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Comment by DCKing | Hacker News Reader

Come on Mozilla, hurry up! I want to give you money for goods and services (I also donate monthly [1]), but I'm not that interested in a VPN (I can and do also pay Mullvad).

Give me that real internet stuff - email, calendar, file sync, chat(?) - give me Firefox Premium. Bundle in the Lockwise password manager. I'd pay good money to see a company fill the void of paid, privacy first essential internet services and I think Mozilla is one of the foremost existing players to pull it off. They've started talking about Firefox Premium a while ago now [2] and it's obviously not easy to build all of this in a lean way, but I'll happily pitch in. If only to help make Firefox development less dependant on Google or Yahoo.

[1]: https://donate.mozilla.org/

[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/10/18660344/firefox-subscrip...

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Only Mozilla can make me pay for Google services like Email/Calendar etc. I think I subconsciously trust the brand more than most internet companies out there.

Indeed. I feel about Mozilla the way I felt about Google a decade or two ago.

And the Basecamp guys with Hey :-)

How about FastMail? They have a stellar email service. They also offer contacts and calendars, though I don't personally use those (I use iCloud for that).

Yep, migrated from Gmail and very happily so :)

I want to migrate from Gmail but I have my Gmail address tied up to so many things. How do you make the move ?

a bit like a physical address - forward the mail on for x months and then cut off completely

That's what I did and it worked well for me for the most part. I ended up keeping Gmail around for the occasional service that doesn't work well with Fastmail. Off the top of my head I've had issues with:

- Frontier

- Green Man Gaming

- Paperspace

- Rainway

- SquareTrade

I went through all accounts in my password manager and changed it. Not so bad. It doesn't need to be done quickly.

I would make this Step #1 to the 5 or 6-step processes outlined above. Gets most of the important migration out of the way with a little work the first day.

Get your own domain, use it for all your email, and in five or so years gmail will be nothing but spam, basically.

which ironically, is the 5yrs it take for gmail/yahoo to not threat your domain outgoing email as spam.

I've never had a problem with gmail recipients since setting up DKIM, SPF, etc. There is an incompetent rinkydink shop running IT for the Irish government ( Topsec - https://www.topsec.com/ )that blocks ANY email from namecheap DNS which is really annoying, though.

FastMail can pull from gmail. My account pulls from all emails I use minus work and can send on those addresses so. It also supports having a different signature depending on which address I'm sending from.

See https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/migratetofastmail.html

No connection to them, just a happy customer!

I set up my own domain, and forwarded emails from it to my Gmail account. Over a year and a half, every time I logged into something, I updated the email address to my own.

Eventually, when I jumped to FastMail, I repointed my domain name to it, and most of my new emails started coming over automatically, since the email address is now something I control. I monitored Gmail for a while regularly to catch straggler services. (I chose not to forward to avoid complacency with stuff going to Gmail before reaching my FastMail account.)

Here are the steps I've been following:

1) Sign up for Fastmail.

2) Sync all mail from GMail account to Fastmail (via the Fastmail web UI; you grant FM access to your GMail data through OAuth - once sync is complete you can revoke this access).

3) Set up an auto-forward rule in GMail for all incoming mail to go to your Fastmail address.

4) Set up a rule in Fastmail to put all incoming mail sent to your GMail address into a separate folder (or labeled with a special label if you're signed up for Fastmail's label beta). Any time you get email in that folder, that's a task for you to either unsubscribe or update the corresponding account to your new email address.

I'm currently in month #10 of migration. Most commonly used accounts were updated during the first couple of weeks. But be careful that the tail of services that are still configured to use your old email address tends to be long, and in my experience those are some of the more important emails that you don't want to miss. The ones that are only sent once every couple years.

Also, it really helps if you've been using GMail with a personal domain name (e.g. through Google Apps). In this case migrating is a matter of pointing the MX DNS records to Fastmail's servers. Bonus points: Fastmail allows wildcard recipients, so if you prefer to have unique addresses for each service you sign up for, you don't even need to set up a separate xyz@example.com alias. Just register with <whatever>@example.com and you'll get all email delivered to that address in your inbox, and you'll be able to specify it as the sender's address if you decide to reply to some of those mails. Having a separate email address for each web service also makes looking up who leaked what on haveibeenpwned.com more fun.

And most importantly:

0) Get your own domain and set up MX record to fastmail servers

This way if you ever migrate again, you will not need to do it all over again. One word of advice - keep your registrar login and emails associated with the domains _not_ on your domain, otherwise it is going to present a problem should you ever need to fix anything related to domains.

Then you are pushing the problem to someone else to manage the domains right? How do you set this up?

Not sure I understand the question.

I have to manage a domain and have a basic understanding of how DNS works, that is unavoidable.

DNS is a bit complicated to describe in short reply but on a very high level: say I register a domain example.com. Registrars usually give you an interface to manage DNS where you can set A records (association with IP), you basically put there 2-5 IP addresses of the DNS servers serving your domain. You can also setup MX records that are used to resolve mail servers for your domain. Setting up fastmail is simple: you tell them that you want them to serve mail for example.com and setup couple of MX records pointing to the Fastmail servers (they give you the full host names).

Sorry I wasn’t clear - basically my concern was that you still have a dependency on a third party email address.

OK, I think the other reply missed your question (if I am reading this correctly).

Basically, if you register your domain through namecheap, then after setting up email at *@ximeng.net, don't update your email address to be namecheap@ximeng.net when changing the rest of your accounts. Reason being, if for some reason there is a problem with the domain, you don't want your only means of fixing that problem to potentially be invalid.

Therefore it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep the account associated with your registrar still on the original Gmail address (or if you are really paranoid, create a new email address through someone like protonmail just for your registrar account).

Right, that is what I meant - you’re then pushing the risk to the management of that secondary protonmail or gmail account. So you basically always rely on a third party to manage the registrar account.

Oh I see. I agree that it is a risk, so - in the vein of another advice in this thread - if you have a co cern about third party email provider, update your domain records to another provider.

And keep addresses, phone numbers, alternative emails, payment details up to date with your domain registrar.

Recently my provider decided to randomly cancel my domain, getting it back from transfer with everything out of date was painful.

That is a great advice. One of the registrars has been sending verification messages for one of my oldest domains to the mail account that I do not use anymore and one day they stopped serving DNS for it. I had an access to the old mail account still but if I had not, that would have been an arduous process indeed!

I did this recently. It's pretty straightforward.

First, do a one-time import from Gmail. Fastmail has an import tool that does this over OAuth. Took me ~45 minutes to import ~50,000 emails.

Next, setup IMAP and SMTP on Fastmail for your Gmail account. This way, you can continue to receive and reply to emails sent to Gmail, using Fastmail as the client. When replying to an email, Fastmail defaults to the right sender (identity) based on whom the email is sent to (abc@fastmail.com or abc@gmail.com).

An alternative is to setup email forwarding in Gmail, so you get a copy of emails sent to your old address.

If you don't have a custom domain, I highly recommend getting one and use that going forward. There might come a day when you want to migrate off Fastmail. With a custom domain, you just need to update the MX records.

Late but essentially what the others said. Additionally I would point out that I migrated my accounts whenever I used them and noticed I logged in - so really piecewise.

On top, I had some burts of motivation to step through my password manager vault occasionally and update accounts I don't log in to too much.

Very happy Fastmail user. Not so happy that so many different services don't interoperate with it. Things like Calendly or many standalone Calendar apps.

Seems like it is Apple, Google, Outlook or nothing.

Maybe I'm missing something but doesn't Fastmail use open standards? For example I access my Fastmail calendar on my phone and desktop using caldav.

Isn't it down to the app to support those standards?

Fastmail does support the CalDAV standard, but calendly does not: https://help.calendly.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/245299227...

That’s entirely calendly’s fault.

I _completely_ agree with you - but it leaves me in the same spot either way as I've yet to find a Calendly competitor that will work with CalDAV.

An open spec is great, but it has to be adopted to be used.

Perhaps you could raise a feature request with Calendly?

I'm also a very happy fastmail user. I don't use the calendar or contacts feature either. But I use the webapp a lot on mobile and it's quite good. I don't even need to download the native app for my phone.

I’ve used Fastmail for years now on a work account. It’s best feature is that it’s not Google.

First, no phone support. Hardly acceptable when even Google has this.

Second, no collaboration suite like Drive/Docs.

Third, no addons I’m accustomed to having in my daily driver email suite. Things I miss include schedule to send later, default reply all, and no priority inbox.

Im stuck using Google for email and maps. I hate google and want to get off them entirely but Gsuite with 1Tb of disk space for my single user personal domain is so powerful and so cheap it’s impossible for me to switch without giving up too much.

Google maps I think has some real competition at least. I’m hopeful Apple Maps gets continued improvements so it can get the job done well enough I can drop Google maps this year.

I feel a bit different: Email is a standard. You are talking about an app. Send later is the job of the application,not the standard. Same with reply all. Intelligent priority inbox is _hard_ but i. Principle the same.

When you use gmail you conflate the standard with the app.

I largely agree with this, except that "Send Later" really does want some form of server support so it will happen even if you quit the app (especially on mobile). That said, there are third-party apps that do this, such as Spark (though they require storing your credentials on their servers).

Priority inbox is also something that can be done client-side. FWIW FastMail does actually have internal flags for "$ismailinglist" and "$isnotification" that you can access via advanced search, but they don't have any intelligent customization of these flags, no way to tell FastMail "hey this email was categorized wrong". You can write a Sieve script that adds/removes the flags yourself but that only works for stuff you can detect in a sieve script, i.e. no ML. Still, it's better than nothing when using the web app.

The Google way, aka masquerading flags as special folders seems to work good for non-aware clients.

IMAP actually has client-defined flags, but support on the clients is sketchy and not uniform

With Fastmail you're essentially buying the app as much as the service.

If you want reliable email service without the nice app, there are much cheaper alternatives.

Such as?

https://purelymail.com/ I haven't try it yet, but it is only 10$ per year

$10/y seems ridiculously cheap. Too cheap. I'd be worried they may go out of business.

I'm a very happy migadu.com user. Set fee for unlimited storage and unlimited addresses. Very simple but effective admin UI too.

Mailbox.org

I’m a happy user and never touch the web app. It works, but a dedicated mail client is a superior experience.

The point of these discussions is that the standard (IMAP specifically) is inadequate to a lot of modern use.

One good thing that Fastmail is doing is promoting a REST-like IMAP alternative ( https://jmap.io/ ) that makes it easier[1] to go back to the distinction application/protocol.

[1] by this I mean that implementing an app like gmail over IMAP would be a terrible idea, while JMAP would be at least a bit better (it also adds browser support as it allows HTTP as transport layer)

What, exactly, do you feel is deficient about IMAP vs. JMAP, other than the latter being a protocol that doesn't require a bespoke parser? The only thing even remotely semi-annoying about IMAP that I can think of is the way message identifiers are per-connection (but in some very important way that actually makes sense).

I’ve never been able to search my entire mail archive quickly over IMAP, using Gmail or Fastmail. Mobile IMAP clients seem especially slow and inconsistent.

IMAP exposes a pretty comprehensive server-side query system. If your email is being synced locally then you aren't dealing with an IMAP limitation, as it isn't even using IMAP. If it is searching remotely, wither the email isn't being indexed for those searches or the client is doing some ridiculously poor search strategy. Like, if you actually look at the mechanism IMPA exposes for this, it is pretty powerful. (The only real limitation is that the original SEARCH mechanism is per-"mailbox", but this was fixed a long time ago with the SEARCHM extension. But arguably the correct way to map Gmail to IMAP is to put all your email in one "mailbox" and use IMAP "flags" as labels anyway.)

So I’m told, and yet searching my mail from the iOS mail app over IMAP is slow and unreliable, so I use the Fastmail app, even though it is slower to launch. Have you found a mobile IMAP client that works? notmuch [1] looks like it would solve my problems on the desktop, but searching from mobile devices is important to me.

[1] https://notmuchmail.org

Server-side search on K9 works fine, but you have to select that you want it.

Being a stateless protocol is the big one, for mobile. There’s more: https://fastmail.blog/2014/12/23/jmap-a-better-way-to-email/

That "stateless" paragraph in that article is explicitly referring to the per-connection message identifiers I was referring to; but that state burden is mostly carried by the server (which is put in the awkward position of dealing with separate clients with individual state sharing a mailbox) not the client (which by definition has a unique state anyway), which the article even admits.

I will argue that if you use the right data structures--not that anyone does--it really isn't that hard to make that work on the server, and the benefits to the client are actually enormous... particularly on mobile!

The way IMAP handles message identifiers allows for the client to pretend to manage a ridiculously large list of messages without storing any state locally that isn't visible on the screen (like it is _so good at this_ as Mark Crispin seriously intended the original IMAP protocol to be used by thin clients for mail: synchronizing mail over IMAP was never the intended usage model), as the entire problem of managing that consistent view has been pushed to the server (where it is solvable, just no one cares enough to even do a basic implementation correct much less a good one as everyone misunderstands and detests IMAP).

FWIW, the argument for how JMAP supports update batching over push notification channels is in fact interesting for mobile clients :(. That is so totally the fault of the mobile networks and OS people, though :(. The correct solution for that is to provide a flow control layer for wireless IP, at which point every app could be doing its own end-to-end encrypted push notification stuff without having to go through Apple/Google, but the incentive structure to centralize notifications through a middleman was just too great :/.

> push notification... That is so totally the fault of the mobile networks and OS people

The issue for mobile is that unrestricted push notifications are a serious battery drain. I think that JMAP makes the correct choice here, a push notification is just an external action/url, how the notification is delivered to the human is left out of the protocol. I would say that it allows for both openness and centralization without a bias for one or the other.

Yes, I both understood that, acknowledged it, and then not only noted that a better solution was available but actually sketched how that better solution would work ;P. Given the poor incentives on the platform players here, I will thereby repeat the part where I understand and acknowledge the issue, but am going to then once again note how sad I am that we are in a world that didn't just solve this issue in an egalitarian way that doesn't require middle-man (using a flow control layer for wireless IP, rather than simulating that using an oligopoly of middle boxes).

oh, the reason for my answer is that I implicitly assumed that something like `a flow control layer for wireless IP` capable of solving the problem could not exist. Or better I cannot even imagine how it could work.

My understanding is that a important property is that the device does not receive network packets that are not "replies". So that it has control on when it is fine to power down the network (in a very gross simplification)

So maybe something like what you are describing would be a protocol where the client can say "pin me back with this for this category of events but no sooner than X minutes", but at a network level, like a tagged TCP sleep function.

I never thought of this possibility. In the form I have imagined it it is technically inferior, but it would be an interesting approach to decentralization and surely could be improved.

The only thing I know about IMAP are from JMAP, so I cannot say what is lacking in IMAP per se.

As far as I know a couple things that are pain points for me when using thunderbird/other IMAP clients (weird search limitations, strict folder hierarchy organization) are due to how IMAP was designed, but these are mostly minor issues that I imagine would not require a new protocol.

What I hope the advantage of JMAP will be is that it will provide a more flexible foundation for gmail-like interfaces on an open protocol.

At least all IMAP clients I have used have always felt... clunky and counter intuitive (I started using email with gmail, so maybe I just never learned the skills) even if IMAP already had all the good things JMAP claim, I think that the different focus on message and less historical baggage have a good change of producing designs that will feel more natural to me.

The push mechanism, for one.

IMAP has one (two actually, IDLE and NOTIFY) but they are not really adapted to the way we use email today (mobile and browser-based apps).

I'm not sure what do you mean by saying "no phone support"? Fastmail has apps for Android and iOS. I use iOS one and it's quite alright.

Did I not understand you statement correctly? Like did you mean that you cannot set it up with other mail apps on the phone?

Customer support via phone call.

Thanks, this didn't even occur to me.

How often are you calling support? The only time I've needed them was when I was locked out of the admin account, and there was no way to reach a human.

Indeed. I've been using FastMail for email (only) for a couple of years at this point, and I've literally never had to contact their support.

It just works.

(I'd actually be more worried about the AU legislation about permissible snooping, but... and I can't believe I'm saying this... It works well enough that I don't care. Most providers have learned to not send actual sensitive info by email.)

« First, no phone support. Hardly acceptable when even Google has this. »

...you can reach Google over the phone?

Gsuite has ways, I think.

Do people use phone support? I've never used it for anything in my life. If I was unable to make something work without phone support I would just switch to another service.

I once got on to Microsoft for some phone support, After asking me lots of questions about myself which were necessary before they could answer the specific question I'd already asked, the person on the other end finished up by saying that this was a question I needed to put instead to the vendor who had sold me the product. I can't remember if they asked if there was anything else they could help me with today.

Microsoft Support can be quite good depending upon the product you need help with.

I’ve called them for help with a Office 365 issue and they were very helpful.

I’ve called them once for an Xbox issue (I wanted to buy an Xbox 360 game and it wasn’t letting me) and the rep didn’t really have a clue. I ended up finding the answer after searching a few Xbox forums.

Actually I'd heard that office 365 support was good and in fairness the incident I was talking about was many years ago.

Oddly enough though, even the enterprise product support can be very bad. I've had dealings with Microsoft over issues related to Azure while under EA, and they still took weeks to even look at the issue, which turned out to be a problem on their end.

When it comes to big-brand software and services, it can really pay off to buy via a good reseller or consultancy, who often offer much better support than the company that actually makes the product. Of course, that's not actionable advice when we're discussing which mail provider is best for personal use. (Although I suggest the answer is still "not O365".)

Yes, if you need an immediate response. It also helps you push through "level 1" support much faster than a traditional ticketing/email system.

If the ticketing system is sane not so much. Obviusly this is always troublesome with the big players.

When you pay for Gsuite, yes you can.

The single case where I used it was a good experience (though obviously you'll find a lot of people who had issues the support couldn't resolve).

You cannot if you just have your personal @gmail.com email.

Yes, I do several times a month on behalf of my clients. You can call them, chat with them, they call you back. They aren't perfect, but far from "you're on your own".

You can and it is good. Had to a couple of times the last couple of years and every single time the support was stellar. Not just did the first person on the phone know what s/he was doing, they went to lengths to verify my credentials, which is a bit of a hassle but I appreciate it since it makes me feel my accounts are "save".

I am happy with Fastmail too. Use it for more than 3 years and never look back. There is a hype about Hey mail recently but I won't buy it:

- It is more expensive than my current plan with Fastmail. Hey mail is 99$/year.

- As all of my current emails and contacts are in fastmail, I am not likely to switch to another providers. Also, because I am happy user, I don't see the need to switch.

I used to love google inbox but switched to fastmail when google killed Inbox and it was easy to choose between old gmail and fastmail. Hey might address why I loved about Inbox. However, it’s clearly designed with companies in mind. The $100/yr is steep for a personal email service. Plus, they don’t have custom domains yet.

I used to run my own mail server and it's not actually fun. If you run everything on the cheapest VPS possible then you still end up paying about $50 or thereabouts. So they're in the right ballpark. I'm happy to pay them extra so I don't have to worry about email server maintenance.

I've gotten better email support from fastmail than phone support from G Suite. It's not much use getting on the phone with people who can't solve any problems. Especially since you can't get on the phone with them unless you can login to see the code, and chances are auth issues are about the only actionable thing they'll actually help you with.

Second, no collaboration suite like Drive/Docs.

Let's be realistic: it's an email service. Complaining it doesn't do everything Google does seems a little unfair.

There are three things that are hard to leave Google for: 1. My email address, I've had my firstname.lastname@gmail.com from almost the beginning of Gmail. 2. $99 a year for 2TB of storage that is shared across my email, images and Google Drive 3. Google One, I can share that storage with my wife and kids and also monitor my kids accounts.

I hate myself a little for tying my kids into Google with their own Gmail addresses but the process is too easy to ignore, I don't have time to cobble together a mishmash of services. One part of me thinks Google needs to be broken up, the other thinks it will be a pain in the ass.

Replacing the data hungry black box of Maps with the closed ecosystem of Apple via Apple Maps isn't a win in my book :(. Still, may be better than no change. I just happen to be intentionally outside of Apple's all-or-nothing ecosystem so it isn't an option for me. Who makes a system like that, are they trying to dominate the world??? If they succeed in their business model, they will probably be more dangerous than Google - a ticking time bomb waiting for shareholder or executive level change toward nafariousness with gargantuan incentive begging for corruption. We already see the dangers based on how they operate the App Store.

Wasn't there a privacy problem because of the Australian encryption law [1] and the company being based in Australia?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18636076

It’s just as private as Gmail, which is the comparison in question.

If you want secure, you wouldn’t be using email in the first place.

Gmail is under US jurisdiction though which provides far more protections depending on circumstance.

I wouldn't consider them equivalent. Australian laws are some of the most intrusive on the planet and are shared amongst the 5/14 eyes without a warrant.

That legislation would affect things for a service like ProtonMail, but although it’s ill-conceived doesn’t affect Fastmail: https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabi...

Having recently moved my personal domains to FastMail, I'm a big fan. It's solid, reliable, and reasonably priced. I would have happily paid for Mozilla/Thunderbird mail hosting had that been available.

Happy Fastmail user here. I love it for the snappy web client. It's only after I switched that I realized how slow Gmail felt.

I'd like to echo similar feedback. After I dropped gmail and went to fastmail i noticed it to be MUCH faster. gmail is my primary personal account. I really appreciated taking control of e-mail again.

i'm happily paying for e-mail and tend to think putting money down ensures I keep myself honest and maintain a workflow. Now I only save e-mails that are important to me, instead of archiving everything.

One of the nicest things about Gmail is to send myself an email with info or an attachment that I can't think of anywhere logical to put it so I'll find it again. Their search makes it the best filing system, a no-file filing system.

Been using Fastmail for years. Not one glitch, love em’

Fastmail's domain feature is the killer app for me. I have my @firstandlast.com secured for $7/year or something, and I can make anything@firstandlast.com and if someone starts spamming me I can just block it.

One thing I'd recommend is making throwaway email addresses using one the domains they own (I think have around a 100). That way, if a spammer gets its, they won't know your domain, and try spamming other username at the domain.

I don't think that's a good recommendation.

Spammers are going to find your domain name and spam it at obvious usernames anyway (eg contact@).

Besides what use-case do people have for throwaway addresses? In my experience in most cases the addresses you use aren't throwaway at all.

Fastmail does subdomain aliasing and I've been using that for years with my own domain without issues. Every subscription I have has its own email address. I don't need someone else's domains for that.

I guess "throwaway" is the wrong word. In my case, I created a few emails under Fastmail's domains and then used them to sign up for things like reddit, newsletters etc, where I don't need to tie it to my identity.

I don't think it's a given that spammers will find your domain, if you only provide your email to real people, and give generated emails to online services.

If you're going to host anything on that domain, then it will be collected in domain lists. I got rid of my contact@ email address because of that.

Email addresses that I use now look like this: reddit@subdomain.domain.com

If this leaks, I can track the source and I can bounce messages for this address.

While what you're saying is possible, a spammer needs to target you personally and that's not cost effective. It's not easy for them to try every possible English name at that address, because then they quickly get blacklisted.

Spammers collect addresses via scripts that crawl the web or via data leaks. It's more cost effective for them to get addresses that have been validated. All the spam I get are on these aliased addresses, biggest problem being the one I publish on my website, which I change periodically.

---

I like using my own domain even for aliased addresses because I can change service providers on a whim. I love Fastmail, but if they ever piss me off, I can change to Google Suite or whatever over night, the only thing required is some flexibility in setting up aliases.

I could probably find an address you don't want to just block once I know your firstandlast.com domain. Why not use @fastmail.com (or any of Fastmail's other domains) for throwaway aliases?

I don’t doubt that you could, but in my experience spammers are invested enough in a single individual to get clever. We’ll see. I enjoy having a predictably unique login for each site {site@firstandlast.com}.

I really love Fastmail, but shared contacts have never seemed to work with the default Mac contacts app. According to Fastmail support as of a few years ago, the default Mac contacts app cant handle multiple address books (shared and personal) from the same account. Not Fastmail’s fault, but has anyone else had this trouble?

Has anyone tried Rackspace email hosting? Looks to be the same price as Fastmail.

https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail

I’ve been a happy Fastmail user for years, but in a recent thread Announcing Hey, it was alleged that fastmail will recycle your email address after you stop paying them, and that it’s a common attack to try to register old fastmail addresses and try to use them to access services.

This contrasts with Hey which will forward your old hey.com address to another address after you stop paying, and not make it available to future customers.

It's probably worth using your own domain even when using third party email providers, so you are in control of your email address.

That's a good point. I don't suppose there a way of leaving Gmail and bringing your @gmail.com address with you, is there. That was one of the changes that was forced on phone companies years ago to make it easier to move provider.

No, and there is no way to do that since domains are controlled by mx records, not email addresses.

No, but Google will happily run your gmail address forwarding to your real address. I've been on fastmail for many years now, but I still get the occasional gmail addressed email in my fastmail inbox.

I also use a lot of the other fastmail features, like mail aliases, DNS, and file storage and web site serving. I'm very happy to pay the money.

Buy your own domain for your email and set it up with Fastmail. You should trust anyone, even if they say they'll always forward.

> You should trust anyone

While I would like to be able to, I suspect this is a typo...? :-)

FastMail do recycle addresses, which I don't like, but Hey will start to run out of addresses over the years unless they do something.

The better option is to register your own domain for $10 a year, something hey doesn't seem to support?

Paying customer of Fastmail for 6 years. It's great.

I love FastMail. Never looked back.

I mention this whenever FastMail comes up: it is way too expensive to equip my family of 6. Give me a sanely priced family plan and I am in.

What in Mozilla's track record makes you trust that they can run a trustworthy service? I'm a big fan of Mozilla for Firefox and rust. But they we have to be objective. They have yet to earn my trust for running a safe and secure service to which I can trust my data.

I'd pay at least $10/month or $99/year for Firefox Accounts, just as they stand today, because they give me at least that much value. Integrate full 2FA into Lockwise, so that I have 2FA that'll never die with a broken phone, and I'd pay more. Add a secure calendar I can use with friends and family, and I'd pay more. (I'd hesitate to say email, just because running that is a can of worms I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, but I'd absolutely pay for that too.) I would love to have all of my major services tied into my Firefox Account, with the same level of security, privacy, and trust I've come to expect.

> just as they stand today,

Yeah, no. The least they should do is enhace the size for syncing extension-data. It's today limited to 100kb per extension, which destroys syncing for most useful extensions like ublock, greasemonkey or some mature manager for bookmarks and notes. Giving any paying user some GB as global storeage and remove the per-extenions-limitation would push productivity immense.

What you are asking for, is a resurrection of Netscape Communicator[1], which had along with the browser, an email client, calendar, editor, chat etc.

It was fairly popular in some corporates for a while, until Lotus/IBM and MS stepped up their collaboration game.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Communicator

Sort of. Netscape Communicator critically never included server infrastructure and was completely focused on e.g. connecting to your ISP's email servers.

Although a great 'client' experience is absolutely crucial for Firefox Premium's success and would be a modern resurrection of Netscape Communicator in that sense, what I mostly need is convenient 'servers' from a company that I can trust and a business model I can support. In a sense that would be a modern way of meeting the needs of Netscape Communicator, sure :)

Agreed, in this day and age we mostly don't have or use the ISP services that come with our connections.

Would you then use a Mozilla run mail service similar to gmail complete with calendaring and document storage, all built into a suite of client apps ?

I think for a certain demographic this could turn into a good Google competitor if done right.

Doesn't need to be a move back to Mozilla Suit (today named Seamonkey). They can offer web-services for this (just cooperate with an existing Provider like fastmail), but with trusted privacy features and embedded in the browser with first class-quality-extensions.

Or they push thunderbird, the mail-client they brought into the world to just ignore it for such a long time. A trustable privacy-first mail-client with brainless configuration and maybe some useful modern PIM-features would sell well enough to satisfy a price. I mean there are already services doing that, mozilla couild cooperate with them or just push their own weight in the ring.

internet scale email, calendar, password manager, OpenID auth provider, VPN, browser + integrated search via DDG = everybody's dream

I know upvote already exists, but I deeply want to +1 on this one. If Mozilla does it, I'd be a happy customer to.

The "barely works" stack.

But with a “just works” vapor!

Cries in FirefoxOS.

Especially when a small unknown company can take the same abandoned platform to become a viable player in the smartphone ecosystem[1] just by targeting the right device for the OS & right strategic partnerships.

At least Mozilla seems to have signed a deal with KaiOS to develop the Gecko engine further[2].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

[2]https://www.kaiostech.com/press/kaios-technologies-and-mozil...

I don't have much too add, I'm just replying in case Mozilla devs see this. I want this so much as well! I don't mind the VPN though. I pay for it now even though I run mostly Linux

I'm in exactly the same boat. Paying for the VPN to use on exactly one device because everything else is Linux, and would happily put more money towards it if they offered a paid equivalent to GSuite that was privacy-respecting.

Question--why does everything else being Linux negate the need for a VPN? AFAIK, aren't the main reasons for a VPN bypassing georestricted content and avoiding ISP snooping? I don't see how running Linux negates any of these, and routing through a VPN certainly doesn't stop win10 from exfiltrating data.

Mozilla VPN is not yet available for Linux.

Oh wow. I haven't thought of this till now. But you are absolutely right. I would totally trust Mozilla to provide me the privacy sensitive alternatives to google and would definitely pay for them too.

I still want Mozilla to release a Android keyboard.

Me to currently using swift key as it came preinstalled but its owned by Microsoft.

I use net guard to stop basically everything in my phone from contacting the Internet.

I believe the 'AnySoftKeyboard' is a good opensource alternative for Android, no?

Gesture typing (swipe) is still in beta and didn't work much the last time I checked. I'm posting this by swiping on SwiftKey. I've been using swiping keyboards since 2011 and I won't go back to tapping buttons.

There are many VPN services that begin just by reselling white-label VPN solutions, such as provided by NordVPN[1], because it's much cheaper and easier than building your own globally distributed high-capacity and low-latency network. I hope that Mozilla didn't go down this route, as many suspect ProtonVPN did[2], which Mozilla has partnered in the past with[3]. In fact, given that partnership I wouldn't be surprised, if Mozilla VPN was just a rebranded ProtonVPN service underneath. That would bring additional income to Mozilla without taking away any of the development resources from Firefox, and could be seen as a win-win situation by both companies.

[1] https://nordvpn.com/white-label/

[2] https://vpnscam.com/tesonet-data-mining-company-owns-nordvpn...

[3] https://protonvpn.com/blog/mozilla-partnership/

FYI Mozilla VPN will just be rebranded Mullvad, ProtonVPN is outdated.

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/12/3/mullvad-partnerships-p...

Thank you, I wasn't aware of that. I consider Mullvad to be both, a technologically superior product, and a much more trustworthy company than ProtonVPN.

As someone who doesn't really use VPNs, could you expand on what makes Mullvad superior?

From the technical point of view, Mullvad was one of the first VPN services to adopt and support the development of Wireguard; it was also one of the first to open-source all of its client-side code.

From the privacy point of view, Mullvad doesn't ask for an email address, accepts payments in cash, publicly states the full names of all the people behind the company, and doesn't pay any affiliate commissions.

I'm a Fastmail and Google Suite paying customer. I would SO transition to a "Firefox Suite" email+calendar service if Mozilla provided one.

> If only to help make Firefox development less dependant on Google or Yahoo.

Omg, my thoughts exactly! I dont want services... I dont want anything except that with the donations they will break away from google. That is it. And I bet a lot of us here would gladly donate, I donate to EFF while mozilla could in theory have more impact.

If Firefox integrated with Keychain, it'd probably be my default browser again. I'd happily pay.

Once Keychain got good enough, I transitioned to Safari 98% and dropped 1Password. iCloud syncing is nice too.

Anecdotally, it just seems like a lot of web sites are poorly tested against Safari, so I run into weird stuff. Also, Safari now inevitably abends, seemingly after binging YouTube.

I favor Safari, mostly because of lower power consumption. I have only positive things to say about Firefox. I've always liked it and I've read they keep improving the power stuff. If I ever do front end work again, I'll definitely go back to 50/50.

Leaving gmail is on my to do list. I've just been too lazy to follow thru. I dunno why, but if Mozilla partnered with FastMail, I'd be more motivated. Probably for bragging rights, virtue signaling.

Totally agree. I feel like I trust Safari in terms of privacy as well, and it works so well in the walled garden of iOS/macos. I really hope they get it up to date with the latest web standards, it's a joy to use otherwise.

> chat

This already exists: https://chat.mozilla.org/

You can use it with your Firefox account.

I've been hanging for about 20 minutes. What is this?

Mozillas own instance of a matrix-setup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)

Paying for a browser in this day and age would really bring Mozilla full-circle back to Netscape in the 90's.

Time for them to reclaim the throne.

Who said anything about the browser? We are talking about the data, aren't we?

OP is talking about “Firefox Premium.” You would be paying for the software and services. Firefox is the browser.

Firefox Premium is just branding, so far as I can tell. I can't imagine Mozilla charging for software. They might make software that's not useful without the service (like the VPN client), but the software itself is free.

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/

The GP seems to be asking for hosted services on a subscription model for email, calendar, etc., and not for the applications alone.

Mozilla VPN literally _is_ rebranded Mullvad. So if you want to contribute to Mozilla, should be a pretty easy switch for you.

I wonder why it's geoblocked in that case?

Different countries have different laws regarding encryption and money

Not sure why I would switch to another chat, email, file, sync just because it’s from Mozilla

Privacy

I don't think it's a good idea to give any company a monopoly on your data even if you trust them.

Why would it be a monopoly? If you use something that uses open standards and provides ways to export or backup your data, you can move anytime.

Taken a little deeper, your statement would imply that people should build and maintain their own data centers and host all services by themselves (this argument could be stretched even further).

> Taken a little deeper, your statement would imply that people should build and maintain their own data centers and host all services by themselves

One doesn't need a data center to host these kinds of services. Nextcloud on a Raspberry Pi works just fine.

> Taken a little deeper, your statement would imply that people should build and maintain their own data centers and host all services by themselves (this argument could be stretched even further).

Yes, yes they should; it's called a personal computer; IBM used to sell pre-built ones.

A monopoly on the services you use, not a monopoly as in they have total control over your data and you cannot export your data. If all you use is Mozilla services, as the original commenter would like, that is the very definition of a monopoly over your personal software usage.

I did not imply anything of the sort, and I am astonished and confused as to why you would think that. How in the world does mentioning that it's not a good idea to give a company a monopoly over your personal usage lead to people should build their own personal data services? Obviously the real implication is that it's better to use multiple different providers of software services instead of one, or use as many different open source software as possible. The benefits being if or when a company decides to use your data for nefarious purposes they can only use a portion instead of all of your data. Likewise a security breach to one of those companies would only expose a portion as well.

I was just about to change to something different from LastPass, pretty much convinced about Bitwarden from previous HN mentions, until you mentioned Lockwise :-) care to share some pros and cons or comparison between these two?

Currently using both, Bitwarden is much more robust, customizable, and safe (audited by 3rd party). Lockwise is great if you want a simple pw manager for browsing online but Bitwarden is like a "life" manager that can store addresses, credit cards, notes, passwords, etc.

I use Bitwarden as my main password manager. But Bitwarden is still lacking in the "life" management part because common things like WiFi passwords or software licenses need to be added as custom entities. Managing those is not easy with Bitwarden. I stopped using 1Password long ago (when it moved to a subscription model), but it has had many more rich types to manage for a long time. Bitwarden has a long way to go.

I can offer up 1password comments. It has a good native app for osx. I don't use osx. It offers a CLI tool that spits out json. I wish it would just integrate with pass(1). The Firefox add-on is close enough to abysmal that I use thier website making it inconvenient. It doesn't work with regular http auth so you have to copy the fields in manually then refresh.

Otherwise it's fine. The multiple Vaults is great to share passwords among family or maybe your co-workers. It has features like TOTP and supports many types of other fields.

4/10 on usability 10/10 on its core feature set. Probably a 9/10 on osx.

> It doesn't work with regular http auth so you have to copy the fields in manually then refresh.

There's a slightly easier way - escape out of the basic auth dialog box, open the 1password menu which will be showing you the website you're on and select 'Autofill', and then reload the page (ie Ctrl-R) and the basic auth is supplied from 1password.

Not great, but easier and faster than copying in username and password fields manually (and with keyboard shortcuts available to do each step it can be quite fast).

From 1password comments I believe the limitation is because Firefox does not allow 1password to interact with the auth dialog box (which isn't strictly a bad policy from a general security point of view).

There is also always https://www.passwordstore.org/ it is a bit more work to get everything set up, but I now have an encrypted git repo of my passwords with clients on my laptop and android phone. I cant speak to ios or macos, but there is a distinct lack of good windows gui client, which is the biggest con.

The major pro for me is that I know exactly how it is encrypted end to end, and have control over how and where it is stored, and can move the storage as I please, all entirely for free.

I personally use 1Password due to it being better polished than Bitwarden and the support being excellent. I'm using it with Windows/Edge and haven't encountered any problems.

I moved away from it because they still don't have a fully featured Linux client, and their 1PasswordX client is missing some features, and seems to be in general quite lot slower than Bitwarden.

Having said that, Bitwarden is a big pain in the ass. I still can't open the main window when I'm in private browsing window.

Judging from the sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23567966), the support for non-mac platforms sounded to be less than stellar. Still nice to have different opinions, so thanks.

To throw in a less conventional option, I've been very happy with MasterPassword [1] myself. I mostly just use use the browser plugin (Firefox/Chrome) and mobile app (iOS/Android).

Unlike the other options, it's a deterministic password manager. This means that you don't need to sync anything, and there's no risk of losing your password database. As long as you know what website you're signing in to, and remember your one master password, you can regenerate all other passwords.

[1]: https://masterpassword.app/

100% this. I'm currently waiting for the ProtonMail calendar and still looking for an easy file sync solution. I tried syncthing today but it's really not that comfortable to use....

>3 years ago, in french: https://linuxfr.org/users/aurelieng/journaux/mozilla-l-enjeu... (can be translated with your favorite tool).

Agree. I’m currently on Proton but I’d like to see Mozilla bundle the essentials, with vpn and mail as the basics.

Also, consider if possible affordability for students and senior, who might not be able to afford a subscription. Maybe limited bandwidth for free w/o subscription? Something like ProtonVPN provided.

I've wanted email so bad. Using protonmail til the day Mozilla decides to go down the email route.

I agree. Bundle a PiHole-powered cluster service with a secure proxy for child surfing and Mozilla will get my bucks. Last but not least, it should be easy to set up.

I recommend https://nextdns.io/ as "pihole as a service" (I'm not affiliated to piHole in anyway, just a happy user =) )

Let them stay in the Niche maybe? I'd rather have a really great safe browser than half a dozen half baked products from the same company.

The problem is the revenue source. Currently Mozilla gets most of their income from their biggest competitor, Google, which is pretty fragile and all-eggs-in-one-basket. Diversifying their revenue stream by slightly diversifying their product would make them more likely to survive.

Mozilla VPN's full device variant is essentially Mullvad...they are using them as a trusted partner.

VPN should be number one feature to be implemented, for the private tabs, at least.

I want this and want to pay for this. Hoping this will be a real product soon.

How about a search engine? Why can't they make their DuckDuckGo analog?

Why would that be better than buying DDG, Qwant, Ecosia, Startpage or any other alternative out there?

Or just putting their support behind one?

Wait... why are you encouraging them to charge for it?

it ensures that they have a sustainable revenue stream and won’t cave into selling data or shutting down

Because running it is not free and paying for it directly is the best way to align interests - you are the customer instead of being the product for advertising and analytics.

What products and services do you want from Mozilla?

> email, calendar, file sync, chat(?) - give me Firefox Premium

But then they would just turn into Google.

Too much power corrupts.

Just to be clear, your donation at donate.mozilla.org goes to Mozilla Foundation. It doesn’t support the development of Firefox or other products, which are part of Mozilla Corporation (which gets about 90% or more of its revenue from the Google search partnership). This doesn’t mean your donation is useless, but it may not be going where one might think it’s going.

I agree with your second paragraph, which is more in line with directly supporting Firefox and other products with money.

"I'd pay good money..."

Sorry, Google pays more. :)

As much as you would like to be, you are not Mozilla's customer. You are, as they say, a "product". The subject of an ongoing marketing study. There are people willing to pay for the results of that study, and they are willing and able to pay much more than you will ever pay for Mozilla's open source software or use of its servers to store your personal data (email, calendar, files, etc.).

We are told that Mozilla has to keep pace with Chrome (because ..., and that's because ....), and the only way they believe they can do that is to take money from Google. Mozilla's CEO and employees are far too expensive for their salaries to ever be paid by end users.

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