Ask KN: What email service should I choose to use?

[pierreneter]

Hello,

I forgot my password at Google mail. They do not allow me to reset. This is an error of the password recovery system, but they didn't listen to me. I want to switch to another mail service provider. Please advise me to choose one. I tried creating my own mail server with DigitalOcean but they didn't open port 25 for me, so I immediately deleted the droplet. I'm really confused. The email has never been so complicated.

Thank you, guys.

[quickthrower2]

I’m preparing for what happened to you. Basically:

1. Get your own domain. 2. Get a half decent provider (zoho has a free plan, I use them they see quite good)

Keep a zero inbox by deleting and downloading emails.

If you get locked out again just change your DNS. Just make sure you don’t get locked out of the domain name!

[dngray]

I would say one of these providers:

* https://www.privacytools.io/providers/email/

* https://web.archive.org/web/20190619003906/https://www.priva...

Ultimately free without encouragement to pay is not good as it will involve the platform monetizing by selling your data in some way.

Should also note at the moment, not all providers are equal, for example posteo.de doesn't allow you to use your own domain whereas some of the others do. Protonmail doesn't currently have calendars although that's coming soon https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/wiki/dev-status Tutanota does not allow for IMAP/SMTP (you must use a browser or their client).

There's also this issue where privacytools.io plan to expand the information about each provider. https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io/issues/603...

[swtrs]

I quite like Fastmail. I switched from Gmail five years ago and have had no complaints.

[dngray]

> I quite like Fastmail. I switched from Gmail five years ago and have had no complaints.

I have heard fastmail has a rather good user interface. Gmail's is terribly slow these days.

They also are the only provider I know of that currently implements ARC (Authenticated Received Chain) http://arc-spec.org/ and are big proponents of JMAP https://jmap.io

If you're not bothered by the fact they operate in a FVEY country US/AU then they are an option too.

What I do like about Mailbox is they let me use my own domain (posteo.de does not).

They also implement DANE, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT. They use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Xchange which allows for things like Guard (temporary mailbox for recipients, they click a link write their message into the browser). They also have a @secure.mailbox.org alias that will force TLS, (not opportunistic).

Additionally they have inbox encryption which will encrypt anything you get in your inbox save in sent (via imap) with a sieve filter that uses your public key. You can keep the private one in your key ring locally.

ProtonMail has their bridge which is supposed to allow full body search (something which is kind of hard when you pgp crypt all your email), however I have read varying responses on the stability of that.

Tutanota has no API access, you must use their email client, web browser. Protonmail has contacts, but no calendars yet so you might still want to use something like https://www.etesync.com or https://radicale.org on your own server.

[zhte415]

Google messed up my email account when they were changing something in Google for Domains (this was a free Google for Domains account, when those were free, and a personal domain, I was an earlyish adopter) and were merging Google For Domain and GMail accounts. There was no support on being locked from the account. Fortunately, having bounced around hotmail etc two decades ago, I had the foresight to register my own personal domain name, and had a backup of mails.

Have your own domain name.

Don't use your registrar to host your email, or website (interesting and wise advice from Dreamhost, a similar amount of time ago).

Running a mailserver is a pain, to be frank, unless you're in it to learn. A paid 3rd party with an SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a good option, and perhaps a privacy slant too. Perhaps Protonmail?

[auslegung]

I've in the process of switching from gmail to mailfence. What I like about mailfence is it has email, contacts, calendar, and cloud storage, plus it's secure. I'm only beginning the process so I can't yet say they're great, but I'd check them out. Or protonmail, fastmail, and others are good, too.

[the_common_man]

For email, you can use Cloudron from the DO marketplace.

DO opens up port 25 by raising a support ticket.

[dngray]

> I tried creating my own mail server with DigitalOcean but they didn't open port 25 for me

> DO opens up port 25 by raising a support ticket.

Should also note many of the DO IPs are on blacklists so you'll probably have issues with mail being delivered if you do that.

[pierreneter]

Everyone, do you know which server provider allows opening port 25?

[halcyonl]

Sad story :(