[floatinghermit]

Thanks for the detailed information, everyone. Lots of good info here.

Apologies I couldn't reply earlier. I did start looking into some of the respones and wanted to comment on them.

Originally Posted by TenFour

but you can find plenty of people who have been locked out of their accounts on the official Gmail community forums, on Reddit, and wherever people discuss email.

Wow, there's actually a lot more of this than I thought. This is pretty scary.

Originally Posted by ioneja

Welcome to the forum! Great question. The primary reason to pay for email in 2022 is indeed privacy, but there are other reasons too.

Here are various reasons... I might have missed a few:
.
.
.

Thanks a ton! This is a lot more than I had even hoped for. A lot of those are valid and make sense to me as well.

Some of these points are addressed by having your own domain (which I do) but don't use as my primary email. I use this for fully automated service sign ups and such but not for any sort of correspondence with humans.

Jurisdictions is another very valid point that I might start thinking about.

Originally Posted by TenFour

There is no getting away from ad targeting, whether or not you use Gmail. You are still tracked by Google, Facebook, and many others as long as you interact with the Internet.

That is more important to me--I don't want a hacker to be able to break into my email account, or steal all the passwords from some unsecured database. Billions of users are testing this security at Gmail every day, but with a small email provider you have no way of knowing if someone isn't sitting in their basement reading your emails for kicks.

Yeah this is one of my biggest concerns too. I'm fairly confident that Gmail's security is better than even other larger paid providers (such as fastmail or protonmail, let alone services like purelymail). I'm completely happy to pay something like $10 per year, but I worry that my mail will be less secure than it can be with gmail.

Originally Posted by ioneja

And while it's true that you can't escape *some* profile being generated by the big tech companies, you can absolutely reduce your footprint and change the kind and depth of profile they generate about you.
.
.
.
As for the "security" issue, that's a different discussion than privacy of course.

.
.
.
Google has been the subject of plenty of security breaches, as have other free services like Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.. And if years of experience and security experience counts (which it does) frankly some of these small paid third party email services have been around for longer than GMail, and some have contributed extensively to the open source code that powers most email providers.... or in some cases they release most or all of their codebase as open source, which is then open to all to scrutinize. Gmail, MS, etc., certainly don't do that.

But with everything, YMMV and everyone has different needs and preferences.

Very valid points. One thing that worries me is that I am techie enough for me to know that it's not always easy to know when your service is compromised. When a larger service like gmail or outlook is compromised, its a lot more likely to come to attention than when a smaller provider with a 100 users. Basically, my worry is there's a lot of "unknown" breaches in smaller services (for instance if I self host myself, this would be likely)

Originally Posted by Bamb0

Alot of email providers are worried of thier server being used for spam now,I think thats why they dont want FREE accounts mostly.....


Welcome to EMD floatinghermit,I hope you like it here

Thanks a lot Bamb0! Yeah the spam issue has really made things a lot worse. I do self host certain things for myself, but email is most definitely not going to be one of them.

Originally Posted by hadaso

The real reason that I pay for email is just that I like the service that I get from Fastmail better than what I can see at Gmail. There's really no other reason. If I had no choice I could certainly manage with just a Gmail account or just a Hotmail account. My wife uses her Hotmail account that she has for almost 25 years despite me paying for her Fastmail account (that she uses for some rare circumstances that don't work well with Hotmail).

What do you actually like in fastmail over gmail? I've tried fastmail before (back when it had a free tier), and I personally didn't feel like it was as good as gmail when it comes to the ease with which I could handle my email. I have a TON of emails, and gmail's search and labeling has always been flawless for me. Fastmail is likely not too different, but I am having a tough time seeing how it's better.

Originally Posted by jeffpan

I have paid for many providers. Include:

1. Runbox: paid for about 3 years, gave up for bad webmail experience
2. FM: paid for about 3 years, gave up b/c I have another Pobox account
3. Pobox: paid for many years, still in use
4. GSuite: paid for many years, still in use
5. Tuffmail: paid for about 2 years, they are a excellent provider, gave up for nothing
6. Mailbox.org: paid for 1 year, their speed is slow to me
7. Mail.de: paid for 1 year, a excellent provider, gave up for nothing
8. mxroute: paid for 2 years, still in use (yes TLS-Mail)
9. Tutanota: paid for 1 year, have no good experience with them
10. Yandex Mail360: paid for 1 year, still in use for a domain
11. PrivateMail by torguard: got a lifetime account from them (100+ USD)

And I have accounts on almost all these URLs:
https://cloudcache.net/data/mails.html

I am tired I have so many email accounts. Even in the night dream I was thinking I should read email right now...

I am an email account hoarder as well Definitely see some on the list that I don't have accounts on though. Will fill them up!

Originally Posted by TenFour

By the way, even though I use Gmail as my main email management account I do use paid email because I like having my own domains and domain-based email. It is as simple as that. I do use some of the domains for various small business purposes too, but even if I didn't I like having my own personalized short and easy to spell and remember email address that stands out from the crowd. At the moment my email provider of choice is Purelymail, so I get domain email for $10 a year. That's pretty cheap for the benefits I get. The way I have it set up I also get my main emails stored in multiple locations. That means if my free Gmail account becomes unavailable for some reason (most likely if I get locked out) I can instantly move to another inbox and keep in touch via email. I don't actually use my Gmail address (even though it is a good one) for most things to help keep it protected from spam and phishing attacks, but even so it has been revealed in various database hacks since I have been using it so long. Luckily, Gmail's spam and phishing filters remain the best in the industry and I rarely see any malicious stuff in my inbox.

I have my own domain as well, and I think it's great. However, I haven't actually used it as my primary email, since it doesn't seem super great when humans are involved (they seem to assume @gmail.com and @outlook.com are the only ways in which email addresses can end)