Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14727014

by cl42 • 9 years ago

49 82 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Curious if people use any personal email tools. I like gmail but also realize I haven't looked for an alternative in several years.

alansmitheebk• 9 years ago

I use protonmail (protonmail.com). It's encrypted email developed by the scientists at CERN. The data is hosted in Switzerland and therefore subject to Swiss privacy laws. There are app for iPhone and Android. They just came out with a VPN product, too.

wheresvic1• 9 years ago

The free plan is only limited to 500 Mb though.

LeoPanthera4• 9 years ago

Pay for your email or you are the product.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

Email is the most important thing you have online, why wouldn't you pay for it?

lyonlim• 9 years ago

I've been testing ProtonMail for a couple months now in search of a Gmail alternative. What's keeping me from fully switching is support for contacts and calendar syncing as well...

That's where I started looking at FastMail.

wprapido2• 9 years ago

ahappy protonmail user here, too

reacharavindh2• 9 years ago

Do they support inline images in Email now? Last time I was using it(long ago), neither the web UI, nor the email apps supported drag & drop of images into the compose window..

mtmail• 9 years ago

That means subject to Swiss surveillance laws as well. Not worse than other western countries but Switzerland isn't a safe haven for privacy.

"All Internet service providers must retain the following data for six months:

type of the connections [...] and if known login data, address information of the origin (MAC-address, telephone number), name, address and occupation of the user and duration of the connection from beginning to end

time of the transmission or reception of an email, header information according to the SMTP-protocol and the IP adresses of the sending and receiving email application"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retent...

Veratyr• 9 years ago

These laws don't apply to Protonmail: https://protonmail.com/blog/swiss-surveillance-law/

As a participant in these discussions, we can confirm unequivocally that upon implementation, the provisions regarding data retention introduced by the BÜPF will exempt companies like ProtonMail and ProtonVPN which are not major telecommunications operators.

Watabou• 9 years ago

Note that ProtonMail paid $6000 ransom to hackers: https://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/crypto-e-mail-servi...

I applaud their privacy stance, but paying ranson money to hackers is a deal-breaker for me.

marcopol• 9 years ago

They were hit by a DDoS that was so big it's suspected to be a nation state. Under those circumstances, their ISP and hosting provider didn't really give then a choice and basically forced them to pay the ransom, which you can read about here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/11/05/proto...

The magnitude of the attack would have killed most services, but ProtonMail managed to mitigate the attack and went as far as becoming their own ISP to prevent getting in this situation in the future.

My two cents on this making them a pretty rare company.

idlewords• 9 years ago

The protonmail encryption is useless, since it's done in the browser. Don't use it (or any email service) for sensitive data.

pbiggar2• 9 years ago

I'm excited by superhuman (https://superhuman.com). Alas I haven't got an invite. Also, dunno if they're going to support my style of email use out of the box (I'm strict adherent to the Andreas Klinger style: http://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-t...).

OJFord3• 9 years ago

I'm excited by superhuman (https://superhuman.com)

That looks like any other Electon-based email client that someone decided wasn't cool enough any more...

pbiggar2• 9 years ago

Can you explain? I don't see how you got to that conclusion.

ben_romano• 9 years ago

I've been using Superhuman for a couple months on and off and I agree that Superhuman visually looks similar to some electron based email clients. However, functionality wise it's quite unique. There is a very strong emphasis on keyboard shortcuts. I never have to use my mouse, which as a frequent vim user is a big plus.

The only issue I have with Superhuman right now is that there isn't 100% feature parity with Gmail yet; however, that's quickly improving with each release.

Disclaimer: I'm friends with an employee at Superhuman.

nkkollaw• 9 years ago

Google Inbox is really amazing, it groups email automatically and its spam filter is awesome.

patrickdavey• 9 years ago

I also like Inbox, except that the desktop experience is so utterly woeful.

koymas• 9 years ago

I use Inbox because I cannot find any other free alternative. It is awesome on the phone....but on the computer it takes forever to load.

JCzynski• 9 years ago

The spam filter is way overzealous. I switched back to unInboxed Gmail after the third time I never got shown an important email and missed an appointment; all three happened within the same month.

tgragnato3• 9 years ago

Tutanota

https://tutanota.com - https://github.com/tutao/tutanota - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutanota

The company is based in Germany and benefits from BDSG.

LeoPanthera4• 9 years ago

They don't support IMAP or even POP3, right?

tgragnato3• 9 years ago

They don't, but apps for iOS and Android are available. These protocols do not guarantee end-to-end encryption, it's been a choice.

OJFord3• 9 years ago

No pricing information without signing up for the free tier?

tgragnato3• 9 years ago

https://tutanota.com/pricing

reacharavindh2• 9 years ago

Fastmail. Paying $30/yr for my email hosting. Pros:

I don't have to worry about my emails being scanned to create a profile of me.

I got my <firstname>@fastmail.com which I could not with Gmail.

As a paid customer I get support for if/when something is wrong.

Has solid Web UI that is minimal and fast. Email client for ios works great.

Cons: Not the cool new thing. Setting it up for shared calendar with others was a bit unintuitive.

Every now and then someone sends me a Google Doc, and I need to think about how to open it without a Google account.

Spam filter is not as good as Google's. A phishing email gets to the inbox every now and then. But, I report them.

LeoPanthera4• 9 years ago

Not getting <firstname>@ shouldn't really be a problem. Everyone should buy their own domain name for email. It's cheap, easy to setup (and natively supported by Fastmail), and it means that you're not locked into one mail provider ever again.

Don't be <firstname>@fastmail, be <firstname>@<lastname>.me - or whatever you prefer.

inezk• 9 years ago

so like 6 billion domains?

sterex2• 9 years ago

I agree. If your provider goes down you need to literally change your email and inform everyone and change it in all your services. If you own the domain, you can just switch providers.

0x00000000• 9 years ago

I have an uncommon last name - about 3 families in the world with it as far as I can tell. Some asshole has been squatting <mylastname>.com for over 20 years and said he "hadn't considered selling it" then wanted $100,000 for it. The same guy has been squatting hundreds of domains since the 90s, many of them 1 letter off from major websites.

What can I do against this scum? I saw that there have been many successful disputes against him so I was thinking of constructing one in a similar vein saying that his use of my unique last name to serve malware and ads is damaging to my reputation but it seems a little weak.

Also no other TLD is even an option for an email address because people always assume you made a mistake and just send things to .com anyway in my experience.

mcbruiser3• 9 years ago

what about someone social engineering the registrar [1] or hacking the TLD nameservers [2] and getting control of all your accounts using that email?

[1] https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-... [2] https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all...

michaelbuckbee• 9 years ago

Can't recommend Fastmail enough. I run a variety of services that depend upon email forwarding and it's _significantly_ better and (like it says on the tin) faster than Gmail.

This is stuff like having support@my-domain.com addresses that forward onto our Helpdesk, etc, that really need to work reliably.

minikites• 9 years ago

I've been using Fastmail since 2008 and it's been great ever since. I've submitted a few support requests in my time using the service and they were handled promptly and politely.

dorfsmay• 9 years ago

You don't need gmail to use google doc. Go to https://accounts.google.com "More options", "create an account". You can create one using a different domain and mail server.

Google docs is pretty amazing for collaboration and accessibility, just don't put your secrets in there.

wfunction2• 9 years ago

1. Gmail won't be scanning emails anymore, although I'm not sure what difference it makes whether they index it when they already have your data at their fingertips.

2. I guess that's nice, whether worth $30/year though is a different question... you can just as well get your own domain entirely and forward through it.

3. Do you ever need support though? I haven't with Gmail (at least nothing major enough to care about; I do see random bugs every now and then)

4. Gmail UI is pretty amazingly solid too (do you not find it so?), just not that fast (but then again that's why there's a mobile and basic version, and an app, etc.).

tmnvix• 9 years ago

$360/year

I think you mistook $30/year for $30/month.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

Support matters a ton if Google suspends your account and deletes your online identity by mistake. I've seen too many stories like it, and somehow people just assume it'll never happen to them.

Gmail's UI was the best thing I ever used... Until FastMail.

colmcg• 9 years ago

A cool feature with Fastmail is how flexable your address is. Say my email is colmcg@fastmail.com, I can also send emails to hackernews@colmcg.fastmail.com instead of colmcg+hackernews@fastmail.com combine that with how easy it is to make alternative addresses, and you can make an email for every site you use.

Spacemolte• 9 years ago

Also a satisfied fastmail user, nice ui, nice ios client. Wanted to use my own domain, and with gmail, I had to pay pretty much the same as for fastmail, and I was tired of the whole we read your mail etc.

prh8• 9 years ago

Just another vote for Fastmail. I have it set up with my personal domain, it's been great to have various email aliases. I use git@domain.com for Github/Gitlab/connected services, resume@domain for resume, and linkedin@domain to easily filter out LI's 10k emails. I'm sure others have plenty of other creative uses as well.

alnitak• 9 years ago

I have been looking for an alternative to the Google apps ecosystem, to support mailing, calendar, contacts and document editing, but most importantly it should allow me to have "guests" contributors to documents I can share with them.

Anybody knows of a company providing such a service?

swsieber• 9 years ago

Sandstorm.io? I don't think it would cover everything... but it might work.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

I use FastMail for all my mail, calendar, and contacts, and Sandstorm.io for collaborative document work.

the_common_man2• 9 years ago

Try nextcloud, rainloop, ether* on cloudron

sheraz• 9 years ago

outlook on mobile and web is great. I happily throw my $8/ month at them.

My only peeve is the confusing admin tools -- it is still Exchange on the backend, so there are a ton of features and settings that are simply in the way.

dangom• 9 years ago

I'm really happy with posteo.org

1. Ad-free, bloat-free, 1 Eur / month.

2. Privacy respecting, with clear transparency reports.

3. Support for IMAP/POP3.

majewsky• 9 years ago

Seconded. Happy customer since 3 years here. The only thing that's not nice is that they do not offer Bring-Your-Own-Domain. You can only have a @posteo.tld address (with a certain range of TLD).

rrggrr• 9 years ago

MIXMAX. It adds many great features to Gmail. Its too expensive, its pushing too hard to integrate with Salesforce, its probably too dependent on Gmail. But, all that said, I really cannot live without it. The founder Olof is a genius.

Sephr2• 9 years ago

Paid Gmail & Inbox (G Suite).

Personally, it feels like Google's spam filtering is still superior to the competition, so it would take quite a lot to get me to switch to a new vendor.

Not to mention the integrated action buttons that Gmail and Inbox have supported for years. Those buttons are a great productivity enhancement that I have yet to see from most of the competition.

leke• 9 years ago

It would be great if telegram incorporated email into their system.

cl42• 9 years ago

THANK YOU EVERYONE! What an amazing set of answers. I'll be exploring a lot of these over the coming weeks.

alkhatib• 9 years ago

zohomail.com

kureikain• 9 years ago

I'm using Zoho. I have no issue so far. You can easily register and point your domain to them. Free if you have less than 5 users. You can then configure catch-all email to forward everything to you.

Work pretty well on any IMAP/SMTP mail client.

revanthc2• 9 years ago

Thanks for recommending Zoho Mail. Appreciate it :)

Just want to let you know, however, that we've changed our pricing, and now we are free for 25 users. We have a great referral program as well that lets you earn a further 25 free users, should you need them.

https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html

desster• 9 years ago

Take a look to ox.io, an European safe and secure mail provider. It take 1 to 2 days to get an invite.

crispytx• 9 years ago

protonmail

carrotam• 9 years ago

I find thexyz.com a really good alternative they have a $20 per year plan and a $50 that adds more storage and syncs your contacts and calendars also. It does a great job of keeping spam out too.

the_common_man2• 9 years ago

Rainloop with cloudron is awesome

mindcrash• 9 years ago

Protonmail: 100% guaranteed E2E encrypted, nice UI, servers based in Switzerland, Android/iOS apps available aswell. Oh, and open source.

https://protonmail.com/

As a nice addon they also recently launched a interesting VPN solution. Also headquartered in Switzerland with core infrastructure located in Switzerland and Iceland. No logging, and Tor routing is available with a single mouse click.

https://protonvpn.com/

reaper7• 9 years ago

I also have thexyz.com as my email provider, very reliable service and I like how there are unlimited aliases included so I can have someotheremail@thexyz.com or 2news@thexyz.net also sent to my main address.

revanthc2• 9 years ago

Hello,

I work for Zoho Mail, so I may be slightly biased here but I would recommend Zoho Mail :). Let me try to convince you about why you should move to Zoho Mail. 1. Privacy - We are a 100% ad-free email service. We always have been and always will be. We don't scan your emails for keywords, we don't show ads, anything. We are 100% committed to maintaining your privacy.

2. Cost - We have a free plan that is free for up to 25 users. Through our referral program, you can get another 25 users absolutely free. That's a total of 50 free users, which is plenty for most small businesses. Our free plan is perfect for that. Above that, our paid plans start at $2/user/month. You can take a look at our pricing here - https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html.

3. Reliability - We have a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Zoho Mail, which is the industry standard. We constantly work on upgrading our infrastructure to maintain that reliability. In the odd event of a downtime, we have contingency plans in place for you to access your email.

4. Features - We are constantly innovating with email, to make it fit into the modern workplace. We've introduced a new feature called Streams, which is perfect for teams and combines slack like real-time collaboration with email. We also have a host of exciting new features for email.

5. Integrations - Zoho Mail is part of 30+ apps from the Zoho family. All our apps are well integrated with each other, and can be used to run your entire business from the ground up. In addition, we are also integrated with 3rd party apps like Dropbox, Asana, Trello, and more.

6. Migration - We make it easy and hassle free for people to migrate their email to Zoho Mail. It is free of cost, and there is absolutely no data loss at all.

To begin with, I recommend you try our free plan. All the features of the paid plans are available in Free as well, so you will get a clear picture of what Zoho Mail is. If I can help in any other way, please feel free to reach out to me at revanth@zohomail.com.

Thanks!

Everula• 9 years ago

Just started using Spark https://sparkmailapp.com for Mac and iPhone (couples of weeks now) and quite like it, generally overall positive experience and great UI. PS., I am not working in the company, just using couple of their products.

busymichael• 9 years ago

I have looked around but haven't beat a paid g suite account.

I have also coded some custom extensions to Gmail that make it more useful.

The most popular one I run is https://dndemail.com. It basically adds do not disturb to Gmail.

Ask HN: Alternatives to Gmail that are new, cool, etc?

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