Anything better?

  • squire3@lemmy.world
    1·
    14 hours ago

    Are there any good free alternatives to Gmail or do all the good ones cost money?

    I assume so since Gmail makes all its money selling YOU…

  • hanabatake@lemmy.ml
    13·
    2 days ago

    This dude compare quite a lot of email providers in term of privacy. I do not necessarily agree with all its critics but it is a useful resource:

    https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/email

    I would recommend to buy your own domain in case you need to change again. That way, you’re not trapped by your email provider and you can change in case you’re not satisfied anymore

  • Breve@pawb.social
    1·
    1 day ago

    I’ve been moving over to Fastmail. Easy to use, tons of features, great price. 👍

    Also quick tip regardless of which provider you end up on: Register a domain name for yourself and use it for your email address. This way if you want to change email providers again in the future or even host it yourself, you can take your domain name and addresses with you.

  • fragrantvegetable@sopuli.xyz
    9·
    2 days ago

    I’m using Infomaniak Mail and am fairly happy so far. They are based in Switzerland and I get custom domain + 5 user accounts for 1.50 EUR/month. I’ve tried other providers but coming from Gmail I like that their webmail displays email conversation like Google does whereas most other providers just run rainloop or roundcube where threading support isn’t quite the same.

    Their android app is open source too and can be installed from fdroid. It can be a bit sluggish sometimes though, but K9mail/Thunderbird works fine too.

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
    82·
    2 days ago

    Murena mail, Nextcloud mail, Tuta, Proton, aything is better as GMail, only Hotmail is worse.

    • jesse@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      2 days ago

      I was looking at moving to Proton as this all went down. Those plans are on hold.

      After reading through it, I am having trouble figuring out how to read his comments because I wonder if there is some different cultural references or simplification going on between the Swis exec and American readers.

      It was absolutely a stupid comment and was then the response was handed badly, but I don’t know that I read it as aligning with Fascism.

      This is the best writeup I can find: https://archive.ph/2025.01.29-213655/https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e

      • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
        27·
        3 days ago

        Domains are cheap, buy one and then you can jump between whatever services aren’t caught up in the outrage of the moment.

        • compostgoblin@slrpnk.netEnglish
          31·
          2 days ago

          Ding ding! After the Proton fiasco, I got a domain and have started moving my accounts to that email, which connects to Tuta

        • owenfromcanada@lemmy.worldEnglish
          121·
          3 days ago

          I did, but I already paid for two years (plus did a bunch of work to migrate files over). So I’ll be here for a bit.

          • sylphrin@sh.itjust.works
            51·
            3 days ago

            I’m in exactly the same boat. Swapped both my Dropbox and emails over to Proton about 6 months ago and paid for 2 years, sigh

              • priapus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                61·
                2 days ago

                Supporting Republicans (probably because they’re porn bans drive VPN purchases), adding AI features and a crypto wallet while their drive still lacks basic features, and some other smaller stiff like their shitty article about Deepseak.

    • en1gma@lemmy.ml
      71·
      3 days ago

      What’s up with Proton?

      I never trusted them 100% so I never paid for their services and didn’t really follow up with their privacy and stuff. Just used their free services from time to time.

      • toastal@lemmy.ml
        31·
        2 days ago

        Wants you in their slow web UIs. Requires a middleman application just to use IMAP—which requires payment. Paid plans are pretty expensive if all you need additionally is CalDAV/CardDAV many will offer for $2 or less a month instead of $5.

        …& these are gripes before the right-leaning heel turn.

  • Yozul@beehaw.org
    8·
    2 days ago

    I’ve been using mailbox.org, and it’s pretty great. It’s cheap, it’s private, and it works well.

    I like the idea of e2ee email, but the way they all work it’s pretty much a completely useless feature for most people, myself included, and I also like using Thunderbird. It’s just not worth the trade off for something I’d basically never get any use out of anyway.

    • notfromhere@lemmy.ml
      6·
      2 days ago

      Just make sure your domain registrar is renewable from an alternate email in case shit hits the fan you don’t want to be locked out if something interrupts the service and bow your email doesn’t work and you can’t verify who you are… because… your email doesn’t work.

      • Dima@feddit.uk
        3·
        2 days ago

        The basic steps are:

        1. Register a domain of your choice
        2. Select who you are setting up your email with (plenty of different providers, Zoho has a basic free plan that would be suitable for a single domain and only a few users at most; Google, outlook etc. also sell services for custom domains)
        3. Configure the DNS records for your domain to whatever your chosen email provider says (MX records to point to the mail server and some records for DMARC & DKIM to prevent your email being spoofed)
        4. Test it all works and start using it

        I’m not going to write a full tutorial so if it sounds interesting I suggest you do more research. The email hosting is typically focused at businesses as they are most likely to be wanting to host email on a custom domain.

    • thirdBreakfast@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      I started doing this, maybe 15 years ago, but if I look through my spam folder now, most of it is to the email address I used before I began using unique addresses (the rest is to random addresses in my domains that I’ve never used).

      My hypotheses from that are that

      • there is probably less ‘selling of email lists’ going on than we think
      • I’m less interested in dubious internet sites than I used to be
      • or (most likely) these days, your internet thing has to be offering me some real value if I’m going to consciously give you any of my data.
    • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
      2·
      3 days ago

      MXRoute is what I use as my domain’s email server and it’s good enough. The included browser email clients (it offers multiple) are sort of trash but if you just use your own it’s perfect. It’s pretty cheap too

    • beirdobaggins@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 days ago

      I really like and use fastmail.

      Although I have just started to try to completely de-google. Its a bit frustrating that they don’t offer an apk download. I put in a ticket today saying as much.

      They seemed to understand,but basically just said that all I can do is to use the browser version.

      I’m using aurora store to download their official google play version for now but it feels icky.

      They are obviously now the only ones that I am having trouble with but I thought that they might be more willing to help people distance themselves from Gmail and Google, as Gmail is their obvious competition.

      • adavis@lemmy.world
        8·
        3 days ago

        The Fastmail app itself is mostly a wrapper around the web app with integrations for notifications etc. Sans notifications it works perfectly as an installed PWA on Android. Ive been using it like that for months.

        Alternatively there are lots of IMAP apps available. I was testing Thunderbird for Android recently and that works pretty well too.

        Disclaimer: I work for Fastmail. But any opinions I have on here are my own.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      22·
      3 days ago

      I was with fastmail for more than a decade.

      They’re the best platform.

      Their spam protection is so-so. Not as good as Gmail but better than some others.

      Their pricing is egregiously expensive.

      Their tech support is painfully slow for anything above chatGPT level.

  • Perry@lemy.lol
    381·
    3 days ago

    disroot and autistici have been providing decentralised communication services (like email) free of cost for many years. They are both run by activists and survive on donations, and they don’t spy on you or get any money from your data. Also they run freedom-respecting software, so all their code is publicly auditable.

  • Yaky@slrpnk.netEnglish
    24·
    3 days ago

    Mailbox.org

    Mailbox Standard compared to ProtonMail Plus:

    • Cheaper (€30/yr vs ~€50/yr; if you don’t need custom domains, €1/mo)
    • More aliases (25 on mailbox, 50 on own domain. Proton has 10 TOTAL - why custom domain aliases are counted against Proton ones does not make sense to me.)
    • Support for any number of custom domains AFAICT (Proton Plus supports only one)
    • Trial account is not allowed to send emails, so fewer issues with services blacklisting proton.me and protonmail.com for spam (hasn’t happened to me, but I have heard of some cases)
    • Can use a regular email client (security tradeoff for E2EE messages - but there already were plenty of discussions on whether E2EE has benefits, especially sending mail to other services)