Things that prompt me to consider a new service
 

Like many on this forum I have tried a bunch of services over the years, and I have investigated many more. The ones that I ended up trying all shared certain features that I find essential:

Upfront pricing on the home page or in a top-of-the-page menu item. If a service requires me to provide an email address before seeing pricing, or hides pricing way down the page or in a bottom-of-the-page obscure menu I move on to more transparent providers.

Clean, simple design of the web page with clear descriptions and prominent links to further information. Standard navigation is important. I want to see links to features, pricing, knowledgebase at the top. At the bottom should be about us, contacts, addresses, etc. If they don't bother to put up a good website that is a red flag for the design of their products.

A money-back guarantee, or a free trial of at least 30 days. This tells me the company is proud of its product and confident you will purchase it if you try it.

Easy to find help documentation available from the main website. Plus, the knowledgebase must be well written and concise, with good illustrations. A collection of videos isn't enough. Yes, videos can be helpful, but I want to see written instructions.

Crystal clear information about where the company is based, what their physical address is, where the servers are located, and who runs the company is very important, but often ignored by many. I want to see this stuff.

What things do you look for when investigating new email services?

Location of servers, company and admin. Somehow this information is mostly made hard or impossible to find.

Purely Mail should match your requirements IMO

Yes! I've used PurelyMail and like it a lot. PolarisMail is another good example. https://www.polarismail.com/about-us/

@TenFour Planning to leave Gmail?

Probably not for my main email inbox, but I also have a bunch of domain email addresses I manage and I am always on the lookout for clean, simple, providers.

Interesting. That leaves you with only some of the big providers (eg. Tuta, Proton, Hey, Zoho..) as they're more established. Undeniably the smaller and "rising" new email providers more often than not are not well documented with all these information, or they just wouldn't care less. However I do agree that your considerations are on point and they can be extremely helpful to eliminate the risk of signing up/putting one's faith on a sketchy provider (e.g. Skiff, CTemplar...).

For me personally I'm sticking with Infomaniak because they should be trust worthy because of location, history and brand. Also their UI is simple yet complete Most importantly their CalDAV and CardDAV works well for me. Also a plus point is that they provide 15Gb of kDrive for me to send big attachments. Have a go to see if it matches your expectations.

Not much to add to your already excellent list.

I look for POP3 access. No POP3, I will move on.

Infomaniak looks interesting, but they only allow Swiss and European residents to sign up. I'm in the USA.

I understand this restriction for free account. What if you're a paying customer? i.e. Transferring a domain over comes with a free unlimited email account.

I finally was able to reach an online form at Infomaniak to email them a question about this, which they acknowledged but have not answered yet. NOT a fan of automated help with endless loops that never answer your simple questions!!! Just using Infomaniak's help system is probably enough to turn me off the product going forward. I hate hate hate automated support!

I have read reports on social media that there are US residents with Infomaniak accounts, and they have encountered requests for photo/telephone number verification - indeed they have an app for this:

https://www.infomaniak.com/en/suppor...d-guide-kcheck

Good luck! Hope that you get a reply soon.

I was lucky that I got myself an account when it was launched and now bought a domain with it which comes with free kSuite (2 email addresses and advanced kDrive, i.e. with expiration/password protected shared links etc.). Personally speaking for the package that comes with the price I pay (domain itself - 7,40 €/yr net), it's unbeatable compares to any other registrar, what more can one ask for?

Other registrars I've bought a domain from are porkbun, cosmotown, cloudflare and migadu...Well I mean they are fine however doesn't offer you much of an email service/suite, just barebone domain services and maybe a simple email forwarding which doesn't include catch-all.

By all means check out Infomaniak if you can especially those from Europe, it is decent.

Just sharing my 2 cent ;)

No reply so far. It's been a couple of days.

Finally received a response--Infomaniak is only for people in Switzerland and other European countries.