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- Hacker News
- I'm a happy user of Fastmail, but I would prefer a properly EU-hosted service. (Fastmail now have data storage in the EU, but much of their infrastructure is in the US and data still passes through there - something that they're open about, but I'd prefer not to happen). The last time I looked at mailbox.org the offer wasn't nearly as good as Fastmail in terms of storage, catch-all email addresses etc, but I took another look recently and it seems to be better. Does anyone here have first-hand experience of mailbox.org?by frereubu
- EU hosted because you want the government to spy on your emails?
If you want privacy you go with a Swiss provider like Proton.
by carlosjobim - They're also headquartered in Australia, which is very friendly, privacy wise, with the US isn't it?
If you're not in one of those places and you want to move from gmail you might as well pick a safer jurisdiction.
by nottorp - I use mailboxorg its acceptable.
The webmail has io.ox in the URL so I assume it is hosted ox (www.ox.io of softwares) which is SIGNIFICANTLY worse performance and usability wise compared to the Fastmail webmail -- I don`t use SMTP/IMAP so I do not know what that is like. Routinely on restricted networks that only allow HTTP/HTTPS so it is a webmail only experience opinionated in mine.
by kay_o - I've used mailbox.org for a few years and been quite happy with it. Its definitely more basic than Fastmail or Proton, but it meets my needs perfectly.
They did recently increase their storage from 10GB to 20GB (along with a price increase from 30 to 36EUR/year). They also have had catch-all addresses as long as I've used the service, you just setup an email alias for it.
by starky - As Fastmail themselves have pointed out many times, e-mail is inherently a multi-party activity with both parties holding a copy of the e-mails. Aside from the microscopic amount of people GPGing their e-mail and sending it over good servers, your e-mail is as private as the other party treats it. Which isn't very much. And you can't do anything about that.
You want private and / or anonymous communications? Don't use e-mail.
by jorvi - > Going and updating my accounts with a new address was easier than I was expecting
Is this really true? Out of the probably many hundreds of online accounts I use I can think of very few that actually let you change the underlying email (which in almost ever case is the username) without having to create a brand new account.
by paxys - The majority of mine are changeable, but the process is typically convoluted. The two that I have run into so far that I can't change are OpenRouter and Ecobee.
- Oh yeah. I did this in 2021. I got the list out of 1Pass and just did them in small batches. I hit a few that wouldn’t let you change but nothing important.
I had all the important stuff done in a week.
by coffeefirst - I didn't keep exact numbers, but of the ~400 Hide My Email aliases I have, probably 85% of them allowed changing email in the online self-serve, 10% required contacting customer support, and maybe 5% needed a new account.by Marsymars
- I was able to change it on every single service I use except for a well known Canadian pizza chain.by sodapopcan
- Most of the sites I have accounts on did let me change my email. Looking at my password manager, about 1/5 of those that use email for login don't use my current email.
I wouldn't say it is easier than expected though, logging in, changing your email, confirming the change, and then making sure the password manager was updated was a bit of work.
by starky - Can you cite an example of a big, well-known, etc service that enforces a 'you can't change your email address' rule? I haven't really seen this sort of thing in the wild to be honest. Maybe one or two over 20+ years? I think the norm is using a username or an internal identification number (such as an UUID). It is rare the email address is actually used as the primary key to identify an account.by kiwijamo
- When I made the switch from @Gmail to my own email domains hosted by Fastmail, I never had any problem changing the email on my 100+ accounts with various services.
That was about five years ago, I imagine it might have been more difficult in the past, say 10+ years ago.
by rationalist - Related:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375016 Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left (moddedbear.com) 75 days ago, 828 comments
by neogodless - Fastmail is fantastic, I've been a very happy customer for at least a couple years now.
Masked emails have been so nice for throwaway/sketchy sites. It's done everything I could ask, would highly recommend for anyone looking to make the switch from elsewhere.
by totallygeeky - A shout out to the fastmail management who acquired pobox.com and kept the domain going, leveraging the fastmail infra.
I was really pleased my decades long investment in @short.name paid off, and I have been able to keep a short @pobox.com instance, which I undoubtedly would lose in the migration into @fastmail.com
Aside from the vanity aspect, the distinction between a real mail provider and a stable forwarding service is a useful one. Thank you Bron (and others) for keeping things going.
by ggm - On behalf of all of us here, you're welcome!by brongondwana
- I have a blog post that I've been meaning to write about why I moved from Fastmail to Gmail. I love Fastmail as a product, but I realised it wasn't what I wanted anymore from my email.
I think there's a tension between explicit and implicit organisation. If you want a really good email client, Fastmail is great, but while I did care about that at one point in my life, what I want now is really just the big box at the top of the email telling me about my package arriving today or showing my boarding pass. Fastmail is excellent for explicit organisation, but its implicit organisation isn't great. Gmail is the other way around. I don't like the Gmail UI or any of the organisation features, but I also don't really need to use them.
by danpalmer - but, you're going to pay either way (assuming you have a custom domain).by dfee
- This is basically what my take has been after chasing everything else for way too long. Though I've not moved back and Gmail honestly isn't something I can now move back to (and no tracking/etc are not the reason). I just wrote a too long comment and I realise now most of that you've said in your short comment.
Email for me is just a communication tool that the world still uses. Nothing else.
by shelled - If you want to be tagged and tracked in that way then there is no better platform than Google services for sure.by righthand
- I think the next paradigm shift in software is going to be LLM-inferred user intent. Serving just what you really want, when you want it. Currently all inside whatever interface the LLM provider offers, but soon whatever interface the LLM decides is appropriate. People won't use apps anymore. Your LLM will tell you which emails you need to address, and will automatically triage the rest (and action those which can be actioned autonomously). You won't navigate to Facebook. You'll ask your LLMs what your friends are up to. You won't navigate to TikTok. You'll ask the LLM for some funny videos (or whatever you're in the mood for). We won't need to structure data hierarchically anymore. Just dump it somewhere, an LLM vectorises it, and it's super easy to retrieve later in whichever domain one needs it.
The internet is about to undergo radical transformation.
by Gareth321 - My big problem with leaving Google is I’ve clicked on far too many ‘login with google’ boxes. In retrospect this was a mistake as it now ties my own domain to google basically forever, but lots of sites don’t even have the option to undo it.by CJefferson
- Hmmm, that is an interesting pickle. Some are probably fairly easy to swap over but it is so dependent on each service.
Alas, short term convenience can lead to long term troubles.
by ColdStream - I was paying for Google Business for my family, and then decided to switch to iCloud, but left only my own account on Google, because of that reason. Also, some services requires you to log in with a Business Google account, regular gmail accounts don't work (ie: Granola).by lardissone
- Go here to see all of the apps linked to your account: https://myaccount.google.com/linkedapps
Then go through each service and email them to have them try and move your account to new accounts with a traditional username/password login. Some might even be able to change your login method to username/password without requiring a new account!
by nunez - i’m not sure i’ll ever delete my google accounts, but my goal was to stop using them. if someday an email comes in, it’ll still get auto forwarded, and if i need to login, i’ll have access to it.by laweijfmvo
- Same; I was a sucker for GitHub SSO as well. I have no idea how to unwind it all, but (like Google SSO) it certainly had its benefits while I was using it. I remember there was an “open” SSO provider - OpenID maybe - back in the 2000s when a federated identity made interacting with blogs and such much easier. It’s the same with GitHub today, with various 3rd parties who need access to your code. They don’t have a “give me an git+ssh url” and so you almost need GitHub.by threecheese
- You can change the MX records of the domain to point at Fastmail (or some other provider) without losing the ability to log into associated "Google Workspace" accounts.by greyface-