1.) Run your own SMTP infrastructure. Setup SPF/DKIM/DMARC. Realize your outbound emails still don't always reach their destination. Also you have to fight inbound SPAM.
2.) Use gmail or Google Apps. Things just work. Cede control to Google.
And if someone wants to DDoS you, you're a lot more vulnerable than a major provider like Fastmail.
Personally, I use a hybrid solution: I use Gandi's SMTP servers for outbound and inbound mail, but I run my own IMAP server for unlimited storage under my control.
They do something similar with their webmail service, but the data is encrypted so it can't be read by a third party.
https://www.fastmail.com/about/reportabuse.html (last paragraph)
EDIT: Fastmail is fairly priced (for me) and i like the features they offer but i wish they wouldn't do this (or rather, i wish they would do the same for the SMTP service as they do for the webmail service)
Personal users aren't of interest to DOS ransomers since a call to the ISP will drop their traffic at the border. Without SLAs costing me money, as would be the case with a big provider, I coulf outlast the DOS. Just inconvenient and annoying.
I'll stick with Fastmail is very reliable and independent. They can't really be blamed for a DOS attack.
That doesn't really hold when their competitors have teams of engineers working on DDoS mitigations and successfully handle most of these attacks. Falling to a DoS is a technical failure just like other causes of outages.
Google is not without its problems. Just now on HN, in fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12008365
Until they don't, and then good luck with getting ahold of someone who can actually do anything to fix your problem(s).
In my experience, Google support is _excellent_ for their paid products.
So here's what I know about Fastmail that I want to know about any provider I host with:
- I know Fastmail will refuse any requests from the US govt to access data because they're Australian and legally the request has to come from an Australian court
- I know Fastmail's servers use encrypted storage
- I know the specs of Fastmail's servers (they post them on their Help/FAQ)
- I know Fastmail's actually trying to make email better, obvious by their invention of the JMAP protocol
- I trust Fastmail to be able to recover from any serious issues because they actually have on staff developers of Cyrus, the open source IMAP software they use. This means their admins have actual recourse when Bad Things^TM happen, vs the usual when an admin runs out of options, eg, "let's just post on mailing lists and hope we can find an answer"
- I know the fine details of how their spam filtering works, because it's publicly documented. (and it's quite well integrated with some tricks I couldn't employ at my last ISP job as I didn't have developers to assist)
- I know their infrastructure is primarily hosted in NYI with the backup in Iceland.
- I know they are serious about security, as they've been proponents of full SSL/TLS vs STARTTLS which could be MITM and downgraded (yes, many MTAs will let you require STARTTLS, but there are always possibilities of client bugs that could be exploited when you let an attacker intercept plaintext and inject data before the upgrade to a validated TLS session)
- I know how their backups work, because it's documented and I also have the ability to undelete emails which almost no provider gives the end user.
- I know their support is responsive and competent, as they've actually fixed Webmail bugs and put them into production for me within 48 hours
- Fastmail does PUSH email on iOS, while GMail, Rackspace, and most other providers don't offer this because it requires custom integration with Apple's Push Notifications service.
tl;dr yeah, the average provider might promise the moon but can they actually deliver when the shit hits the fan? will they actually strive to please their users and make the internet a better place? probably not.
Amsterdam was also hit by last night's ddos. They were hitting mx, and our secondary mx is in Amsterdam.
Also, you can buy your own domain, and have Google merely act as the SMTP relay and temporary storage. They can also forward your mail to another server for you.
It gets more difficult if you are providing a service that has to have uptime guarantees or are providing mail to many users but if you take the time to learn and educate yourself on current standards, hosting your own mail for fun and for profit is a doable thing that more developers and admins should do.
We are at a time when we actually have relatively easy to use software to managing mail servers, so us it.
For what it is worth, I have not had problems with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or domains that use their services whether it comes to sending or receiving. Sometimes a server is stuck in an SPAM prevention queue or I might have to whitelist a particularly silly server, but that doesn't happen very often.