Email client...gmail etc

[Condobloke]

I currently use Gmail.

It works.

I access it via Thunderbird Mail. It seriously works !....almost without fault.

That doesn't mean I am enamoured of google. Far from it.

My objection to google is not completely rational. I do realise there is a trade off for a 'free' service.

I have come across:

The Message Company. (TMC) (Owned by Atmail)

Home | The Messaging Company

Modern, secure and private email for everyone Servicing telcos, ISP's and carriers worldwide for over 20 years.Powered by Atmail. Trusted by The Messag ...

themessaging.co

Does anyone have any thoughts/experience with them ?

other alternatives that actually work

 

[kc1di]

Can't speak for TMC never used them. But I too have been moving away from gmail. I use Protonmail it's secure and they do not track you info. Only draw back is there is no linux client at the moment. thunderbird will not download them so you would have to use their web interface.

Proton Mail: Get a private, secure, and encrypted email account | Proton

Proton Mail is the world’s largest secure email service with over 100 million users. Available on Web, iOS, Android, and desktop. Protected by Swiss privacy law.

proton.me

 

[osprey]

Hello Condobloke.

I can't help with your query as to having any experience with the company you mention, but I am able to make a few observations which may be interest.

When looking at the "Privacy Policy" of this company, there are points of interest, in particular these two which I have selected let you know about their attitude to their customers:

We collect, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:
<snip>
to help our partners (or other customers to whom we provide services for you on their
behalf) such as third-party advertising or marketing research partners improve their
services or online offerings;

and

We disclose your personal information to third parties including to:
a) our business partners and customers (for example, partners or customers that we supply
our goods and services to and who ask us on their behalf to supply them as they may be
providing their goods and services to you);

These sorts of clauses are not unusual in "Privacy Policy" statements. There's a quote that I think is worth pondering about these things I came across somewhere :

whenever you see the word "privacy" online anywhere it means "we're collecting your data, what are you going to do about it?"

Once I had a gmail address and traveled overseas, from Oz to NZ. In NZ I tried to use my gmail account but was blocked. Google asked for me to verify who I was. I only had my password but they asked for other information such as the date I subscribed to gmail, some number that was used back then when I signed up, and other things I can't recall. I had none of that other information at hand, so I couldn't use gmail. Apparently they were concerned because it was unusual for my account to be used from another country so I guess they suspected fraudulent usage.

Nevetheless, whenever I used my browser on my computer in NZ, they had no trouble with the ads they supplied in the sidebars which were targeting subjects and services that I had accessed online, so they knew exactly enough of who I was to do that. Maybe their internal communications, or their absence, played a part in that.

After that experience, I now use a paid email service that has been reliable and free of any unwanted intrusions and works from anywhere on the planet that I may be.

 

[Condobloke]

I now use a paid email service that has been reliable and free of any unwanted intrusions

Can I ask which one you chose ?

 

[Alexzee]

Like you Gmail works well for me.
Tried Thunderbird for a few weeks and hated it.

Proton mail works pretty will for the week I gave it a spin.
However with Proton mail I don't think that the user has as much space like Gmail has.

 

[osprey]

Can I ask which one you chose ?

Fastmail.com. It used to have free emails, and an Oz company, but I wasn't with it then. It grew and became a paid service that suited me so I subscribed after my free email issues. I still have free accounts with gmail, protonmail and tutanota, but only use them for particular purposes, usually when there some online website that wants an email address before it opens itself to let the user in. Everything important, like linux.org, goes through my paid service

It's probably worth re-iterating that when one has a free service, they are the product which is able to be touted to third parties, despite the fact that you get a service. With protonmail, I am the primary product for their own paid services which they regularly offer me through my account. Similar with tutanota. With gmail the remit is much wider and I guess that one sees to whom one is being sold one's info through the ads that appear in the unblocked browser.

 

[KGIII]

Get a domain name and cheap hosting. Use that for email.

No, your cheap hosting company isn't going to have time or interest in trawling through your email.

If your email is that important, you can do some encryption but not everybody you email will support encryption. That there takes quite a bit of work.

The only time a hosting company is going to try rooting through your email (and they'd have to be an admin on the system to do so with modern web hosting control panels) is if there was a legal issue and a warrant. Otherwise, they don't have time for that.

(I host a whole lot of sites for other people. I can't read their emails. The control panel simply doesn't allow it.)

Well, let me amend that... If I did read their emails, they'd know. I could log in to their control panel, set a new password, and check out their emails. They're gonna notice when their password is changed.

And, frankly, that's a whole lot like work. I've got far better things to do with my time. Also, they can see the IP address of the last person who logged in. So, they're definitely gonna notice.

 

[gvisoc]

Can't speak for TMC never used them. But I too have been moving away from gmail. I use Protonmail it's secure and they do not track you info. Only draw back is there is no linux client at the moment. thunderbird will not download them so you would have to use their web interface.

If you have a paid plan (I do, to use it with my own domain, etc.), you can use protonmail bridge. It will act as a proxy exposing IMAP and SMTP at your local host, for all email clients installed. I used it with Evolution, Thunderbird and Mutt without issues.

EDIT: Link to the source code repository (GPL-v3)

 

[f33dm3bits]

Can I ask which one you chose ?

I host my own domain and mail. so all the mail I receive is hosted on a vps that runs a mail server setup.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

I use Protonmail several years now, I moved from Gmail, It did worked good for me too but there are things about it... I have nothing to hide, yet it doesn't feel right to have my inbox shared with everybody... Authorities, advertisers and who knows who else.
I trusted the word of Protonmail that my inbox is private and I moved, I have no issues to mention so far, It just works

 

[Terminal Velocity]

I just remembered an issue with Protonmail, once I couldn't send an email in an apple email address, I was receiving an automated message that I am a spammer, perhaps Apple considers incoming emails from Protonmail as spam

 

[atanere]

The Messaging Company has a FAQ on their Support page with this tidbit:

What is the cost of your service?
If you currently have free email (with the TPG group) your service provider will cover any costs until September 2024 (the sponsorship period) - so nothing to worry about until then. We will be publishing detailed plan and pricing options in the coming months.

Sign up now... we'll tell you what it will cost later! Too scary for me!

But keep an eye on them if they interest you. They may offer great service at a reasonable cost (when you can find out what it is). If you start the signup process, you may find their pricing more quickly. I didn't see any price info, but their Terms of Service is 24 pages long. It might be worth a read.

Like @KGIII and @f33dm3bits mentioned, I have my own domain names that provide me with email services that I use regularly. I also have Gmail and the free tier of ProtonMail too, but I seldom use them. I do like ProtonMail, and I have considered a subscription for it, but mainly for better options on their VPN service than the email enhancements.

 

[Condobloke]

Sign up now... we'll tell you what it will cost later! Too scary for me!

And for me too!
i must admit I didn't read all their blurb initially. It was only when @osprey drew my attention to their privacy statement that I read the whole thing carefully.
I had already emailed them asking a few questions. The answer from them read like a spam email...poor english etc etc...open ended statements full or promises but no substance whatsoever.
It also assured me that they would have "their plans" in place in a couple of months time. A blurb on their site also assured me of the same thing (ready in a couple of months)....and that blurb was already a couple of months old !!

So....definitely not for me.

I am a member of tpg....that is my ISP. on the whole the experience with them has been good. But there is not a chance in hell that I will transfer the free email account I have with them to TMC. I will simply allow it to close and go away. I note that there are a whole host of email providers belonging to various ISP's shutting up shop and suggesting that the accounts be transferred to TMG.
Gmail is starting to look good by comparison !!

I will continue digging, but for now, it may well be a case of better the devil you know.

 

[Condobloke]

Anyone have any hands on experience with Fastmail ?

Home Page

Plans start at $3 a month. 30-day Free Trial. All the Control and Features you love with no creepy surveillance. Stop paying for email with your privacy.

www.fastmail.com

 

[osprey]

Anyone have any hands on experience with Fastmail ?

Home Page

Plans start at $3 a month. 30-day Free Trial. All the Control and Features you love with no creepy surveillance. Stop paying for email with your privacy.

www.fastmail.com

There's an extensive privacy policy that fastmail has. They make the boast:

You are our customer, not our product – Fastmail works to serve you, not advertisers or anyone else. Your money gets you a solid product and all our focus and attention.

so they try and head off the common online criticism of users being used as products.

I shall make a few comments on my experience. Bear in mind, they suit me, and but I am not spruiking on their behalf and have no connection with them other than my account. I'm reporting to respond to your request.

Fastmail collect heaps of data. It's on their servers so they have it. They claim to use it thus:

provide you with our services and to maintain, manage and improve our services

and that is how I find it. They only ever inform me about their own service. They don't regularly and periodically try and sell me their product and urge me to "upgrade" my account with artistically designed advertising emails that the protonmail company does in my free account. Rather, Fastmail send me information when they are changing something in the service, adding a function, updating a function etc.

The ticketing system is very responsive. Each issue I've had, they have responded within hours.

They cover all the email functions I use, like filtering, threading, aliasing etc. At present I have 10 email addresses on a single account, but I can have more at no cost. There's lots of functionality they have that I have no use for, so one is probably best to read up to see the range of possibilities to see if they have what one wants of an email provider.

It's been reliable virtually 99.99% of the time, and on the couple of occasions over a decade that I wasn't able to access my mail, there's a webpage they run explaining why, which helps. My recollection of problems was of a DOS attack, which they countered within an hour, but it was some time ago.

 

[Alexzee]

Had time to log into my Proton e-mail. I wanted to check on the amount of storage they give you for a free e-mail account.

Hardly anything! It's 500.00MB.
The lowest plan is $3.49 a month for 15 Gig's of storage.

 

[KGIII]

Hardly anything! It's 500.00MB.

Bandwidth is pretty cheap. But... RELIABLE disk space can be expensive. But, for email, that's a lot of emails before they get mad at you.

It wasn't that many years ago that a free email account may allow just as few as 10, 50, or maybe 100 MB. While we like to bag on Google, it was their moves that changed all of that. I believe Hotmail (not Outlook at the time) had a limit of 200 MB when GMail was introduced - and GMail had "unlimited" storage. That move changed email forever. Well, it changed our expectations forever.

NOTE: Good bandwidth can be a bit pricey, like a quality CDN. But, there are free-tier CDN options out there.

I just checked something. My admin email at my Linux site contains ~500 messages, complete with attachments. It occupies less than 9 MB of space.

 

[Condobloke]

google....it changed our expectations forever.

It certainly achieved that !

Like any high profile person or corporation, google attracts serious criticism (some warranted, some not)

In Australia, that is referred to 'tall poppy syndrome"

 

[wizardfromoz]

My Gmail stats:

Joined 7 June 2010
Inbox 9,434 messages
Sent 748 messages
Capacity used 2.49 GB of 15 GB

Conclusion - in another 65 years I will have to increase the capacity allowed.

Avagudweegend

 

[KGIII]

Capacity used 2.49 GB of 15 GB

I believe that total also includes anything you have in your Google Drive account. So, if you have anything in there you might have more than 65 years to go.