Topic: Email providers

[touchingcloth]

I’ve been using gmail for over ten years as my main personal email provider, but I’d like to switch away. For numerous reasons, in descending order of arsedness:

- they don’t need to scrape any more of my data than necessary
- the address includes my date of birth, and there are no unique options left for my name which don’t look like an MSN handle circa 2001
- Gmail uses labels to categorise emails rather than a folder structure, meaning if you use non-Gmail addresses[1] in the Gmail client and vice versa then compromises have to be made
- they don’t support push notifications

The things I *do* like about gmail are:
- decent inbox search, which makes the lack of folders a largely academic issue if you have a rough idea of who sent you a given email and when
- support for aliases (the myname+netflix@gmail.com) sort of thing
- integrates with Google drive[2]
- I’ve never had any outages or issues with deliverability or speed of forwarders

The above has ruled out various providers because they:
- don’t have a pool of free addresses large enough for to avoid DoB sort of shite (this rules out iCloud & Yahoo)
- don’t support tags/aliases (this rules out iCloud, GMX, my GreenGeeks-hosted domains)
- don’t support push notifications (which seems to rule out pretty well everyone, so it’s not my biggest concern as I can always manually refresh if auto-refresh times doesn’t work and I’m expecting something imminently)
- Are HEY (which is ruled out because: it costs; doesn’t play nicely in other clients/alongside non-HEY accounts; deals with emails in a way I find quite shit).

I suspect the best way to go will be a custom domain, but does anyone have any experiences with providers who can overcome a lot of the above?
-

1.	I have a non-DoB account which I use as a forwarder for job applications and the like.
2.	Ideally I’d move away from this as well, but I’m involved with various things which require shared documents and spreadsheets among PC and Mac users, and given how decent their office web apps are - especially for collaborating - Google are probably the least of all the evils for now.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I also use gmail for my main email but signed up with protonmail for something else and it seems pretty good. Allows the + tagging and custom domains etc, places privacy and security high up.

It also has calendar stuff if you want to move away from google calendar at the same time. I want to switch but at the same time can't really be bothered.

If you're using a custom domain I'd still pipe it through someone like protonmail (or google, ignoring the main downsides) since they provide a decent client and do all the spam filtering. Running your own mail service from scratch looks more trouble than it's worth honestly.

[touchingcloth]

I’m synced with Google calendar for my phone without using their calendar app. I can’t get away from some level of Google on my phone because we use GSuite at work.

I should have said I’ve ruled out Proton due to their encryption meaning that I’d be forced to use their app on mobile. Does their client support adding non-Proton accounts? Might be worth me having a look if it does, and assuming it stores credentials for them locally rather than I their servers (which ruled out Spark among others). I’d like to be able to use a single client on my phone and Macbook, though phone is the main issue as I’m not too averse to just using webmail elsewhere.

[RenegadeScrew]

I am not sure if you can add other email into Proton, but you can activate IMAP/SMTP and view them in another program. I am not sure you want to be using your own domain, as you'll probably need to use a third party anyway to avoid ending up in everyone's Spam folder.

[touchingcloth]

You can’t add other providers into Proton’s iOS app. You can receive via IMAP, but only on desktop/Android by running their Bridge app which decrypts things and runs an IMAP server locally.

I think iCloud might be my winner here. My main reservations are that I wouldn’t want to feel tied to Apple forever just for the sake of an email, and it doesn’t support sending from alias addresses (though it does support receiving to them.

My main concern is around professionalism. Somehow iCloud feels juvenile/poseur-ish in ways that even Gmail doesn’t. Am I just being fussy, or is that a vibe others get as well? I’m not sure how I’d feel using it on a job application.

[RenegadeScrew]

After I clicked on it, I realised it's a paid feature anyway.  I presume you don't want to pay for email although generally privacy comes at a cost. 

You might find this list helpful. https://prxbx.com/email/

You might get around your name problem by using something like mail.com, which has a lot of domains to choose from.  You should be able to get your name.

[canadagoose]

You can’t add other providers into Proton’s iOS app. You can receive via IMAP, but only on desktop/Android by running their Bridge app which decrypts things and runs an IMAP server locally.

I think iCloud might be my winner here. My main reservations are that I wouldn’t want to feel tied to Apple forever just for the sake of an email, and it doesn’t support sending from alias addresses (though it does support receiving to them.

My main concern is around professionalism. Somehow iCloud feels juvenile/poseur-ish in ways that even Gmail doesn’t. Am I just being fussy, or is that a vibe others get as well? I’m not sure how I’d feel using it on a job application.

The Android app for ProtonMail is pretty good - do you just not like the idea of using a different mail app? I agree with Sebastian that PM is a great service, although you do have to pay if you want a decent amount of storage. iCloud seems decent too and has good pricing options.

(Gmail user here with Outlook and ProtonMail accounts as spares)

[DrGreggles]

Had an Outlook account for about 10 years now.
No issues whatsoever, and I was able to add my old email accounts to the (easily searchable) archive.

[touchingcloth]

The Android app for ProtonMail is pretty good - do you just not like the idea of using a different mail app?

A different app is fine, it’s needing to have multiple apps installed at once which I don’t like. If Proton had a Bridge thing for iOS that’d be fine, likewise if their app could display non-Proton IMAP accounts.