Comments on: What email service should I use?

By: jjmarcus

jjmarcus — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:39:56 +0000

Perhaps Dreamhost makes that switch more easy and GUI, but making those choices with any registrar merely requires that you have total control over your DNS records. GoDaddy still hosts my WordPress web site, and in my GoDaddy DNS panel, I pointed my mail exchange at Google Apps.

By: Scott Martin

Scott Martin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:57:06 +0000

FWIW, Dreamhost allows uses to switch between utilizing them or Google for email and web services separately. So you can can keep and organize a bunch of domains through Dreamhost and try out Google hosting when and where needed – the flexibility is great. It’s kind of complicated for most users but one can evan host email in both locations simultaneously which has advantages (like more access options and double spam filtering).

By: jjmarcus

jjmarcus — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:01:42 +0000

Of course, and while you feel that’s the right move, might as well begin the transition to Google Apps. Please understand, I would dearly love for anyone to come up with an alternative. But so far none have measured up.

By: John DeFore

John DeFore — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:48:07 +0000

Gotcha. My case is probably a little unusual, but since there are hundreds of people from whom I want to get email — plenty of whom I don’t even know until they email me — announcing a new address is just such a big hassle I’m willing to pay $48/year for the foreseeable future.

By: jjmarcus

jjmarcus — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:43:32 +0000

Right. You would likely want to keep your Earthlink address alive for a while, and start emailing trusted correspondents that your address is changing. In the case of email for your personal domain, if the hosting service you have is charging you or is unreliable, moving those to Gmail is simply smart. A little off-topic: If you’re paying more than $4/month for email and web hosting, you can save the difference. I use WordPress as an application included with GoDaddy’s $3.95/month web hosting, and point “mail exchange records” for my domain to Google Apps.

By: John DeFore

John DeFore — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:02:58 +0000

I may be misunderstanding something: You’re talking about forwarding any email address via Gmail, but I do have to continue keeping that email address valid, right? If I stop paying Earthlink, won’t anything sent to that address simply bounce back to the sender? Or does Gmail somehow intercept it, even though I won’t be able to access it via Earthlink’s webmail?

Unrelated: I just got a 2nd gen iPod Touch. What apps do I want?

By: jjmarcus

jjmarcus — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:54:38 +0000

Wise I don’t know about. But after slogging through pretty much ALL of the different email options as they’ve developed over the last 12 years, I’m glad there are finally some cheap, easy, and versatile prescriptions for folks to get into.

I well understand your contentions and concerns. However…

Cost: $48/year, for the indeterminate future? When Google is free?

I might add that it’s funny how people complain about Apple charging $99/year for MobileMe, which offers an array of services well beyond just an email address. Earthlink and others should make it free to forward an email address, in perpetuity, even when someone chooses to leave their service. AOL converted their email to free a while back, and the rest are pirates for not doing so.

Backups: When it comes to backups, I trust no one. I am still going to back all of our Google Docs up (we’ve just begun using them), as I already do with my email. (I have at least 10 years of email available within minutes, and pretty sure I have every email I’ve ever sent or received somewhere.)

Other concerns might be:

Privacy: Illusion? Partially. But a… ehm… maintainable one. I firmly believe no one can access my email and private online storage without my passwords, and I have mechanisms in place to make sure that those are absolutely not available to anyone.

Yes, Google has my private stuff on their private property. Yet, I’d like to think that, if it were clear that Google or anybody else actually released our private material, there would be a shitstorm of lawsuits. Unfortunately, I too clearly remember Yahoo giving something up to the Chinese government, twice, but then again, anyone sending anything in or out of China would have to assume it is going to be inspected.

“Making all the world’s *public* information accessible” is too long for a catchphrase.

Spam: One can use a local spam-catcher such as SpamSieve, which in particular some have found daunting to configure, but I prefer server-side spam blocking whenever possible. I’ve always been ticked with the ISPs for not installing decent spam protection in their email services.

By: John DeFore

John DeFore — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:59:34 +0000

Jonathan, you’re a wise man. But I continue to hesitate for reasons both general and specific to me:

- I hate paying $3.95/mo to maintain an Earthlink address (they’re no longer my ISP), but I’m in a profession in which it would be an enormous challenge to get any new address to everyone who should have it. $48/year seems like a reasonable price to avoid that hassle.

- I instinctively avoid having my important data stored somewhere other than my own computer. I realize my laptop’s a zillion times more likely to self-destruct than Google’s servers are, but a) I do backups regularly, b) I like the sense of control, c) I hate becoming reliant on the continued existence of a company and its continued willingness to provide a service for free, or to provide it at all.

- Plus, don’t you have to see ads when you use Google docs? That’s not a major consideration, but I love eliminating ads from my life whenever possible.