Gsuite legacy users have to pay – what is a better option for a family?

Question

Just saw this HN submission[0], about 'G Suite legacy free' users have to start paying.I've been using this for so many years now for our family of five members. To move away from this would be quite an effort.However, I've been contemplating moving away from Gmail for quite some time now and this might be just the push I needed.We hardly use Google drive or any of the other services so it should not be too painful. For all of our other services, we have been using Microsoft Office 365, which comes with Word, Excel, etc. Since this is a personal (family) plan [1] which we subscribe to, Microsoft does give an option for custom domains but only via GoDaddy [2].Since the domain isn't registered with GoDaddy, this isn't an option. And the Microsoft 365 Business Basic Plan at $5/user/month doesn't give any offline office products, so the option would be to go for the next tier of $8.25/user/month.I would prefer to just move my email to some other provider since we already have Microsoft Outlook on all our machines.It would also be a bonus to have a good online UI but that is not a priority as of now.What alternatives are out there for people like us?[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29996432[1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-365-home/cfq7ttc0k5dm?activetab=pivot:overviewtab&rtc=1[2]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalized-email-address-in-microsoft-365-75416a58-b225-4c02-8c07-8979403b427b#:~:text=As%20a%20benefit%20of%20your,with%20your%20Outlook.com%20mailbox.Edit: I also found Zoho Premium Email which is sounding really attractivehttps://www.zoho.com/workplace/flexible-pricing.html?src=mailpricing

helph67 · Accepted Answer

I have used Fastmail for many years and recommend them for their quality product and service. https://www.fastmail.com/ They offer a free 30 days trial.

neogodless · Answer

No affiliation but I use this for a client domain - NameCheap private email hosting. Very inexpensive options for most users. (Even my oldest Google Workspace account with 100,000+ emails uses under 2GB, though I have gone in and deleted out emails with large attachments.)
Supports custom domain names and catch-all email addresses.
https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/email/ As little as $1.24 / month per user.

mongrelion · Answer

If you host your domain with Gandi [1] you get 2x mail boxes of 3GB each included in the price plus a bunch of (unlimited?) aliases. The web interface is sogo [1] which is very decent but you can always fall back to Thunderbird or any other email client.
I just migrated away from Zoho because since I'm already hosting my domain in Gandi, I thought that I might as well...
[1]: https://www.gandi.net/en/domain/email
[2]: https://www.sogo.nu/

mobilio · Answer

Another alternative is Yandex Mail for domain: https://yandex.com/support/connect/add-domain.htmlAnd another one is Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-email-routing/

aranelsurion · Answer

Being in a similar position, I'm considering iCloud+ Mail myself. It's cheap, comes with custom domain support and if you're already in the Apple ecosystem, could integrate nicely.Their web UI looks quite.. simple and likely lacking in features, it might still be just fine to use it with an IMAP client.

andreinwald · Answer

Free mail service for custom domains - G Suite alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30006596

leros · Answer

I have several small businesses with their own emails not worth paying $10/mo for in GSuite. I use ForwardMX to forward them all to one email account.