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nsagentyesterday at 10:22 PM17 repliesview on HN

I've need a paying subscriber to Proton since 2018, but I recently canceled my subscription (which ends in November). I just got fed up with the constant bugginess and jankiness of their offerings.

Any suggestions for mail hosting and VPN? I hear good things about Fastmail and mailbox.org (I see they very recently rebranded to just mailbox and revamped their offering).

Also, I've been a heavy user of the SimpleLogin alias service. Any suggestions for easily porting all those accounts to a new provider? Manually changing each and every account to a new email seems painful.


Replies

0xbadcafebeeyesterday at 11:13 PM

Fastmail is fine. It's somewhat limited in its UX, but technically speaking, everything works, and it's snappy. Very few outages. I really like their integrations with calendars, contacts, and mail for 3rd party sites/services. Not a ton of features or deals re: custom domains or multiple users, but it's fine if it's just for yourself. edit They literally -JUST- turned on Offline support for their app and web interface, so my only real complaint is gone. Go with Fastmail.

For a VPN, what do you need it to do? For tinfoil hat privacy stuff, get a VPS in Estonia or something. If you just want a secure tunnel while working remote, get a WiFi access point with Wireguard and Dynamic DNS at your home (it's free plus you probably have more bandwidth).

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GCUMstlyHarmlsyesterday at 11:39 PM

This 9-year-old issue me a bad taste for mailbox...

https://userforum-en.mailbox.org/topic/anti-spoofing-for-cus...

crossroadsguytoday at 5:39 AM

I am a Fastmail customer. Absolutely horrible customer support but pretty solid email. Do not even think about using the "suit" they offer alongside email.

The rebranding and "revamp" is limited to the logo and colour changes :D everything under the hood is still the same good old OX inferiority. Hell, you may never want to use their webmail either (my 99.9999% mail usage is via IMAP clients). They are fine other than that.

Fastmail is pretty good if their price and offerings are not an overkill for you. You should check Runbox as well - really good.

Simple Login alt: addy.io? Fastmail and Mailbox (auto-deletes in 30 days unless you "touch" it :D) also have disposable email as part of email offerings. Don't know about Runbox.

citizenpaultoday at 5:56 AM

Fastmail has an open source API they call jmap. You could probably find or write something that could help convert to the fastmail masked email. I was able to setup an integration with a local llm to read my email and act on it in about an hour.

I like fastmail they seem to have a move slow and don't break things mentality that I like from my email.

idle_zealotyesterday at 10:35 PM

I'm using Fastmail and Mullvad. Both seem to work pretty well and are reasonably priced. You could also host your own on VPSs if you're feeling adventurous.

newscrackertoday at 5:38 AM

For mail hosting, take a look at Posteo.de (no custom domains though), mailbox.org, runbox.com, mailfence, migadu, and cranemail. All these are cheaper and a lot more affordable than something like Fastmail. All of them support IMAP, using which you can move your email elsewhere (or easily backup/have local copies).

cscharenbergtoday at 1:46 AM

I've been on Zoho for my (and my partner's) email for 4+ years and it has been great. Chose them because there is no per-domain charge, so I have like 12 domains on it.

The configurability is extensive in both web app and ios email app. Service has been fast and stable. They rarely change anything in the UI (no random tinkering is what I mean) so it is predictable and easy to use.

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Modified3019today at 12:25 AM

I moved to Fastmail a few years ago. No real complaints, and I’d definitely do it all over again.

That said, because I’ve not experienced any failure, I’ve not experienced how well Fastmail handles failure, which is the real measure of a company.

dunefoxtoday at 5:35 AM

https://tuta.com/

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essephyesterday at 10:39 PM

> constant bugginess and jankiness of their offerings

This is something I had not heard (also have been a paying user for a very long time).

I've never encountered a bug, to my knowledge. I did dislike that when they released photo storage they didn't have a proper search feature.

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8cvor6j844qw_d6today at 2:43 AM

Similar case, I recently migrated from @mozmail to SimpleLogin and wondered if I made the right choice.

I heard using your own domains solves the migration issue but that makes your email pretty identifiable just by looking at your domain.

I wonder whats a suitable replacement candidate after Mozmail and Simple Login? One of the reasons I migrated away from Mozmail to Simple Login was that you can't initiate a email sending, which made it difficult to contact support if needed. Plus Mozmail are on Amazon SES.

const_casttoday at 12:17 AM

My experience is the apps are missing very fundamental features. Which would be fine... If you could use other clients. But you can't, except for email, kind of.

Like, the calendar on mobile doesnt even have a search function. What if I want to know when an event is happening? I just have to scroll and scroll until I find it? Come on now. Also no storage backup in proton drive??? What??? That's, like, 90% of the purpose of proton drive!

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aryonocoyesterday at 11:12 PM

I moved from Proton to Fastmail (and Mullvad for VPN).

I was a a founding paying member of Proton Mail. I loved them and evangelised them for years. But after a decade, the quality of the offering, especially the mail and calendar, is almost a joke, and the company seems very distracted chasing the next big thing (the half baked password manager being one).

Comparing Fastmail’s UI and feature set with Proton, you quickly realise they are leagues apart.

And no Fastmail doesn’t provide e2e encryption. For that I use Signal, and for the few occasions where I need e2e encryption in email, I use PGP.

My only wish is that there was more client support for JMAP protocol. Even thunderbird doesn’t support it, and I can’t go back to IMAP because I like labels. Thankfully Fastmail’s own web interface is so good it is not a big issue.

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DanOpcodetoday at 12:19 AM

I recently moved from Gmail to Migadu and started to use my own domain instead. Works great so far

2cents5ewe27366yesterday at 10:49 PM

I've been happy with Startmail, good customer service, they don't offer any of the non-email cloud services though.

calvinmorrisontoday at 12:06 AM

Fastmail is a good product with technical chops, contributes to open source and cares generally about being good members of the international email space, standards etc.

Fastmails interface is very plain, and it works very fast and works well.

They support a plethora of ways to do mail and have many advanced users so their mail support is very good, maybe close to running your own mail server without having to deal with rbls and getting spamlisted

mulmenyesterday at 10:48 PM

I use Fastmail and I’m mostly happy with it. Their design team is thoughtless so their web and mobile offerings are disappointing. The mail hosting itself seems to be excellent though.