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Comment by bostonvaulter2 | Hacker News Reader

What are some good alternative email accounts to use? I should really start decreasing my dependence on Google.

Anything, so long as your e-mail address is on a domain name you own and you back up your inbox via IMAP. If both of those are in place, you're not really dependent on your mail provider at all, because you can switch just by changing a DNS record. If you lose the use of an e-mail address on someone else's domain, then you've got a serious problem.

This works until a registrar revokes your domain name.

It's turtles all the way down at this point. The reality is that you can't get content on the internet without the approval of at least a few entities.

If/Until the culture changes the best practical advice is to make sure that those few entities are distanced from your message that they won't be pressured to take it down.

Well, nobody can ban a hidden website yet (.onion or .i2p).

However barrier of entry there is still a bit high and they're still vulnerable to attacks, hosts don't want anything to do with them either.

Wait until google bans your domain. I’ve recently found out how much of the internet’s mail is hosted on gmail because of one very problematic user.

Exactly. IMAP is IMAP is IMAP, anything goes. Only if you crave for great web UIs then things narrow down to Fastmail/Gmail. Although, Gmail has been gone to crap, UI-wise for me. The process of writing plain-text emails has turned so cumbersome and the UI occasionally stops retrieving new mail to show. Too bad I'm still in love with Gmail labels: they act as TODO entries for me. IMAP folders won't replicate this behavior because the message can't be foldered _and_ remain in Inbox but I guess I can manage.

We have a Finnish, for-Finns-only nonprofit community that hosts email, ssh, www, you name it that I subscribed to for €40/y and I'm planning to move all of my gmail business over there. It's easy because I've had my domain for years now and it has been redirecting mail to my gmail.

And I already moved my github pages over. (Github is also having fits for wrongthinkers.)

Fastmail.fm

Not free; but you definitely get what you pay for.

Happy to second FastMail. Been there almost a year, and it's amazing how good their product is. Note that they just revised their TOS to get rid of the dreaded "can terminate your account at any time for any reason" common to most services, in exchange for a clear set of conditions. Aka, the CEO waking up one day and deciding to get rid of you isn't valid anymore, as it would be for most companies.

Another happy Fastmail customer here. Push email on iOS/Mac, CalDAV and CardDAV to access calendar and contacts from anything, and I even host my little crappy website on their servers. I've never had deliverability problems and their spam filtering is (so far) sufficient.

I am still happy after 15 years of paying for Fastmail.

Kolab - https://kolabnow.com/ (just go for the webmail-only lite version)

Posteo - https://posteo.de/en

Both paid but they are very cheap and don't advertise to you.

Kolab is run by the founder of the European Free Software Foundation, with all that connotates.

Posteo is a German provider, aiming to be totally green and offering at-rest and in-transit PGP encryption and a host of other security and privacy features.

You should pay for an email account. Fastmail is a good service.

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