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Old 11 Feb 2022, 08:25 AM   #1
audelair
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Unhappy The hardest things to find in an email provider?

As a Google Workspace Legacy potential refugee, I'm realizing how hard it is to find a perfect email provider. I've done so many free trials and even setup mail servers on VPS's to try different solutions. Here are some of the hardest things to find, that I discovered, and I'm wondering if there are a few providers I might be missing out on.

Affordable Pricing Model:
It's common to have a few users who just casually use email and for which it's tough to justify a high monthly fee. Some of the providers that make this a non-issue:
  • MXRoute and Purely Mail come to mind, where number of accounts/aliases/domains do not matter. Only storage space used (i.e. with MXRoute)..
  • Cloudron Email Server and other easy docker-based installations (Mailcow).
  • Fastmail isn't perfect, but it's nice that casual users can get on the $3/month plan and still use the custom domain of someone on a more expensive plan.

Feature: Fetching from Other Accounts:
It's so nice to have an account that fetches (via IMAP or POP) and also sends from other accounts using custom SMTP settings. I'm only aware of Google Workspace, Fastmail, and Zoho being able to do this. Any others?

Good customer service:
I've already had a bit of disappointment in Google Workspace's customer service and I've never been that impressed with Fastmail's in the past. Not sure if it's any better these days, but my takeaway from other people's experiences is that it's not great. The best customer service I've had with some of the free trials I've tried is ServerMX, Purely Mail, and EasyDNS's EasyMail.

Good Forwarding Feature:
This may not be a big deal if the first issue (Pricing Model) is a non-issue, i.e. with MXRoute or Purely Mail. Simple set up a mailboxes and have people retrieve (via POP) on their consumer Gmail account or something. But otherwise, it's nice to have good forwarding features for people who want to use the custom domain but don't want to pay for an additional user. Fastmail's alias forwarding is nice, and it's pretty cool you can turn on sender rewriting scheme (SRS) if you want. Most places either have it or don't (i.e. Google Workspace does not use SRS).

Very nice Webmail and App
This might be the hardest to achieve, unless you are totally cool with Roundcube. But Fastmail and Google Workspace, to me, are the only two games in town. I haven't really tried any other webmails that I really like. I haven't tried Protonmail mainly because I still want to access and backup my mail with open standards like IMAP, etc. I might need to give Zoho another try, as it has been many years since I tried it.

Calendar, Contacts, etc
Not every provider has CardDAV and CalDAV, so this is where Fastmail, Google Workspace, Zoho are among the better options. A lot of the other providers (ServerMX, Gandhi) that have this use SoGO, but I really dislike SoGO's interface.

If Google Workspace was cheaper, they probably tick the most boxes. But I'm reluctant to use them due to the steep cost $6/month/user. Fastmail is a little expensive too, and maybe if they had better customer service, they would tick enough boxes for me. In some way or other, all the other providers are non-starters due to a lack of critical features.

Any other email providers I should look at? And thoughts on other hard-to-find features of email providers?
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Old 11 Feb 2022, 08:56 AM   #2
TenFour
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Maybe not what you want to do, but it is very easy to use a provider like Purelymail just for the email part of things and then get all the other stuff by fetching the mail to a free Gmail account, giving you the nice calendar, contacts, email apps, etc. you want. Of course there is no customer service with free Gmail. Another option you don't mention is Microsoft, providing the potential for email, calendar, app, and even some customer service. iCloud+ email is another option if you're in the Apple ecosystem. It can essentially be free if you are already paying for extra iCloud storage. Here in the USA with the popularity of iPhones anyway I would suggest iCloud+ is the best solution for those families who want domain email for the least cost and the least hassle, unless they already pay for a Microsoft 365 family plan, which includes everything you might need. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft's email due to its terrible spam filtering that routinely puts junk in your inbox while putting valuable emails into your spam folder no matter what you do. There's also Zoho that provides the whole kit and kaboodle: email, apps, calendar, contacts, office, etc. From my reading of various forums I think there is a very wide variety of legacy G Suite refugees with very different requirements and use cases, so no single solution jumps out as the best one. Some are just individuals, others have families that were in it just for domain email, others are small businesses, while still others were essentially creating email services by supplying accounts to many others. There isn't one size that fits all with email.
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Old 11 Feb 2022, 11:41 AM   #3
audelair
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
Maybe not what you want to do, but it is very easy to use a provider like Purelymail just for the email part of things and then get all the other stuff by fetching the mail to a free Gmail account, giving you the nice calendar, contacts, email apps, etc. you want. Of course there is no customer service with free Gmail. Another option you don't mention is Microsoft, providing the potential for email, calendar, app, and even some customer service. iCloud+ email is another option if you're in the Apple ecosystem. It can essentially be free if you are already paying for extra iCloud storage. Here in the USA with the popularity of iPhones anyway I would suggest iCloud+ is the best solution for those families who want domain email for the least cost and the least hassle, unless they already pay for a Microsoft 365 family plan, which includes everything you might need. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft's email due to its terrible spam filtering that routinely puts junk in your inbox while putting valuable emails into your spam folder no matter what you do. There's also Zoho that provides the whole kit and kaboodle: email, apps, calendar, contacts, office, etc. From my reading of various forums I think there is a very wide variety of legacy G Suite refugees with very different requirements and use cases, so no single solution jumps out as the best one. Some are just individuals, others have families that were in it just for domain email, others are small businesses, while still others were essentially creating email services by supplying accounts to many others. There isn't one size that fits all with email.
Yea, Microsoft and iCloud are definitely worth a consideration. I'm hesitant to get more locked into the Apple ecosystem, though. Microsoft probably is worth looking into, but I don't like the Hotmail spam filtering and thinking Office 365 might be the same. Definitely no one-size-fits-all solution and I'm thinking I'll stay with Google Workspace until the 1 year 50% discount is up. But I already feel like I have one foot out the door.
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Old 11 Feb 2022, 08:09 PM   #4
TenFour
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Microsoft is offering legacy G Suite refugees 60% off their Business Basic plans that provides email and only the online versions of Office.
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Old 11 Feb 2022, 09:38 PM   #5
jeffpan
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Agree that for webmail user experience only gmail/FM are kings.
from my feeling all other webmail are worse.
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Old 11 Feb 2022, 10:07 PM   #6
TenFour
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Originally Posted by jeffpan View Post
Agree that for webmail user experience only gmail/FM are kings.
from my feeling all other webmail are worse.
Outlook webmail is fine, except for Microsoft's terrible spam filtering. If you like really simple, check out Onmail's web interface. They have a free account with 10GB of storage. But, their domain email starts at around $50 per year I believe. So many domain email options utilize Roundcube that you are in luck if you like that webmail (I don't)! I haven't used it in a few years, but I recall that Zoho's webmail and app had decent interfaces. I also haven't used it much, but Apple's webmail and app are fine if you like simple.
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Old 11 Feb 2022, 10:58 PM   #7
JeremyNicoll
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So many domain email options utilize Roundcube that you are in luck if you like that webmail (I don't)!
What do you dislike about it?

I use it (at a provider who handle the email that I don't send to FM). There's only two things that really bug me:

(1) that if you rename a folder any rule that referred to the old name no longer works.

(2) that when a new rule is added it starts off at the bottom of the list of rules and getting it to where you want it to be is tedious if, like me, you have a lot (433 at present) of rules. One has to drag the definition and the interface only lets one do that one screenful at a time. I zoom out in the browser so everything is very small and then a screenful holds a larger number (of barely legible rules) and drag in that mode, which is not quite so irritating but is also trickier to do. If I lose a definition (by a drag not being handled properly by the RC code) I can always export the rules, which I do anyway every so often as a backup, and find out where it ended up in the overall list. FM's equivalent isn't great either, in my view.

I did previously have a problem (with lots of folders - there's about 510 of them now but a few fewer then) with it timing out when a "refresh" was attempted (one could log out and back in alright though) but the provider I use researched that and fixed it; I think they perhaps installed a much newer version of RC, and maybe changed the db backend.


An advantage of RC is that one can switch between plain-text view and HTML view of a single email by clicking an always-visible icon in the message viewer, whereas in FM one has to find that option in a dropdown menu, which - although only one click more - seems to take a lot longer to do.

Last edited by JeremyNicoll : 11 Feb 2022 at 11:06 PM.
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Old 11 Feb 2022, 11:09 PM   #8
TenFour
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What do you dislike about it?
Where to begin? Well, for starters the UI is fugly and disorganized. Like why are settings you almost never use all in a column to the left? Like dark mode, password, and about? That left most column should be populated by the things I want to see every day, like my various folders. I use email a lot on smaller screens like phones and a small laptop and the folders have to stay hidden most of the time because of this layout. And then a bunch of what I would consider "settings" are scattered around the UI and not in the actual "Settings" section. You have to go to the three dot menu in the upper right to find the Import button, for example. Anyway, I find the whole thing not only ugly but confusing.
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Old 12 Feb 2022, 09:20 AM   #9
JeremyNicoll
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Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
Where to begin? Well, for starters the UI is fugly and disorganized. Like why are settings you almost never use all in a column to the left? Like dark mode, password, and about? That left most column should be populated by the things I want to see every day, like my various folders. I use email a lot on smaller screens like phones and a small laptop and the folders have to stay hidden most of the time because of this layout. And then a bunch of what I would consider "settings" are scattered around the UI and not in the actual "Settings" section. You have to go to the three dot menu in the upper right to find the Import button, for example. Anyway, I find the whole thing not only ugly but confusing.
Nothing that you wrote seems to match what I see. So I'd guess that we're either using versions of Roundcube that are well apart, or that they've been skinned differently.

I'm using v1.4.13. How about you?

For example, when I go into "Settings" - by clicking the "Settings" link at the top right (in the "Mail Contacts Settings" set of links), I see this:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zwq1z3fnif...tings.jpg?dl=0

As you can see in column 1, "Preferences" is highlighted. Column 2 shows the names of 8 sections within preferences, and if I click on any of them the currently empty white section on the rh side is populated with relevant details. I'm not going to show them though...

If I click on Folders in col 1, then col 2 shows a list of all folder names; if I click on one of them, the big white area shows that folder's details.

If I click on Filters in col 1, then col 2 shows just one thing - the name of the set of filters which on most of my accounts at this provider (dunno why not all) is "managesieve", then in col 3 there's a list of filter names. If I click on any one of those the whole set of conditions & actions for that filter show up in the big white area.
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Old 12 Feb 2022, 09:47 AM   #10
TenFour
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I'm using v1.4.13. How about you?
Roundcube Webmail 1.5.1. I think my provider uses the Elastic version that you can see here: https://roundcube.net/screens/
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Old 12 Feb 2022, 09:56 AM   #11
jeffpan
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one of the big advantages in G and FM is their threads by topic. which is very convenient for the mailing list discussions. It makes email as a session, not the standalone event.
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Old 13 Feb 2022, 05:37 AM   #12
JeremyNicoll
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Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
Like why are settings you almost never use all in a column to the left? Like dark mode, password, and about?
Well, I'd agree with you about About being given pride of place - surely no-one ever looks at that unless they're making a support request!

My version of RC doesn't have a "password" option anywhere. I use part of the provider's own "control pages" to set that. But maybe it's one of the fields that naive users often want to be able to find often?

I'd also have thought that Dark mode would be a choose-once-and-forget option for most people, so it's maybe just trendiness that made them make that so visible, unless lots of people switch mode back and forth depending on whether they're using a laptop or a phone, or even eg read and compose mails in one mode but explore settings etc in the other?

On the other hand all the things you see in this lh column are along the top for me, and my landscape-mode laptop screen has width galore but not much vertical depth so I'd have been happier if they'd been at the side.


Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
And then a bunch of what I would consider "settings" are scattered around the UI and not in the actual "Settings" section. You have to go to the three dot menu in the upper right to find the Import button, for example.
It's not a setting, though, is it? It's more of an "action" albeit one that some people would mainly do when setting-up a system.

You've reminded me of something else that I do dislike about my version, which is that one can only export (though they call it "download") emails one at a time. And there's no import option at all, so to my mind not liking where the option is seems like a luxury. I'd guess it's on the three-dot menu for the target folder because that folder is where anything imported gets placed?

To "export" stuff I either have to use an IMAP utility (which I've not done yet) or forward sets of emails (which I send to FM in fact) and deal with them there.


Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour View Post
Anyway, I find the whole thing not only ugly but confusing.
I came to RC (and FM's web interface) shortly after I'd had catastrophic disk failures on a PC and had to abandon the mail client I was using - there'd been an insidious issue for a while that had also corrupted backups and as I later found a bug (which took ages to get fixed) in the client's folder-repair option so mildly corrupted backed-up folders couldn't be used at first in a newly installed client. At that point I was grateful for anything that worked and RC was a whole lot better than the other thing my mail provider offered.
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Old 13 Feb 2022, 05:52 AM   #13
TenFour
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I came to RC (and FM's web interface) shortly after I'd had catastrophic disk failures on a PC...
Roundcube is perfectly usable even if I don't love it, and I vastly prefer webmail to desktop email clients so if my preferred provider only had RC I could deal with it. I have had multiple catastrophic PC failures as well as catastrophic Apple laptop failures that lost data so I am a big fan of everything in the cloud for convenience and safety, particularly email.
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Old 13 Feb 2022, 07:26 AM   #14
placebo
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Originally Posted by audelair View Post
Affordable Pricing Model:
It's common to have a few users who just casually use email and for which it's tough to justify a high monthly fee. Some of the providers that make this a non-issue:
  • Fastmail isn't perfect, but it's nice that casual users can get on the $3/month plan and still use the custom domain of someone on a more expensive plan.
One of the main things I don't like about Fastmail's pricing is that if you want to use your own domain and use IMAP/POP/SMTP, it's $50 per user. For one or two users, that might be acceptable, but it gets expensive fast if you have more users. Unlike many here, I see webmail as something to use as a last resort.


Quote:
And thoughts on other hard-to-find features of email providers?
If you access your email on an iPhone or iPad, you may want a provider that supports Apple's push notification system, like Fastmail.
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Old 13 Feb 2022, 08:56 AM   #15
jeffpan
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Originally Posted by placebo View Post
One of the main things I don't like about Fastmail's pricing is that if you want to use your own domain and use IMAP/POP/SMTP, it's $50 per user. For one or two users, that might be acceptable, but it gets expensive fast if you have more users. Unlike many here, I see webmail as something to use as a last resort.
.
And 3 usd/m for 2GB without client access, it's so ugly pricing.
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