       | 
       | Looking good so far. My main requirement is no restriction on
       | domain aliases.
        
       | jws wrote:
       | I've moved mine off to Gandi.net where I had the domains. It is
       | either included for free with your domain, or something like 1.5
       | EU/mo if you store a lot of email.
       | 
       | Easy on the Gandi.net side and on Macs. A complete pain on the
       | iOS side. The accounts added on the Mac don't come over to iOS
       | for some reason like they do other Macs, then when you go to add
       | them manually iOS won't look to see which ports to use or mail
       | servers so you have to enter all that, except you can't do the
       | port until later and when you do the device hangs at "verifying"
       | until you turn off all internet access and turn it back on.
       | (That's a half day of research for free for you.) It's an
       | accepted defect by Apple, its been documented for years.
       | 
       | Also, moving is a pain. Google lets you export, but you lose your
       | folder information. Apple on Mac lets you easily copy from one
       | account to another, but that is a little strange since you have
       | two accounts for the same email address and there have been
       | catastrophic failures in the past from that. Also some of the
       | special folders like "Archive" apparently can't be copied for
       | "reasons". The work around is to "select all" in Archive and hope
       | it doesn't explode from the volume.
       | 
       | All in all, you are in for some pain. And pain raised to some
       | exponent if you have non-technical users in your domain to
       | support.
        
       | mdasen wrote:
       | Google Takeout will export all your mail in mbox format which is
       | easily handled by mail programs like Apple Mail and Thunderbird
       | and should let you sync everything to a new service (if that
       | service won't let you transfer it themselves).
       | 
       | I'm using iCloud+ from Apple. It's cheap at $1/mo for 50GB of
       | space and lets me have my custom domains. $3/mo will get you
       | family sharing and 200GB of space (if you want multiple accounts
       | - I just have one account with multiple domains/email addresses).
       | Apple's email hosting is 22 years old (pre-dating Gmail by 4
       | years) and seems like it won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
       | They've recently expanded their email offerings with things like
       | "Sign In with Apple" and "Hide my Email."
       | 
       | Zoho Mail will give you free hosting without IMAP or $1 for 5GB,
       | $1.25 for 10GB, $3 for 30GB, $4 for 50GB, $6 for 100GB (billed
       | annually).
       | 
       | Microsoft 365 will cost $5.83/mo for 1 person or $8.33 for a
       | family of 6. Each account gets 1TB of storage (6TB for the family
       | in total) and you get all the Microsoft Office apps. One issue is
       | that the domain needs to be with Go Daddy which ups the price a
       | little given their premium pricing on domains which is around an
       | extra dollar per month.
       | 
       | FastMail is $5/mo for 30GB, $9 for 100GB.
       | 
       | There's no magic email provider that no one ever complains about
       | - including Google where we've heard horror stories of getting
       | locked out with no one to even contact. It also seems like no one
       | wants to be hosting your mail for free with IMAP support anymore
       | (and almost no one wants to host your domain email for free
       | generally).
       | 
       | For me, migrating to iCloud+ was cheap and easy. I'm already on a
       | Mac and iPhone. I set up some simple rules to filter my mail on
       | my Mac and I'm enjoying the instant response of a native app. At
       | $1/mo, there's no lock-in to annual billing and it basically
       | costs nothing.
       | 
       | Microsoft 365 seems like a good deal if you're looking for a lot
       | of storage and Microsoft Office apps. 1TB for $5.83/mo is
       | basically the same price per GB as Dropbox, but you're also
       | getting mail and the Office apps.
        
         | SmellTheGlove wrote:
         | Oh wow I had no idea I could use a custom domain with iCloud,
         | and I'm already paying for the 2TB tier and family sharing.
         | Thanks!
        
         | nachteilig wrote:
         | Does iCloud+ support catch all on custom domains now? I really
         | like this about Google but would also be glad to go elsewhere
        
           | dan_wood wrote:
           | No they don't and it's a maximum of three email addresses per
           | user.
           | 
           | Looking at it they don't allow for "groups" or aliases
           | either.
           | 
           | It feels years behind.
        
             | hughrr wrote:
             | It has only just been rolled out. I think it's still early
             | days.
             | 
             | I'm using it for my domain fine but that has only two users
             | on it.
        
         | mxrlkn wrote:
         | I just switched to iCloud as well, but I want all my email
         | forwarded to my private gmail account. One thing to be aware of
         | with iCloud is that it doesn't do ARC, so your forwarded emails
         | will fail on SPF. I instead use cloudflare's email forwarding
         | for incoming email, which does support ARC, and then iCloud for
         | outgoing. Works well so far.
        
           | gst wrote:
           | Are you sure that Cloudflare supports ARC? Last time I
           | checked they used SRS for sender rewriting (that's why SPF
           | doesn't fail), but didn't support ARC yet.
        
             | mxrlkn wrote:
             | There's ARC headers on the emails I get forwarded, so looks
             | like it. I don't know about SRS.
        
         | voisin wrote:
         | I just did the Gmail --> iCloud transition and was frustrated
         | that the MBOX format failed to maintain labels / folders.
         | Everything went into a single place. On researching it seemed
         | like the best process was to set up two IMAP accounts in Apple
         | Mail and simply drag and drop the directories. I've done this,
         | but it is still a pain and took 100x longer than I expected.
        
           | Saris wrote:
           | Mailstores free home version works pretty well for this. You
           | can backup your IMAP account in it, and then it has the
           | option to export that archive to another IMAP account. It
           | does retain folder/label structure (although it places them
           | under a parent "Mailstore" label, but that's easy to fix
           | after).
           | 
           | It will also read EML, MSG, PST, and MBOX formats, and
           | connect to Outlook and Thunderbird.
           | 
           | https://www.mailstore.com/en/products/mailstore-home/
        
           | concinds wrote:
           | I _really_ don 't recommend doing that with Apple Mail. I
           | did, many years ago, and ended up losing quite a few emails
           | due to Apple Mail bugs; I did it again a few years later and
           | ended up with weird corruption of email headers (wrong
           | "received" dates).
           | 
           | That was way before the Catalina Apple Mail data loss bugs.
           | https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/11/mail-data-loss-in-
           | macos-1...
           | 
           | Any sysadmin will tell you Apple Mail has had occasional
           | weird dogshit bugs for a decade.
           | 
           | Use Thunderbird, it's more likely to be robust and not
           | corrupt your emails, then feel free to switch back to Apple
           | Mail once you've moved everything.
        
         | lewisl9029 wrote:
         | An alternative to Microsoft 365 if you don't need anything
         | other than email hosting is their Exchange Online plan, which
         | is $4/month: https://www.microsoft.com/en-
         | us/microsoft-365/exchange/excha...
         | 
         | This is what I ended up switching to and it's been working fine
         | so far. I learned from this debacle that tight-coupling email
         | to any other service is a liability, so email-only is actually
         | a feature for me. No GoDaddy requirement either.
        
         | sgloutnikov wrote:
         | Here is a workaround for Microsoft 365 to not host your domain
         | with GoDaddy.
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/Office365/comments/ft15pk/use_perso...
        
           | RKearney wrote:
           | That "workaround" instructs you to use "v=DMARC1; p=none;"
           | for your dmarc record. I'm not sure if Microsoft actually
           | requires this, maybe it's because it doesn't support DKIM,
           | but setting your dmarc policy to none disables SPF checks and
           | is an extremely bad idea.
        
         | znpy wrote:
         | > One issue is that the domain needs to be with Go Daddy
         | 
         | Absolute dealbreaker.
         | 
         | There's no real reason why I can't just point my MX at them, do
         | the additional configuration[*] and have them host my mail.
         | 
         | Any explaination would be pure (and utter) BS.
         | 
         | [*] being setting spf, dkim records and stuff
        
           | d000001 wrote:
           | This is comparing o365 business and the personal offering.
           | 
           | The personal/home offering requires godaddy for the domain.
        
           | Pasorrijer wrote:
           | This is not accurate. I host through Site ground and have
           | absolutely no issues setting O365 as my mail provider.
        
           | f_ wrote:
           | I don't think this is true; I am running Microsoft 365 and
           | use AWS Route 53 and manually set up DNS records to work with
           | Microsoft 365 just fine.
        
         | jread wrote:
         | +1 for iCloud+. I moved 3 business/family domains and shutdown
         | my G Suite legacy account with no issues, and no extra cost
         | (already paying for iCloud). Can't beat $0.99/mo for 50GB
         | shared on up to 6 accounts.
        
           | skydhash wrote:
           | +1 for iCloud+. I got the 200 to give my cousin a way to
           | backup her pictures (around 30 GB, and it annoyed me she
           | wasn't backing them up) The custom domain was nice, and I
           | moved all of them to iCloud+.
        
             | infinityplus1 wrote:
             | You might want to read this reddit post about iCloud files
             | disappearing. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/sixyv
             | x/warning_files...
        
               | hughrr wrote:
               | Just a heads up here:
               | 
               | iCloud / OneDrive / Google Drive / DropBox are _not a
               | backup solution_ despite the vendors promoting it.
               | 
               | They are there only for convenience.
               | 
               | I have experienced file loss on OneDrive. I am now using
               | iCloud and have had no file loss whatsoever. I regularly
               | diff my offline backup with iCloud Drive contents
               | mirrored to my mac.
               | 
               | Also to note: About 50% of the stories you hear are users
               | being morons. My sister lost some files. She deleted them
               | after fat fingering something and blamed the cloud vendor
               | (Google). It happens.
               | 
               | Make sure you back up stuff separately and fully offline.
               | You're just as fucked if someone rips off your account.
        
           | r90t wrote:
           | Just migrated to iCloud with custom domain.
        
         | Pasorrijer wrote:
         | Not true. You can host through any provider and link it to
         | Office365.
        
           | mdasen wrote:
           | https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-
           | personalize...
           | 
           | Q: I already own a domain that's registered with a provider
           | other than GoDaddy. Can I set up a personalized email address
           | in Outlook.com?
           | 
           | A: At the moment, we only support connecting domains managed
           | by GoDaddy with Outlook.com.
           | 
           | Maybe that only applies to "Microsoft 365 Family or Microsoft
           | 365 Personal" and not their business offering? They have a
           | basic business offering for $5/mo, but it doesn't include the
           | Office apps (just the online versions).
           | 
           | EDIT: It looks like non-GoDaddy is for business/enterprise
           | plans: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
           | us/microsoft-365/admin/setup/a...
        
             | EwanToo wrote:
             | If you do some googling you can find forum posts on how to
             | do it manually, though I've not tried it myself
        
         | nodesocket wrote:
         | Is iCloud+ IMAP/Push?
        
           | gumby wrote:
           | Yes and has been since it was introduced.
           | 
           | Unlike gmail they appear to implement the full imap protocol
        
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