Hacker News Reader

Comment by peatmoss | Hacker News Reader

Most important thing is to buy a domain so you can port your email address from provider to provider. I’ve had the same email address and several hosts over the years.

I’m currently on Fastmail and find the service good.

View on HN

Fastmail has worked well for me with custom domains. It's nice being able to create custom aliases for when an address is publicly visible e.g. GitHub so I know through what funnel emails are coming from.

Like others have said, the Android app is not worth installing unless you're okay with limited and, in some cases, poor functionality.

I suppose you can set it up with the Gmail or Outlook Android apps? I've never tried, as this defeats the purpose of not having those companies as your email provider :)

Still searching for a good Android mail app...

You can funnel mail with Gmail, too using extensions. Although some online forms incorrectly reject this. Looks like this: notmyaddress+github@gmail.com

Those can be stripped out, and the email sold or whatever.

This is called subadressing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Subaddressing

This is too well known to be useful anymore.

> Still searching for a good Android mail app...

K-9 Mail has served me very well over the years!

https://k9mail.github.io/about.html

Edit: Highlights for me:

- IMAP Idle support: e-mails appear instantly, configurable on a by-folder basis.

- Mature and stable: it's been around forever, updates are infrequent, it just works.

- Free software: apache license

- No fanciness: it is very traditional-email oriented. The only "fancy" feature is a unified inbox (showing mails from all your folders), and it can be turned off.

If your e-mail is "complicated" you'll have to spend a bit of time setting everything up. For instance, my server classifies e-mail as it arrives, and I setup different synchronization schedules and notification preferences for different folders. Best time investment of my life.

I use K-9 Mail too, and while I think it's great (fast and customizable) I think it could use some gestures or more in general a UI revamp to reflect the fact we are not using Ice Cream Sandwich anymore :)

Actually K-9 already has a nice UI in "master" branch but for some unknown reasons it's not released yet :(

Thanks for the heads up, apparently they are (were) working on it: https://github.com/k9mail/k-9-design

BlueMail is a pretty decent Android email client. :)

> Still searching for a good Android mail app...

Give AquaMail a try.

I find it efficient, fast and featureful. I've never noticed any bugs.

The user interface is perhaps not fancy, but IMO not ugly either, and certainly functional.

I've been using it for years, and they keep updating it diligently.

I use AquaMail as well, it's one of the few apps I pay for. I paid so I could attach more inboxes though the limit is quite relaxed. The only fancy feature they've added really is a unified mailbox, other than that it's the only android mail client I've used for the past 4-5 years now. I'm a big fan!

Co signed on Aquamail - the original author was very receptive to feature requests and fixing bugs (It was nice when he eventually added scheduled outgoing emails). The software has since been acquired but developement appears to be continuing.

Other clients that caught my eye also were Bluemail or Nine, depending on the need.

I've been using Aquamail on my tablet for years, it's a nice mail app and they continue to support is. I use it on my tablet for the swipe feature especially.

On my smartphone I'm using MailDroid Pro. Like Aquamail, I'm using it for several years now, steady updates and good support. The reason I use MailDroid on my smartphone is the anti-spam plug-in (they charge extra for that though).

What do you miss in the Android app?

I thought the same for a while, until I noticed tapping the body of an email changed the top bar options...

+1 nice having your own domain so you can port to different providers.

Used fastmail for a few years and it is fine although their android app isn't great and hangs a fair bit needing to be restarted.

I agree fastmail's service is good but the Android app is very poor in comparison.

I eventually paid for the aquamail app which is a significant improvement

I think fastmail app on browser still the best native browser experience.

Another vote for fastmail. They even do a pretty decent job being a DNS host as well. Simple setup to add subdomains if you're already using them as your primary/sec NS.

Their static file hosting is great too. Automatic Let’s Encrypt support!

This is exactly what I did a few years back. And exactly for the same reason — so I can easily migrate to different provider with low cost of swiching. So far I’ve used gmail as provider but I’m considering switching now.

Although I like the control and portability of having my own domain, as a less technologically-proficient user on a shoestring budget, I've found it more challenging to set up and configure on shared hosting services. There's a need to get your head around things like DNS records, reverse DNS, DKIM, SPF, SpamAssassin, cPanel etc. to stand a reasonable chance of successful delivery and low-maintenance inboxes. I've been through a few hosts and fortunately seem to have settled with a reliable provider now (Squidix), but it's not always been so easy.

Fastmail allows you to set them as the DNS provider and they take care of all DNS records for you. Just buy a domain, set their nameservers, and you're good to go.

+1 for Fastmail with my own domain, I've used it for 4 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com