Recommendation for no-frills paid email service

[rnkn]

I'm currently with Fastmail and looking for an alternative. I'd really love to find a no-frills email provider that can give me a handful of GBs for mail, and an address book.

I've been with Fastmail for about 10 years, but I don't like change, and Fastmail keeps changing things. Little annoyances keep popping up that make clear they want you to do things *their* way, for example the web UI breaks in small ways if you don't use conversation threading, or that they proclaim to have "No ads. Ever" and yet there's link to Dropbox in the compose screen (because, you know, *everyone* uses Dropbox so it's okay, right?). They have an amazing file storage, but their transfer limits make it useless for any file sizes you wouldn't just send with email.

Anyway. I'd really like:

- to use my own domain
- CardDAV or LDAP access to address book
- a simple generic (open source?) webmail client that I can configure to my liking, e.g. SquirrelMail or Roundcube
- Sieve rules
- at least 5 GB

I'm considering:

soverin.net – These guys seem interesting. I like their aesthetic (which is the most important thing), that they've got the sweet EU privacy laws, and they use basic Roundcube webmail. But their site was taking an inordinate time to load, so I did some digging and what I found didn't inspire confidence. The server response time seems always 2-4 secs, and their admin login page was loading the entire uncompressed javascript of CodeMirror just for a simple username/password form. Until I emailed them about it, they didn't seem to be using compression or "minifying" any of their assets and they're doing things like loading *all* of Font Awesome icons (rather than just they subset required). Now at least they're using gzip.

mailbox.org – The price is right, and another EU-based service gets the thumbs up. I'm not too into the idea of an "online office" so this feels a bit bloated. The webmail is pretty ugly and I find their green colour-scheme a bit garish/vomity.

tuffmail.com – Looks great and I like the choice of webmail clients. The price per GB is a bit outdated. A US-based company gives me the heebie-jeebies though. Also it seems like this is run by one guy, and I worry what happens if he dies or is otherwise incapacitated.

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

[TenFour]

Check out email provided by one of the domain hosts. I've used both Porkbun's and Namecheap's email and in both cases it was super easy to set up, cheap, seemed reliable, and offered a generic web interface. Not fancy, but serviceable. Not sure if you will find any cheap providers that have sieve rules. Namecheap's email currently starts at $11.88 a year with 5GB and Porkbun's starts at $24 a year with 10GB. I think Gandi still includes 2 email inboxes with each domain registered. Their domain hosting is a bit more costly, but when you factor in the email cost it is cheap. No idea how good the email is.

[rnkn]

Originally Posted by TenFour

Check out email provided by one of the domain hosts. I've used both Porkbun's and Namecheap's email…

Thanks for the info. I actually use Porkbun for my domains and love them! I trailed their email but unfortunately they don't have CardDAV or any way to sync contacts outside the web interface.

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by rnkn

Thanks for the info. I actually use Porkbun for my domains and love them! I trailed their email but unfortunately they don't have CardDAV or any way to sync contacts outside the web interface.

Hi
Then you could give a try on Namecheap who has open exchange for card/calendars sync.
Also mailbox.org, Ionos use the same solution.

[TenFour]

YMMV but I have found that email services that don't include their own contacts, calendar, and dedicated smartphone apps are just not worth it in the long run. Too much hassle and time wasted trying to sync everything, and inevitably you lose data.

[rnkn]

Well, I tried Soverin and unfortunately they are not nearly ready to provide a reliable email service.

Immediately I was hit with problems:

IMAP migration imports all failed (6 attempts). I was missing only 9 messages but had no way to tell which messages, and missing messages is not a good start.

CardDAV and CalDAV authentication failed. I was never able to add the address book or calendar to any device.

Sieve messages filtering failed. There's no documentation stating the IMAP prefix path, so I didn't know if folders were named "INBOX.Folder" or just "Folder" (but both failed anyway). Sieve is difficult to debug but even the most basic filter wouldn't work.

Plus addressing and subdomain addressing failed. Both with my primary @soverin.net email and the domain alias I set up for testing. The emails arrived but would not refile into folders.

The Zendesk-hosted support site relies on cross-site tracking (i.e. support.soverin.net). This is disabled by default on modern browsers, so I needed to allow cross-site tracking just to register for support.

Opening a support ticket has a check box to allow support staff access to your messages for the duration of the ticket, but the catch is once opening a ticket you have no way to close the ticket (or see it at all) and thus revoke access.

But the thing that really convinced me was that opening three support tickets over a 12-hour period returned tickets with three consecutive numbers, which leads me to believe Soverin just do not have sustainable numbers of customers to keep operating.

Lesson learnt. The grass is always greener. I'll be sticking with Fastmail.

[digp]

Originally Posted by TenFour

YMMV but I have found that email services that don't include their own contacts, calendar, and dedicated smartphone apps are just not worth it in the long run. Too much hassle and time wasted trying to sync everything, and inevitably you lose data.

Yes. This is right. I have lost data with gandi webmail carddav.

[TenFour]

Check out Purelymail. One-man band but price is right and he is very responsive:

Cheap, no-nonsense email
Let's get straight to the point:

We host your email address.
We're IMAP and POP3 compatible, so we work with most mail apps.
Or you can use our webmail, powered by Roundcube.
No arbitrary limits. Have as many users and store as much mail as you want.
Bring your own domain, or use one of ours. No extra charges.
It's cheap. Really, really cheap.

[emoore]

I've never used them, but inbox.eu offers a 100GB mailbox for €9.99/year ($10.80). They increased it from 20GB last November. They have both business and personal accounts. It appears if you want to use your own domain you need a business account (same price).

I didn't find any mention of CardDAV or CalDAV support. They don't support Sieve but claim "More than 100 proprietary spam filters" and "99.9% of spam and 0% of useful messages filtered out".

They have been in business 20 years and are based in Latvia. I read about them in https://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=76058 . The author states: "The webmail is kind of old style, php with no ajax, for example you cannot drag the messages in folders and you have no preview pane. However is a thousand years ahead Runbox in terms of functionality and design."

https://company.inbox.lv/type/gallery/ is the company that owns them.

[Cory]

What about Polarismail? They are often talked about in this forum, active on this forum, and have been around a while.

[digp]

Originally Posted by TenFour

Check out Purelymail. One-man band but price is right and he is very responsive:

Pricing troubling - https://purelymail.com/advancedpricing

Looks interesting.

Why are they charging in beta.

Not enough info about owner.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by digp

Pricing troubling - [url]https://purelymail.com/advancedpricing[/url.

If you find this troubling, there is a trouble-free option:

We offer two pricing options, but the first should work great for most people. It's called simple pricing, and it's very simple: it costs $10 a year.

[digp]

Yes.

CardDAV
While we plan to support this in the future, we do not currently offer CardDAV support.

Hmmm.

[SideshowBob]

I think it's worth remembering that it took many years for Fastmail to become reliable and to be able to scale that reliability as they grew.

I've not used purelymail, but I'd be wary of trusting it for anything critical.

It wouldn't hugely bother me because I regard my local dovecot server as my main mail store and I could switch mail hosting in minutes if I wanted to, and pay by the month.

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by rnkn

Well, I tried Soverin and unfortunately they are not nearly ready to provide a reliable email service.

...

But the thing that really convinced me was that opening three support tickets over a 12-hour period returned tickets with three consecutive numbers, which leads me to believe Soverin just do not have sustainable numbers of customers to keep operating.

I noticed something similar with Soverin... the ticket numbers do indeed suggest that the userbase is very low. They've been in business about 5 years, I believe, so that at least says they aren't a fly-by-night operation. But long term viability does concern me too. I might still go for it, but I'm now cautious.

Basically, I'm struggling to find a new email service too. Like many here, I've tried and used many services, and use several services right now, including, like you, Fastmail.

I will keep Fastmail for some things, BUT they've really bugged me for a while now due to the privacy laws in Australia. Not to mention the fact their servers are in the US, plus now that they own Pobox with an office in Philadelphia gives me even less confidence in Fastmail in general, with two big feet in two Five Eyes countries... no matter what their lawyers and privacy policy say about how safe they are. I'll stick with them for some of my email due to convenience and familiarity (and good old time's sake), but I'm planning on spreading things out now and moving some email out of Fastmail, maybe eventually all of it. My teenage son won't let me ditch it entirely right now since he has a fantastic email address on the fastmail.com domain that he will never want to give up. So I'll probably maintain at least some level of presence there until he can pay for his account himself (that will be a good parenting lesson at some point).

Obviously everyone has their own "threat model" they are comfortable with and features needs/preferences, so there's no "perfect" service out there that manages to balance all the things that each of us uniquely needs/wants. So this forum is a great place to figure things out. I've always been grateful for the knowledge here in this forum.

Right now I'm testing a bunch of services -- including some with security features that are pretty strong that I'll eventually want to use more often. My first requirement is that for this new provider, I want to choose a service outside the Five Eyes. Preferably outside the Nine Eyes, although Netherlands and Norway seem slightly better. Some of the 14 Eyes like Germany, Belgium and Sweden also have acceptable privacy laws for me, at least for now.

So that currently leaves me looking at Tutanota, ProtonMail, Mailbox.org, Posteo, Startmail, Soverin, Mailfence, Runbox, Countermail, CTemplar, and KolabNow.

My current list represents a very broad range of features, various levels of security enhancements and various benefits/shortcomings, but in theory they could all work for me. YMMV of course. I have no in-depth experience with them yet except for Runbox, which I've had for years, but never really fulfilled what I want/need to replace something like Fastmail. I spend a lot of time in webmail, so I need a good UI, and my other personal needs will be very different than other folks.

Tutanota - like it so far, feels limited, but I really like the security features. Not sure yet.

ProtonMail - I do NOT like that you can't search the full email text yet... that immediately turned me off. Tutanota -- similar in security features -- solved that problem already... but not ProtonMail. Bugs me. I understand why, but I need full text search for my needs. Otherwise pretty darn good.

Mailbox.org - intrigues me, worth spending some time to see if I like it, although I don't like the way they handle 2FA. I could get used to it though.

Posteo seems no-frills functional, simple and clean, might do the job. Not a fan of the UI though. I feel stuck a decade back. But it does seem solid.

Startmail looked promising to me at first, but I don't like their UI and honestly it seems a bit pricey for what you get compared to some of the others. The designer needs to come back and polish this off and maybe I could handle it. Features look good for me on paper though.

Soverin - I share your concerns, but it's still on my personal list. Can't shake the number of tickets though... does raise a red flag to me.

Mailfence has potential. I had issues setting up the account, and I think I found a bug in the message threading in the interface, but it seems pretty good so far. I like how it handles encryption options, seems to let you step in at your own pace more naturally. I like it.

Runbox is probably the least secure of this batch, but I do like the Runbox team, and it has been very solid for me. I just don't like the webmail -- neither the old or the new (v7 beta still after years!). I like Runbox overall, but just don't LOVE it, even though I do think it's solid. Still feels stuck in some time warp for me, even the beta feels off to me. Also, it's missing some security features I'd like to get into. But it has been reliable. I might just jump in more here if the others don't pan out.

Countermail is pretty intriguing. A bit overkill for what I need in terms of security, but there's something comfortably retro with its UI and vault-like, focused feeling. It seems to know exactly what its identity is, which is different than some of the others that try to balance a broader range of general productivity features. It might be a contender.

CTemplar - don't know enough yet, but am starting to look at it... Probably overkill again for my needs in terms of security focus, but still on the list to check out.

KolabNow is pretty good so far TBH. I think this might be one of the new services I end up going for. Definite contender. I like many of the features and the UI is pretty decent. Can get a little pricey, and it is one of those that tries to balance a lot of features. But overall, it does a decent job of a balance. Worth spending time testing.

Also, as for your OP, I noticed you mentioned Tuffmail. I used to be a huge fan of Tuffmail years ago... with the original owner, to the new owner, and back to the original owner. Good guy as I recall, ran a tight ship. I loved the super detailed control you could have over accounts. But it is in the US, and I'm trying to avoid that. If Tuffmail were outside the Five Eyes, I'd try it again.

Anyway, I'll follow this thread, would love to know what you and others recommend and do as you go through this process. I tend to re-evaluate my email situation every few years, maybe start up a new thread here in this forum, etc... and now is the time for me to try some more services. Never have found that magical "perfect" service yet...