Email services I have tried

TenFour · 9 Mar 2019, 08:38 PM

Near the end of this post http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...t=73636&page=2 InquiringMind made a list of email services he's tried with very brief summaries of their strengths and weaknesses, in his opinion. I found it interesting and thought I would contribute my own list in roughly the order I joined them:

1. Various local ISP email services back in the era of dial-up Internet and not many people sending emails. Slow and plain, but exciting thinking about the future.
2. Earthlink was one of the first national email providers I used that provided a taste of the future.
3. Fastmail. I had a Mailcan address with them and the service was far superior to most at the time.
4. Gmail. Got my first address in 2006 and have been using it ever since. Big storage, speed, reliability, spam and phishing protection, and many useful (free) services. Google Photos is amazing.
5. Outlook.com. Close rival to Gmail as among the best free email services. The interface is more traditional, which many like.
6. Briefly tried and rejected due to poor performance: Migadu, MXRoute.
7. POBox.com. Used their basic service, which is email forwarding with SMTP so you can send from your own domain. Worked well. A few performance issues and left after slow cs not fixing my problem for days. Good value for money.
8. Namecheap. A quick and easy way to get basic email service for a domain. No problems, but limited features. Mainly used it for forwarding, which it did reliably.
9. ProtonMail. Decent interface and performance, but limited features. The phone app works well. I would use them again if I felt I needed encrypted email.

There are probably some others I have forgotten. How about you?

InquiringMind · 10 Mar 2019, 06:59 AM

Thank you for the compliment. I am reminded of the lyrics of a song,
"To All the Girls I've Loved Before" written by Hal David (words) and Albert Hammond (music).

Now instead it would be "To All the Email Services I've Loved Before."

TenFour · 11 Mar 2019, 05:24 AM

I forgot to include:

10. Office 365 (business) with email. One of the bests, though the admin functions are way too vague and complex. Definitely business grade.

11. G Suite. Most day-to-day functionality nearly identical to the free services, but you do gain admin controls (again, rather complex), increased security, and real customer service. Might be better for small and new businesses than Office 365.

InquiringMind · 11 Mar 2019, 07:57 AM

TenFour,

I am going to reprint my post from the other thread so that it will be easier for people to read this thread.

Reprint:

I have tried many email services thought not everyone as some of the folks on the forum have.

Of the paid services I have tried, I consider Fastmail to be the best overall.

Inbox has many nice features and a reasonable price considering the space you are allocated, but there is little support and if you have a problem, you may have to wait several days to get help.

Polarismail is pretty good for sending out newsletters and their price is very nice, but their web interface leaves a lot to be desired. I cannot get Thunderbird to download emails quickly in IMAP, so you'll need MS Outlook if you want fast downloads from Polarismail.

Amongst Free services, you cannot beat GMail for features, but I still do not trust them not to read my emails and send targeted ads or worse.

GMX mail works very well, though their web interface is not one of the better ones.

Tutanota has been very reliable and gives you a very confident feeling regarding privacy, but their web interface is relatively crude.

Openmailbox is slow and was out of service for many months. I cannot in good conscience recommend them.

Scryptmail and Hushmail are no longer free and there is regrettably not
enough benefits there for me to recommend.

I have not had the chance to try Proton mail yet, and I am looking forward to having the time to try it.

I would not waste time with Yahoo or Windows Live (or whatever they are calling it today). They are worse hack bait than GMail. GMail warns you if someone is trying to log on from a different IP. I suspect them also of selling your info regardless of what they claim.

I hope this is useful to you and let us know what you ultimately end up doing.

HTH

End Reprint.

InquiringMind · 15 Mar 2019, 04:08 AM

I realized today that Tutanota's Android app does not flash the phone's LED when a PUSH notification comes in and makes a notification tone. ( I have never used PUSH notifications before with Tutanota.)

So this seemed like a good time to try ProtonMail and it's mobile Android app. It both flashes the LED and makes a tone. It has a simple interface and only 500MB of space for the free version, but it seems to work okay. I will try it for awhile.

HTH

jeffpan · 15 Mar 2019, 08:45 AM

I have tried,

GMX/Web.de: too many ADs, system is solid
Virgilio.it: lack smtp/imap, webmail is OX, a lot ADs
Vodafone.de: webmail is OX, imap is solid
Orange.fr: webmail is out of date, imap is fast, no ADs
Laposte.net: doesnt work from here (HK/CN)
freenet.de: imap is solid, webmail is slow and bugful, with ADs
t-online.de: behaves well, mobile app is even nice
UK2.net: works just well, roundcube powered, no ADs
riseup.net: works just well, roundcube powered, no ADs
yahoo.co.jp: it's totally different from yahoo global, a solid system, my main account
gmail: I only use gsuite, it's great to integrate email and drive, and google file stream is powerful.
fastmail: I have used it for many years, fast and clean, works well, i don't like its ios app.
runbox: it's slow from here (HK/CN).
mailbox.org: powered by OX, exchange is not stable, and slow from here.

InquiringMind · 15 Mar 2019, 01:27 PM

I have to correct my previous post.

For reasons I cannot explain, the flashing of the LED on my phone for PUSH notifications from Tutanota, started without me changing any settings, nor can I find any settings for the LED to change. So apparently you do get a visual notification for PUSH, which is very helpful.

I notice that many people complain about ads with GMX mail. The one I use is US based and after I first set it up many months ago, I think I made some settings that got rid of the ads. I do not remember what they were, and looking through the options, I cannot figure out what they were, but it was possible. It may also be that I use it very infrequently, and therefore there is not much for them to use as a basis for sending me ads.

Berenburger · 15 Mar 2019, 05:42 PM

Not yet mentioned:

Tuffmail
Rock solid! After a few years of no development Tuffmail is back in the hands of the original owners. SquirrelMail and Roundcube front-end. Most comprehensive admin console I've seen.

Rollernet
Comparable with Tuffmail. SquirrelMail and Roundcube front-end. Rollernet has a more technical approach and self-service angle than most other providers.

Pobox
My main account. Part of the FastMail family. Founded as a forwarding service. Uses FastMail's front-end. The best in spam reporting and spam filtering.

EuMX
Steady going, but outdated. However I do miss the OpenWebMail interface. Many webmail interfaces to choose from. Very responsive support.

Slashmail
Does it still exist? Yes it does. Roundcube interface. Not much in the news.

Soverin
Testing Soverin lately. A mail provider from my own country. Focused on privacy. Bits of Freedom, a leading digital rights organization in the Netherlands is using Soverin as their mail provider. Roundcube (modified) and Rainloop (simple and fast, like it) interfaces. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable support team, as far as I have experienced.

InquiringMind · 16 Mar 2019, 03:39 AM

One more advantage, for those who need it, of Fastmail.com and Inbox.com is that they can get through T Mobile's dreaded email to sms spam filter.

They apparently have valid Reverse DNS lookup values and T Mobile's filter requires that validation to allow an email to text message to go through.

With other services like Tutanota, Protonmail, etc., the email is either bounced back with a 550 error or just goes into some abyss never to be received or errored back.

HTH

alexu2007 · 16 Mar 2019, 04:47 PM

I only mention the paid providers I have tried, if I include the free ones the list would be too long

1. Office 365 - business - it's really business targeted. After a month I switched to home edition and this is what I needed.
2. Fastmail - nice webmail, a lot of features, however I stopped using it after the new Australian internet law was adopted.
3. Runbox - solid provider but webmail is the worst. Just think of it as a provider with no webmail. It has an unsupported roundcube installation but you still need to login to their default webmail to setup and admin your account. The new webmail they are working at is even worse. They just don't get the webmail part of email.
4. Tutanota - solid provider, simple webmail with a lot of features I need missing. You can't use IMAP.
5. Mailbox.org - nice OX webmail but email delivery is slow. Looking at some logs I can see that their incoming mail servers timeout very often. Incoming mail is delayed very often for more hours at a time.
6. Protonmail - a little bit expensive when I set up all the features I want to use. It's encrypted but you can use IMAP with a bridge app they provide for paying accounts. Sometimes it works, sometimes it freeze.
7. Namecheap email - OX webmail, cheap, but it doesn't allow sending from the aliases you set up.

TenFour · 16 Mar 2019, 09:07 PM

Quote:

One more advantage, for those who need it, of Fastmail.com and Inbox.com is that they can get through T Mobile's dreaded email to sms spam filter.

Just used Gmail to email to my own cell number on T Mobile and it went right through. Not sure if that is a fair test, but it seems that Gmail might also provide this capability.

TenFour · 16 Mar 2019, 09:16 PM

One thing that is critical with any email service is reliability, and how customer service deals with problems. Like most people posting here it is relatively rare that I resort to contacting customer service, but inevitably something crops up that isn't working correctly or you don't understand and requires assistance. That is a huge minus for my favorite free provider, Gmail, in that there is essentially no live customer service and you must fall back on assistance in the official help documentation, or on the Gmail forum, or on sites like EmailDiscussions. Here, results are often very useful, but the average person often flounders with no official cs help. On the other hand, the quality of cs with paid providers varies a lot. In my experience if something unusual is happening the first reaction of most providers is to point you to help documentation that doesn't solve the problem and/or to accuse you of doing something wrong. Every email provider needs to go by the old adage "the customer is always right," even if they aren't.

InquiringMind · 17 Mar 2019, 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TenFour

Just used Gmail to email to my own cell number on T Mobile and it went right through. Not sure if that is a fair test, but it seems that Gmail might also provide this capability.

Either you are lucky or I am unlucky. Not sure which.

When I tried with GMail, (and also same with GMX), it went through after about a 30 minute delay. Did not leave me feeling confident like with Fastmail and Inbox.

I guess I will re-try and see if same happens.

InquiringMind · 17 Mar 2019, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TenFour

One thing that is critical with any email service is reliability, and how customer service deals with problems. Like most people posting here it is relatively rare that I resort to contacting customer service, but inevitably something crops up that isn't working correctly or you don't understand and requires assistance...snip...Every email provider needs to go by the old adage "the customer is always right," even if they aren't.

It is very hard to find any business with good customer service nowadays because money flows up to the top of the pyramid and little is left for the people who actually do the work that makes the company function.

I don't need someone to hold my hand, I just need them to help me help myself. Yet, much of the time even that is unavailable.

I suspect paid email services run on a low profit margin since their competition is often free. Also, many people want to use a computer, but do not wish to devote any time to learning how. Imagine the same for driving cars. Ouch !

Those folks really do need hand holding. The more experienced are burdened with dealing with "script puppets" because the assumption is most customers are unwilling to learn more.

It is just a difficult situation all around.
JMO

TenFour · 17 Mar 2019, 07:30 PM

I just tried the Gmail to Tmo email to text thing and my test message went through in less than 30 seconds. I wonder if it is more dependent on the particular part of the T Mobile network you are using? Not so much with T Mobile, but with AT&T I routinely encountered long delays in text message delivery, particularly if I was traveling outside of my home area. Just the other day I received an AT&T text message from someone that was sent a day previously. In short, I would not rely on text messages getting through reliably and quickly 100% of the time.

Back to the main topic of the thread, I agree basically with what Inquiring Mind says above about customer service today. But, on the other hand, I do encounter good service from time to time, indicating to me that it is not impossible to make money, remain in business, and provide good customer service. Unfortunately, email seems to be near the bottom of the barrel in offering good customer service. In my limited experience I would rate paid G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 customer service as near the top, though not ideal. At least you can eventually get through to someone with the technical ability, time, and follow through to fix things. I recently went through a set up of both for a company and in both cases I encountered things that were not documented, were not working correctly, and would have been game stoppers without the help of customer service.

9 Mar 2019, 08:38 PM	#1
TenFour Essential Contributor Join Date: Feb 2017 Posts: 486	Email services I have tried Near the end of this post http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...t=73636&page=2 InquiringMind made a list of email services he's tried with very brief summaries of their strengths and weaknesses, in his opinion. I found it interesting and thought I would contribute my own list in roughly the order I joined them: 1. Various local ISP email services back in the era of dial-up Internet and not many people sending emails. Slow and plain, but exciting thinking about the future. 2. Earthlink was one of the first national email providers I used that provided a taste of the future. 3. Fastmail. I had a Mailcan address with them and the service was far superior to most at the time. 4. Gmail. Got my first address in 2006 and have been using it ever since. Big storage, speed, reliability, spam and phishing protection, and many useful (free) services. Google Photos is amazing. 5. Outlook.com. Close rival to Gmail as among the best free email services. The interface is more traditional, which many like. 6. Briefly tried and rejected due to poor performance: Migadu, MXRoute. 7. POBox.com. Used their basic service, which is email forwarding with SMTP so you can send from your own domain. Worked well. A few performance issues and left after slow cs not fixing my problem for days. Good value for money. 8. Namecheap. A quick and easy way to get basic email service for a domain. No problems, but limited features. Mainly used it for forwarding, which it did reliably. 9. ProtonMail. Decent interface and performance, but limited features. The phone app works well. I would use them again if I felt I needed encrypted email. There are probably some others I have forgotten. How about you?

10 Mar 2019, 06:59 AM	#2
InquiringMind Member Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 44	To All the Email Services I've Loved Before Thank you for the compliment. I am reminded of the lyrics of a song, "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" written by Hal David (words) and Albert Hammond (music). Now instead it would be "To All the Email Services I've Loved Before."

15 Mar 2019, 08:45 AM	#6
jeffpan Master of the @ Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: South China Posts: 1,543 Representative of: Mail.dnsbed.com	I have tried, GMX/Web.de: too many ADs, system is solid Virgilio.it: lack smtp/imap, webmail is OX, a lot ADs Vodafone.de: webmail is OX, imap is solid Orange.fr: webmail is out of date, imap is fast, no ADs Laposte.net: doesnt work from here (HK/CN) freenet.de: imap is solid, webmail is slow and bugful, with ADs t-online.de: behaves well, mobile app is even nice UK2.net: works just well, roundcube powered, no ADs riseup.net: works just well, roundcube powered, no ADs yahoo.co.jp: it's totally different from yahoo global, a solid system, my main account gmail: I only use gsuite, it's great to integrate email and drive, and google file stream is powerful. fastmail: I have used it for many years, fast and clean, works well, i don't like its ios app. runbox: it's slow from here (HK/CN). mailbox.org: powered by OX, exchange is not stable, and slow from here.

15 Mar 2019, 01:27 PM	#7
InquiringMind Member Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 44	I have to correct my previous post. For reasons I cannot explain, the flashing of the LED on my phone for PUSH notifications from Tutanota, started without me changing any settings, nor can I find any settings for the LED to change. So apparently you do get a visual notification for PUSH, which is very helpful. I notice that many people complain about ads with GMX mail. The one I use is US based and after I first set it up many months ago, I think I made some settings that got rid of the ads. I do not remember what they were, and looking through the options, I cannot figure out what they were, but it was possible. It may also be that I use it very infrequently, and therefore there is not much for them to use as a basis for sending me ads. Last edited by InquiringMind : 15 Mar 2019 at 01:37 PM.

16 Mar 2019, 03:39 AM	#9
InquiringMind Member Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 44	One more advantage, for those who need it, of Fastmail.com and Inbox.com is that they can get through T Mobile's dreaded email to sms spam filter. They apparently have valid Reverse DNS lookup values and T Mobile's filter requires that validation to allow an email to text message to go through. With other services like Tutanota, Protonmail, etc., the email is either bounced back with a 550 error or just goes into some abyss never to be received or errored back. HTH Last edited by InquiringMind : 16 Mar 2019 at 03:57 AM.

11 Mar 2019, 05:24 AM	#3
TenFour Essential Contributor Join Date: Feb 2017 Posts: 486	I forgot to include: 10. Office 365 (business) with email. One of the bests, though the admin functions are way too vague and complex. Definitely business grade. 11. G Suite. Most day-to-day functionality nearly identical to the free services, but you do gain admin controls (again, rather complex), increased security, and real customer service. Might be better for small and new businesses than Office 365.

11 Mar 2019, 07:57 AM	#4
InquiringMind Member Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 44	TenFour, I am going to reprint my post from the other thread so that it will be easier for people to read this thread. Reprint: I have tried many email services thought not everyone as some of the folks on the forum have. Of the paid services I have tried, I consider Fastmail to be the best overall. Inbox has many nice features and a reasonable price considering the space you are allocated, but there is little support and if you have a problem, you may have to wait several days to get help. Polarismail is pretty good for sending out newsletters and their price is very nice, but their web interface leaves a lot to be desired. I cannot get Thunderbird to download emails quickly in IMAP, so you'll need MS Outlook if you want fast downloads from Polarismail. Amongst Free services, you cannot beat GMail for features, but I still do not trust them not to read my emails and send targeted ads or worse. GMX mail works very well, though their web interface is not one of the better ones. Tutanota has been very reliable and gives you a very confident feeling regarding privacy, but their web interface is relatively crude. Openmailbox is slow and was out of service for many months. I cannot in good conscience recommend them. Scryptmail and Hushmail are no longer free and there is regrettably not enough benefits there for me to recommend. I have not had the chance to try Proton mail yet, and I am looking forward to having the time to try it. I would not waste time with Yahoo or Windows Live (or whatever they are calling it today). They are worse hack bait than GMail. GMail warns you if someone is trying to log on from a different IP. I suspect them also of selling your info regardless of what they claim. I hope this is useful to you and let us know what you ultimately end up doing. HTH End Reprint.

15 Mar 2019, 04:08 AM	#5
InquiringMind Member Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 44	I realized today that Tutanota's Android app does not flash the phone's LED when a PUSH notification comes in and makes a notification tone. ( I have never used PUSH notifications before with Tutanota.) So this seemed like a good time to try ProtonMail and it's mobile Android app. It both flashes the LED and makes a tone. It has a simple interface and only 500MB of space for the free version, but it seems to work okay. I will try it for awhile. HTH

15 Mar 2019, 05:42 PM	#8
Berenburger The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 2,458	Not yet mentioned: Tuffmail Rock solid! After a few years of no development Tuffmail is back in the hands of the original owners. SquirrelMail and Roundcube front-end. Most comprehensive admin console I've seen. Rollernet Comparable with Tuffmail. SquirrelMail and Roundcube front-end. Rollernet has a more technical approach and self-service angle than most other providers. Pobox My main account. Part of the FastMail family. Founded as a forwarding service. Uses FastMail's front-end. The best in spam reporting and spam filtering. EuMX Steady going, but outdated. However I do miss the OpenWebMail interface. Many webmail interfaces to choose from. Very responsive support. Slashmail Does it still exist? Yes it does. Roundcube interface. Not much in the news. Soverin Testing Soverin lately. A mail provider from my own country. Focused on privacy. Bits of Freedom, a leading digital rights organization in the Netherlands is using Soverin as their mail provider. Roundcube (modified) and Rainloop (simple and fast, like it) interfaces. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable support team, as far as I have experienced.

16 Mar 2019, 04:47 PM	#10
alexu2007 Essential Contributor Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 222	I only mention the paid providers I have tried, if I include the free ones the list would be too long 1. Office 365 - business - it's really business targeted. After a month I switched to home edition and this is what I needed. 2. Fastmail - nice webmail, a lot of features, however I stopped using it after the new Australian internet law was adopted. 3. Runbox - solid provider but webmail is the worst. Just think of it as a provider with no webmail. It has an unsupported roundcube installation but you still need to login to their default webmail to setup and admin your account. The new webmail they are working at is even worse. They just don't get the webmail part of email. 4. Tutanota - solid provider, simple webmail with a lot of features I need missing. You can't use IMAP. 5. Mailbox.org - nice OX webmail but email delivery is slow. Looking at some logs I can see that their incoming mail servers timeout very often. Incoming mail is delayed very often for more hours at a time. 6. Protonmail - a little bit expensive when I set up all the features I want to use. It's encrypted but you can use IMAP with a bridge app they provide for paying accounts. Sometimes it works, sometimes it freeze. 7. Namecheap email - OX webmail, cheap, but it doesn't allow sending from the aliases you set up.

16 Mar 2019, 09:16 PM	#12
TenFour Essential Contributor Join Date: Feb 2017 Posts: 486	One thing that is critical with any email service is reliability, and how customer service deals with problems. Like most people posting here it is relatively rare that I resort to contacting customer service, but inevitably something crops up that isn't working correctly or you don't understand and requires assistance. That is a huge minus for my favorite free provider, Gmail, in that there is essentially no live customer service and you must fall back on assistance in the official help documentation, or on the Gmail forum, or on sites like EmailDiscussions. Here, results are often very useful, but the average person often flounders with no official cs help. On the other hand, the quality of cs with paid providers varies a lot. In my experience if something unusual is happening the first reaction of most providers is to point you to help documentation that doesn't solve the problem and/or to accuse you of doing something wrong. Every email provider needs to go by the old adage "the customer is always right," even if they aren't.

17 Mar 2019, 07:30 PM	#15
TenFour Essential Contributor Join Date: Feb 2017 Posts: 486	I just tried the Gmail to Tmo email to text thing and my test message went through in less than 30 seconds. I wonder if it is more dependent on the particular part of the T Mobile network you are using? Not so much with T Mobile, but with AT&T I routinely encountered long delays in text message delivery, particularly if I was traveling outside of my home area. Just the other day I received an AT&T text message from someone that was sent a day previously. In short, I would not rely on text messages getting through reliably and quickly 100% of the time. Back to the main topic of the thread, I agree basically with what Inquiring Mind says above about customer service today. But, on the other hand, I do encounter good service from time to time, indicating to me that it is not impossible to make money, remain in business, and provide good customer service. Unfortunately, email seems to be near the bottom of the barrel in offering good customer service. In my limited experience I would rate paid G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 customer service as near the top, though not ideal. At least you can eventually get through to someone with the technical ability, time, and follow through to fix things. I recently went through a set up of both for a company and in both cases I encountered things that were not documented, were not working correctly, and would have been game stoppers without the help of customer service.