Best Gmail Alternative?

>I keep seeing threads on HN about

Gmail alternatives. I’m not sure if anybody else noticed this but every week or every other week there’s the same thread about alternatives. Sure I can flag it but I don’t get it, the suggestions are always exactly the same, no difference whatsoever. Is it so that people just don’t like to use the search function?

I really like using Fastmail. For raw features, it's got a contact sync, calendar sync, custom domain suppport, a snappy webmail client, push notifs (which Gmail does not support outside the official app), a robust spam filtering language, integration with 1Password that lets you make per-site masked email addresses, and a lot more.

As for security: I only care about account security, not confidentiality. As a friend said to me recently "as far as I'm concerned, emails are digital postcards". For account security, Fastmail has 2FA and revocable per-client passwords.

I've bought Proton Mail. But I don't like the fact that I depend on their mobile app instead of being able to use K9-Mail and their proton-bridge on desktop to connect to Thunderbird. Also they don't allow you to initiate an email with "From:" begin an alias (like "me+somealias@mydomain.com", you can only use "me@mydomain.com") (workaround is doing it from Thunderbird). I even requested this as a feature but their Support rejected the proposal.

Because of those I think I'll switch to something else (maybe Fastmail or Migadu) when my subscription ends in two years (I bought it with a 2 year discount and a sale).

> I keep seeing threads on HN about people getting locked out of their Google accounts for automated errors like the .DS_Store issue, uploading blank text files,

Note that you've misinterpreted those threads. As far as I can tell, those were not reports of anyone being locked out of the account. They were just notified that the sharing of those files over Google Drive had been disabled.

I have been a happy paying Zoho customer for years. $4/month, and I have a dozen domain names setup and tons of aliases and catchalls.

If you have a problem, customer service is responsive and helpful… actual humans.

If it's just a personal mailbox, Proton Mail has been amazing.

It it's a custom domain or business emails, I've been using Zoho Mail for a couple of years and it has been fantastic. It's also the most reasonable pricing I've seen at $1 per user per month (compared with GSuite at $6 per user per month).

I have enjoyed Outlook, though I can't say I've spoken to their customer service.

Otherwise if you go with a smaller service and use it to send messages to Gmail recipients, there is a good chance that Google will automatically reject your messages as unsolicited spam, even if you were emailed first and even if you have no URLs in your message.

More to the point on your question, you could create a second account on Google or another service, then automatically forward all of your email to that. If you get locked out of your primary account, you will at least have a backup somewhere

I am using Posteo. You pay 1 euro a month, it runs on renewable energy and it's a European company (German to be exact). Supports everything that's needed for privacy and security. And it allows you to create as many aliases as you want, for 20 cents per month (I found this feature very useful).

Just choose one that pleases you / make sense for you.

I mean, email is federated, let's use it this nice feature wisely and stop trying to get everybody on the same service.

To answer your question I'd vote for Tutanota or Protonmail.

I've been a happy FastMail customer for 8 years now. Migration from Gmail was a breeze too!

The only feature I've missed in all this time is schedule-send which they seem to have indefinitely put on their backlog.

I like using IMAP, so ProtonMail with their required IMAP bridge and mobile app is a no-go for me. I like Migadu, but as mentioned in the past in several threads, they have a mixed track record (although they have been good to me). Their webmail is decent enough (RainLoop), I use Thunderbird to back up my e-mails locally, and K-9 Mail on the phone (awesome FOSS app).

My next choice after Migadu would likely be mailbox.org

Namecheap supports webmail on their mail accounts that come with their domains. It's cheap (approx $10-$20/yr) and at privateemail.com. Private whois and unlimited "catchall" addresses for spam isolation included. It's good and reliable, though I prefer Thunderbird to access it from my computer.

Happy Fastmail user here. I tried protonmail, but the lack of real full text search killed it for me.

Fastmail. And you can use your own domain, which you own, rather than a domain someone else owns.

I use Yandex. It is not my primary account, I use Gmail for that. I use Yandex for a grease trap. If I need to sign up for an account just to read an article, use Yandex. If I need to buy something from a seldom used website, use Yandex. You get the idea.

I'd recommend an own domain with a hoster that has decent email service.

If the service ever leaves you, you leave the service. Nothing they own you cant host on another service provider. In case your email gets hacked you still have another layer of ownership.

This comes up a lot and the suggestions are always the same, but here is my question:

Do any of the alternatives have priority inbox? I've spent years training my priority inbox in Gmail and it works nearly flawlessly now.

Does any paid service even come close?

Im using mailbox.org right now, which costs 1€ per month. Only went down once in three years for about 30 minutes. No other issues so far (except that the webdav path is insanely long when using webdav for stuff like keepass).

Any standard email host with IMAP access and a custom domain will do. I like Migadu.

So, given the last parenthetical statement of OP, I think I'd like to counter and ask folks here: why should I host my own mail server?

I switched to Protonmail a few months ago.

They are okayish.

Their security features are awesome. The onion app is outdated. The UI is generally a bit meh. The mobile app sucks.

Any with your own domain, because then you can change the provider later if you make a mistake

ProtonMail + Simplelogin/AnonAddy (alias service)

I use fastmail and have been really happy with it.

PurelyMail

ProtonMail

protonmail