I have been using gmail/google for a long time now (decade or more). But the systems I have come to rely on have been getting enshitified. With their new AI advertisements popping up like crazy…Im just done.
Anyone have a good alternative to gmail? Im looking for something that will not break the bank.
For a bit there, I was running my own email server, but spam and issues with my internet provider (other email servers kept thinking my domain was spamming others) made it hard to keep up. I just dont have the patience anymore for that.
I was thinking of trying out proton or namecheaps offerings and seeing if I like them.
I am used to working with thunderbird but can use online portals if needed. If they have ac alendar that might be a bonus. Personally, I want minimal or no AI. And I want the company to be trusted and in business for at least 5 years.
Any good recommendations?
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Proton
I use MXRoute which is inexpensive and run by someone who has the strong opinions of a wise grey beard. Also Black Friday/holiday sales can make the cost even more reasonable. Doesn’t have the suite of accessory products like some other options but it’s excellent for what it is.
i like tuta personally; the team is great, they’re responsive, and they’re smaller than proton which is a positive.
plus you can have as many custom domains as you want as they dont count toward your inboxes.
This post made me realize I should start planning my migration from gmail to other one. Preferably where I can use my own domain so I’ll never be tied down to a service provider ever again.
Having your own domain is key to owning your digital identity. I migrated from google to proton seamlessly and I can migrate away if (or when) Proton turns to shit. 80% of mailboxes are owned by ether Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. We know they can’t be trusted with that much power.
I’m using mailbox.org with a custom domain. German company, all of their email services seem pretty industry standard, so the biggest advantage for me is that it works quite well with 3rd party mail & calendar clients. Forgot when I switched but so far I have no complaints
Proton is focused on privacy and security. You can get a free email and you can chose to pay for a subscription. The free version is great! I used it for 2 years before I went for a paid subscription including a keypass, 2FA, drive, wallet, calendar, VPN and some other things.
Self hosted mail isn’t marked spam because it’s new, it’s because there’s a foundation of security you need because of all the bad actors over the years
You need a good understanding of servers, dns and mail to do this yourself but it is possible.
This is a good guide other than the AWS and cloud service pieces
Ive actually ran corporate email servers for around 7 years at a couple of previous jobs. Ill be honest, I just dont want to do it. Its too much like work and for literal cents on the dollar I can have some entity deal with it.
Its the one thing I dont want to self host. Hell I even have my own lemmy/piefed I keep around for testing purposes. But email admin-ing over the years sucks
As someone who also supported exchange and corporate mail servers
For personal use it’s doable At scale is really hard
Please, please, please, get a personal domain for your email.
Hosting doesn’t matter, to some degree. You can keep your email for life and move it between services.
It costs like $15 a year with namecheap. Hosting might be as much as a single nice dinner out for a year.
Been using Fastmail for a couple years now, previously bouced between Proton and Tuta.
I cannot fault Fastmail, yes, like the name suggests, it is fast (sending is almost instant and new email comes through quickly too), but their features for inbox sorting, rules, and custom domains is incredble.
I have my own domain name that I wildcard in Fastmail, which means I can enter whateverthefuckIwant@domain.com and it’ll be delivered.
Then I have several rules set-up to autotag depending on the address the email is going to.
Their interface is slick, easy to use, not too cramped and not too spacious, lovely contrast, just pleasant to be in.
All of that, along with a calendar with easy CalDAV support, notes in Markdown, and generous cloud storage which I mainly use for file transfer between my devices make the £5.40 I spend on it monthly an absolute steal.
Seconded. I came from Proton after a number of years. I got frustrated that because of their encryption, I couldn’t use their service outside of their ecosystem. With Fastmail, it just works and comes with easy access to card/caldav, SMTP, etc.
They just added an api for interfacing with LLMs, which I support because it gives everyone the choice on what to do with their own data. Want to pipe your emails and calendar through a LLM, go for it! Think AI has no place in your inbox, that’s the default. Instead of forcing a shitty AI into their product that no one wants, they enable those that do the option while letting everyone else not have to deal with it. I respect that.
The price is right, it’s fast and has been around forever. It is hosted in Australia, which while better than the US, is still a member of Five Eyes, so do with that what you will.
As a resident of the UK, the international Eyes coallitions are unfortunately unavoidable for me, so that is mostly moot.
But I agree with everything else, especially the AI API, I would consider allowing a local open-source and open-weight SLM access to my inbox for summarisations / weekly digests, among various other ideas.
+1 for Fastmail. I have the cheapest plan and I don’t use most of the add-ons. I use Thunderbird on desktop, I use Fastmail’s Android app on mobile. Virtually perfect service for years, very cheap, is not Gmail. That’s about all I ever wanted.
Tuta has been pretty good to me. They have a calendar as well and possibly a cloud drive coming soon. Bonus was their apps were available on F-Droid and they’re powered by renewables.
I’ve been very happy with Tuta! I moved to them from Proton after Proton’s CEO said nice things about fascists, that and I didn’t like how unfocused they became (too many services, too expensive given I didn’t want those other services, even on the almost mail only plan).
The Linux desktop client has been fine, as has the Android client. Not PERFECT but honestly a lot better than Thunderbird and running Proton’s bridge
I have NOT been happy with Tuta. They have deleted my account instead of asking me to renew my subscription…
Huh? Your account doesn’t get deleted when the subscription expires, it moves to the free plan.
It happened to me tho.
Posteo is ridiculously cheap, secure (e2e encryption and the whole works) and just all-around great. Been using it for years without a single issue.
I may actually make an account with them ive had a microsoft account forever
I am happy with Proton
I use Runbox. It’s non-nonsense, cheap and privacy-focused. My family and I have been using it for many years.
Yes, it just works and is inexpensive too. Web UI is fast af.
Is all email still delayed by 30 seconds or more?
Support first denied it’s a problem, saying email was never meant to be realtime (doesn’t change I’m receiving OTPs on it and sitting there waiting for their server to get off its ass while it’s expiring) and to come back if it’s ever more than 5 minutes delayed. So I do some shell scripting to find those emails and supply a list of emails that were delayed more than 5 minutes (visible by the Received headers that the problem is between Runbox internal servers). Then they ghosted me. And ignored an inquiry about the ticket status iirc about a year later. Another year later, we moved away iirc for some calendaring reason, so I don’t know what things are like since about 2022. I self-host personal email and it often pops the “you’ve got mail” before the sign-up page finished loading. Feels like it’s coming from the future so fast compared to the experience I had at work 😅
I loved Runbox in every way except for this email delay. If this got fixed, I’d recommend it to people again as the #1 thing to use since this question comes up with some regularity on various platforms but this really bugged me and sometimes seriously got in the way
Edit: CC @ExtremeDullard@piefed.social — do @ mentions work when edited in?
You know what, I thought that was just me. I think so, feels like some come through faster than others but I attributed that to the sender.
I use Proton, but I use their other services as well (drive, vpn) so it’s worth it for me.
