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Comment by tehabe | Hacker News Reader

The worst thing, the absolute worst thing is, you know all that but you have gotten so used to the way Google services work, that you simply have a hard time to switch.

E.g. thank to Gmail I rarely use an email application on my computer and use webmail. When I tried out Posteo it was extremely annoying that it logged me out every few minutes and I couldn't get my email. They said this couldn't be changed.

Google really did an excellent job of supply me with services which I want to use. Not just tools which are working well.

BTW, Google doesn't use all its services to sell or personalise ads. Which doesn't mean they don't use them to learn more about you which in turn is used to improve the services so that you them even more.

So as much as I wish I could restore my privacy by leaving Google, I think Google knows me too well that I won't for now.

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I haven’t found a replacement for Gmail yet. I’ve tried fastmail and ProtonMail but both have limitations.

From a search engine perspective I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo and I’m impressed with how good it has gotten.

With maps I’ve tried various solutions including mapquest, Microsoft, and Apple but nothing comes close to Google Maps.

Can you elaborate on the limitations you experienced with fastmail and protonmail?

I have used Fastmail for years with a custom domain without a single problem. Amazingly great communications from the company too. Highly recommended but not free. (Less than $2/month though - so almost free.)

I think half of my comments on hacker news are how much I love Fastmail, which I've used for email, calendar, and contacts for a decade now.

Aww, shucks :) Thanks.

Haha, I just came here to post how could they write that article without mentioning Fastmail.

I need to use my account more, though. So helplessly locked into my Google account for sign ups everywhere.

Perhaps I ought to read that "The Psychology of Dread Tasks" article that is also trending now.

Are you sure about that price? It looks like it’s $50 per year allowing for custom domain, $30 without.

I paid $117 for the 3-year plan with custom domain (and that price is discounted slightly from the normal 3-year price), which comes out to $3.25 per month. So, definitely not under 2 dollars, but easily under 4.

Ah I see, it doesn’t look like there’s a 3 year option anymore. Thanks for the info!

I just logged in to check and the option is not gone:

https://i.imgur.com/4gcnqzg.png

Thanks again!

I don’t yet have an account, so was going off the pricing listed on their website. Good to know there are more options.

I don't think this pricing is active per https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html

I signed up and I only see the same plans as on the pricing page

Does Fastmail have decent search that works on mobile? Gmail’s search is just too good. I’m currently using mailbox.org but it’s impossible to search for old emails that are not already downloaded to your phone. The only way is the use web interface and it’s annoying as hell.

They have a hybrid mobile app, it's not as smooth as a native one could be, but as far as I'm concerned search works perfectly.

Yes, the same search is available in either our app or from any web brower on mobile. We use the Xapian search engine.

It looks much the same either in brower or app. Here's what it looks like on my phone:

https://imgur.com/a/407HN81

I’m doing this in the coming days — setting my custom domain with Fastmail. I’m planning on making that my main email and trying my best to unsubscribe from things on my Gmail account and move accounts over from Gmail to Fastmail until I think for certain I could delete my Google account entirely with no harm.

Then again, I rarely have and like having subscriptions these days because of minimalism but I suppose this is a good trade off for my entire lifetime.

On a different note, does anyone know how GoDaddy is in terms of privacy? Is there a better domain registrar out there?

Edit: Just realized I’m using Google’s Project Fi on my iPhone SE, with Hangouts.

I generally don't trust GoDaddy, but I don't see how they could violate your privacy. From what I can tell, the worst they could do would be to log DNS queries. If you have a server with a static IP, you can always serve DNS yourself.

Out of curiosity, what domain registar do you use? With GoDaddy, I pay $14.99/yearly for .COM Domain Renewal and $9.99/yearly for Private Domain Registration Renewal. It seems a bit price-y but I'm completely unaware of other competitor's prices.

I use Namecheap, but it's not the cheapest. A couple months ago on a thread here in HN a bunch of people were recommending Porkbun, which seems quite cheap (~$9/year with free private domain), but I've never used them.

I too feel like I am ingested, rather than served. You may want to take things more in your own hands, requires more upkeep: https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox

I'm definitely on the hunt for a Gmail replacement, considering I have been hearing things such as a snapchat-esque disappearing emails, unprintable emails, and other similar stupid ideas. I decide what to do with emails and other data sent to me thank you.

Using another service won't help you; when someone uses those features, Gmail only sends an email with a link to see the actual message: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/rgmail1.pn...

> From a search engine perspective I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo and I’m impressed with how good it has gotten.

I switched to DDG over a year ago and it works great for things that are simple lookups to Wikipedia, IMDB etc. When I have an arcane Windows bug, I end up using "G!". Also DDG isn't that great for latest News but the Image search is pretty good.

I set DDG as the default search on my non-techie wife's new PC earlier this year and she has not once complained about the search qualify.

I use it for python related development queries and it satisfies 95% of them these days. It was unusable two years ago. Things have changed.

I second those asking what limitations you ran into (specifically with FastMail, since I have more chance of being able to fix those than the limitations with Protonmail - though I'd love to know both!)

If it's "costs money", we're not planning to change that! We (FastMail) are proudly a paid-only service.

The biggest thing I've been missing since I started using FastMail is labels. My workflow in GMail used labels pretty heavily, and I've been able to get pretty close using saved searches and folders, but it's not quite the same.

Right, hopefully when JMAP arrives (soon!) you'll be able to use that nicely. It will give label-style handling by allowing the same message to exist in multiple folders.

Kinda hijacking this. When using FastMail with a custom domain can I setup a catch all address and then have each different address somehow tagged? It would be nice to be able to have proper unique email addresses for each service so I know where spam ends up coming from.

You can create an * alias in FastMail which will act as catch-all address. The received email will retain the original To: field so you can use rules to match them.

Fastmail limitations are:

When I signed up in 2016 (I’m still a customer btw) it was a big pain to get my custom domain added after paying for an account. I had to contact support for assistance. I somehow have to have two accounts for my plan but only one has a mailbox. Crazy bad experience here.

The amount of space we get for mail is low for the fee. I pay around $12/year in additional fees with Google for another 70GB of space outside of the 30GB they give for the base plan. Fastmail was pricier last I checked.

There is zero quality collaboration option for me. Even if you added one the fact that anyone who wants to collaborate would have to have a paid account with me creates a barrier for me to even try and use it for anything but just email.

The spam filter is about 30% as accurate as Gmail. I try and train it but don’t have time to always be doing that.

The mobile app on ios doesn’t remember me. It doesn’t even have an option to remember me. What a pain, I hardly even bother to use it because of that.

That all said. I like some things about fastmail:

The web interface is fast.

The admin features are robust and easy for adding aliases and new custom domains.

The fact you are pushing to make the world a better place for email is why I keep paying for the service.

What you are doing is hard. Your competitors are massive and well established. I hope you continue to make progress.

>When I tried out Posteo it was extremely annoying that it logged me out every few minutes

I haven't encountered this with my personal email server nor heard of it from anyone else. I think this might just be an issue with Posteo.

It's easier if you don't try to move all at once. Spend some time looking at different email options and move that. Do calendar later. Get rid of Google Apps on your Android later still. Gradual change is much easier.

Posteo is very aggressive on privacy, reducing exposure, and keeping information safer. So a shorter webmail session timeout may be related to this. Depending on the use case, if this were the only issue with Posteo, the GP could’ve used Firefox with one of the many tab reload or tab refresh extensions to keep the logged in session alive.

Posteo doesn't allow custom domains (a no go) and lies about why they don't.

What's the real reason they don't allow custom domains in your opinion? Why do you say they are lying?

Their support replied with a mumbo-jumbo of techno-babble why it's not possible.

Of course it's possible.

The reason is clear: lock-in.

People are reluctant to change providers if they lose their mail address.

The FAQ (https://posteo.de/en/site/faq) says the do it because a domain has personay identifying information in WHOIS and they would need to store it.

I think for .de domains, you are required to have your personal address in WHOIS if you are not a company.

That's a new claim, and it's also obvious bullshit.

First, I may be okay with it. And why would Posteo store WHOIS data? Unless they want to be a domain reseller, which is not what I asked them about.

Second, there are other TLDs.

I still insist that they do it because of lock-in and that they lie about it.

They wouldn't store whois data of course, but the domain needs to be stored at it can then be used to look it up.

I think mailbox.org supports custom domains and is similar in other respects.

That's a stupid excuse.

They should stop storing the mails themselves, they are full of private information. /s

AFAIK the GDPR explicitly mandates registrar to hide personal information.

Yes. Since May 25, the whois for .de is limited to technical information like DNS server or DNS key.

> use webmail ... Posteo logged me out every few minutes

Lets me assume, that you're always logged in. Google thanks you for that, much easier to link this browser's history and searches to your account.

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