Hi everybody,
I’ve had a domain name at Gandi.net for quite a while, which included 5 email addresses as well, hosted on my domain. Now they’re however discontinuing this offer, it will now be €3,99 per month per mailbox.
So, I’ve been looking around a bit. I need a service that allows me to connect it to my own domain name, that actually allows IMAP instead of requiring a special client, and preferably should allow me to put up several mailboxes under the same account since I currently have mailboxes for some of my family members.
Security is not a concern since this is only intended to be used for the email I send and receive under my actual legal name, and I know better than to use email for confidential material.
Zoho Mail seems like a good deal, since they have 10GB per user for only €1,13 a month. I’m just afraid that my emails might end up in spam filters since they’re based in India.
https://proton.me/ Are worth a look at. The allow custom domains and I believe have IMAP support. Additionally they encrypt everything they store so are very good from a privacy side (at least as far as you can be private using email).
They only sorta provide IMAP. You need to run Proton Bridge on your computer and that program will connect to their service and provide a local IMAP connection to your mail app of choice. It’s all a bit hacky but works well enough.
That’s a sign that they aren’t goofing on the encrypted part. If done right, they can’t decrypt your emails to hand them over on IMAP, so a bridge would be necessary to decrypt on your equipment, then hand off the decrypted mail to your IMAP client. It’s nice they offer that solution.
What’s the point with emails that were transmitted unencrypted over the Internet right before that? It’s like sending a post card via mail and then putting it into a safe at the receiver’s side. Sure it’s secure there, but that’s entirely pointless.
It’s a sign they use non-standard tech and lock you in progressively… while touting encryption at rest as a big advantage, when it doesn’t mean anything for email.
The Proton bubble is one evil acquisition away from bursting.
I use proton for my domains email too, but consider that their integration with other services is pretty bad. I haven’t found a proper tool for calenders sync, and email sync with thunderbird or other clients requires a extra app.
The pro of choosing them is that you get all their services: VPN, password manager, storage, calendar.
If you have iCloud+ this is included and you can use Apples Mail app
Fastmail is awesome. If you want to set it up as receive only, you can set up CloudFlare email forwarding for free and have it forward to your regular account.
I’ve got Fastmail set up for myself (more tech savvy) and for my wife (it needs to ”just work” and easy like Google), and I’d say it’s a solid balance between wanting to do a bit more with the email and a rock solid just works email. At $5/mo (or $50/yr) per user, it’s not cheap, but I think the service is quite good and I’ve been extremely happy with the service provided. I also never have issues with SMTP access for my home server, I don’t think my mail has ever been sent to spam for any of my family or even sending reminders to my work email.
Their iOS app has also replaced the default / native iOS mail app because it’s just that good, which is a nice plus.
The ability to see up sieve filtering is great too. I’ve got a massive script that automatically sorts and files away most of my emails.
I want to like Proton Mail, but their sieve filtering kind of sucks, and with large mailboxes it slows down to an almost unusable amount.
Be aware that the Australian government’s Assistance and Access bill allows them to compel local companies like Fastmail, or even employees of local companies without the awareness of their employers, to implement backdoors in their software without informing anyone about it.
I’ve used zoho before years ago, it’s pretty good. I currently do use proton personally as it has a good mix of stuff, including a VPN.
