Is Gmail still the go-to email provider for generic email addresses? | Hacker News Reader

Is Gmail still the go-to email provider for generic email addresses?

11 pointsbenrmatthews20 comments

Looking to create an email account for a new position. Which would be best out of Gmail, Proton, Fastmail?

Doesn’t need to be tied to a domain, so happy to use the default.

Proton is the way. Solid free tier and you can use your own domain with the paid tier

I’ve used Protonmail for years, but lately the encryption is making me seriously consider a switch. You can’t use 3rd party email clients, unless you also install Proton Mail Bridge, which is only available for paid users. And the bridge only works for desktop, so you won’t be able to use 3rd party email clients on your phone.

This is an issue not only with Proton Mail, but with other services in their ecosystem too. For example, you also can’t integrate Proton Calendar with the iOS Calendar app, because of the encryption.

And all of this is for no benefit, because your email won’t be fully E2E encrypted unless your recipient is also using Proton Mail. Most of your recipients will be using Gmail or Outlook, so at the end of the day Google/Microsoft will read your emails anyway.

I’m considering switching to Fastmail, Mailbox.org, or Migadu. If you need to send truly private emails, use PGP encryption.

I have a paid proton account so I can use mail at a domain I when, but I don’t use anything else, and this is why. I don’t want to say encryption is a problem, just that Proton isn’t going to integrate with my phone and computer, and that’s a problem. I don’t mind using the Proton app for mail (I use Apple Mail and Gmail as well), but migrating calendars is a pretty big deal to me, since I only want 1, it’s not something that’s even worth trying out, like I can with email.

I prefer fastmail

+1 for Fastmail -- their iOS and web mail apps are _amazing_ and free, too.

+1 and Fastmail respect your privacy!

Gmail's search function has degraded to garbage now, can't even find emails I type the exact subject in word for word. Go with fastmail, protonmail or really anyone else at this point.

Let's be realistic, it was always garbage.

I always found it unbelievable that Google, a company whose entire brand was built around search, built such a poorly-functioning search into their own mail product.

Not to mention that Gmail was built around the idea that search would be all a user needed from day one. 1Gb of storage, and archive everything in on big archive, because a simple search will get you where you need to be.

I always found this bad, because I can’t control when people title an email or put in the content. People who use really informal and non-descriptive email subjects drive me nuts. “Here you go”, “that thing you were asking about”, “important”… these are terrible email subjects and once they drift away from the top of the inbox they will be gone forever.

I worked in an organisation that replaced all directory structures including network drives and folders with what a friend called 'a swimming pool' where all documents were security/sharing the classified then tagged. 2002ish.

Finding a document again was entirely down to search: title, author, date, meta data, full text.

I loved it. I was in a minority. I loved Gmail's search.

With documents I would me more OK with it, as I would be in control of what I’m naming my documents. In Gmail, if I wanted to me sure I could find something again, I would need to tag everything that hits my inbox, and make a mess of my tags.

It's never been amazing, but I don't remember every having actual usability issues until the last maybe year or so.

I think gmail is definitely worth it. They have the best spam filtering, interface is pretty clean and it’s ubiquitously trusted

The main disadvantage though is the privacy you give up, and the expensive premium tier… if you ever need it

Fastmail is wonderful; I can't recommend it enough.

Yes, unless you have a axe to grind with Google.

Proton more for their growing ecosystem of tools

proton.me is more preferable than gmail. Ever since the removed all spam filers, and just inboxed everything - its been a poor experience. And all managing functions in web gmail are lame - so one good practice is connect via thunderbird and use that to mas organize and clean if you never use a desktop client.

But for your personal email, as it were, Protonmail's proton.me is +1

mailfence.com .No IMAP with the free account. Paid plans are cheap and provide IMAP

Anyone has used hey.com?

I did for a few weeks before switching back to Gmail. It wasn't really worth the cost, and the upfront sorting/filtering of emails into a white-list was a hassle (compared to the traditional way of reporting spam).

I don't really get spam with Gmail anyway, and there was no compelling reason to switch.

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