Email alternative to Gmail ? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Lindley
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 05:40:33 pm
content: Hi,We moved to Gmail due to the ISPs service being so poor, but now becoming more concerned about privacy with Gmail, particularly when using it with banking messages etc.Though there are lots of suggestions on the web, wondered what folk here use/recommend as a good alternative ?As well as a few totally free ones, there are some site that offer a paid for sevice for about £1/$1 a month which we would consider ?At the moment , Mailbox.org seem to tick the boxes? though things extra storage etc are not essential for us.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 05:45:00 pm
content: I've had a Microsoft Exchange Online Plan 1 for at least a decade which is $4 a month per address. Not to be confused with the free Outlook email. i.e., my email is my domain name. I've never had a problem.https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/exchange/exchange-online?activetab=pivot%3aoverviewtab

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 06:02:55 pm
content: Mailbox.org for example.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 06:17:17 pm
content: whats wrong with yahoo?

author: M0HZH
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 06:29:36 pm
content: I use Zoho for business, they have a free plan as well and the service is very good.Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 16, 2021, 06:17:17 pmYou mean Yahoo "we've lost everyone's personal data twice" Mail ?

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 06:36:57 pm
content: I usehttps://protonmail.com/

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 06:39:12 pm
content: Quote from: Lindley on January 16, 2021, 05:40:33 pmIf you're going to pay for it, make sure to get something with a domain name so you aren't locked in.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 07:15:45 pm
content: Quote from: M0HZH on January 16, 2021, 06:29:36 pmwhy do you keep your personal data in a mail box? i never lost anything since i switched from hotmail when it became paid version in my young age.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 07:20:04 pm
content: I use FastMail and can absolutely recommend it. I switched from google many years ago. At the time there were a number of stories of google locking people out of their email over some youtube comments. And I did not like this concentration of power.Since then FastMail UI stayed mostly the same, unlike stupid stuff goolge does, and all the changes were for the better. It just works and is not affected by google stupid need to change random stuff for no reason.It is not free, but it is one of the services I'm absolutely happy to pay for.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 07:29:23 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 16, 2021, 07:15:45 pmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_data_breaches

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 07:39:31 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on January 16, 2021, 06:36:57 pmThe problem with protonmail is it is only web based, no integration with email clients. For a reason i guess.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 09:59:26 pm
content: Quote from: Marco on January 16, 2021, 06:39:12 pmNot just that; make sure the domain is registered to your name and not the hosting provider. With the domain registered to your name you can always move the domain without help from the hosting provider. Hosting providers really like to keep domain names hostage so they can charge extra for things like moving.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 10:02:20 pm
content: I also use Fastmail with my own domain ... the middle plan which is a bit more expensive at 5$ plus vat.Works great for my needs and have no problems recommending it.The domains are at namecheap.com , probably over a decade using them.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 10:03:50 pm
content: Yes, custom domain is a must. Just register it though hover or any other domain registrar so there is no questions who owns it.When I did email change from google I also switched to the custom domain. I also made an effort to go though all the services and update my email. It is amazing how many services have broken systems for that. My bank still sends marketing stuff to my old email and actual banking stuff to the new one. Clearly they copied it somewhere there and never updated the copy.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2021, 11:36:02 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on January 16, 2021, 07:39:31 pmThat's because of the encryption but they have a solution for that:"ProtonMail Bridge is an application available to all paid users that enables the integration of your ProtonMail accountwith popular email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Apple Mail. Bridge runs in the backgroundby seamlessly encrypting and decrypting messages as they enter and leave your computer. The app is compatible withmost email clients supporting IMAP and SMTP protocols."https://protonmail.com/bridge/

author: M0HZH
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 01:38:13 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on January 16, 2021, 07:15:45 pmAn email provider will ask for your name, date of birth, answers to your security questions and password just to set up your account. Some also need phone numbers and/or other email addresses.An email address will also have your personal correspondence (possibly bills, bank statements, medical information, work related content etc) and are a gateway to most of your other online accounts.And yes, you lost. All 3 billion Yahoo Mail accounts were compromised during the 2014 data breach; a lot of the information is out there on the internet, in huge files anyone can download, that have your email address, name, password and possibly other details. There are even websites that will search the leaked data for you and report if your email address is compromised - some will even return your password. Have a go:https://haveibeenpwned.com/The second Yahoo Mail breach happened in 2014, when about 500 million accounts have been compromised via fake cookies.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 03:23:52 am
content: Quote from: M0HZH on January 17, 2021, 01:38:13 amHIBP will report a breach on your email even if it is because someone else's data were breached that contained your email address. It doesn't necessarily mean that an account of yours was breached. Also, a breach can simply mean that the email address you type in to the HIBP search is listed somewhere. So if you your account got hacked and my email address was information you had, it would be flagged.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 06:14:30 am
content: I have a couple GMX accounts for various uses, the service seems to work fine.If you're not paying for it then you can bet you're the product and they're going to try to find some way to make money off of you using their service. At least diversifying helps keep one company from having too large a slice of your personal data pie though.

author: S. Petrukhin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 09:00:59 pm
content: See russian yandex.ru. This is a very powerful and reliable mail service of a major Russian player. The English-language interface is available.ya.ru domain page have not news.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2021, 09:29:18 pm
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on January 17, 2021, 03:23:52 amyeah my email is pwned! but istr yahoo asked me to change password sometime ago. so i think they will inform us in case of such situation. i have my own domain name mail but too lazy to setup or having 2 mailboxes at a time, so i directed my domain name mail to my yahoo mail atm. nothing too important, some spams are manageable.

author: Haenk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 21, 2021, 06:46:20 pm
content: For 1 GBP a month you should be able to get your own domain including email (but probably no web hosting); you can then move around your mail hosting and use an email program - there are plenty free ones around.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 10:39:28 am
content: It's that age old, you get what you pay for. I recognised this long ago and have bought and run my own hosting for years. Storage is not free, data centres cost money, the land, buildings, security, fire suppression, the computers themselves and the power to run them not to mention their connection to the internet.I am currently a resseller and can host if anyone wants an account just for email or anything else. I use a UK based company that are really good. I'd never dream of using someone else's services, not because of privacy (it's still illegal to read customers emails and if found out that is massive reputational damage not to mention possible legal action) but because I like to have choice and control. I don't have to jump through hoops to get any mail client I want to work.Gmail seems to be the provider of choice now for spammers but I think they take the accounts down fairly quickly too.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 12:32:17 pm
content: gmail is just an account to use to activate stuffs in handphone.. whatsapp, telegram etc. i guess because of this "glamourous effect", government agencies now enforcing/implementing everything google into their system. i dont know how many accounts i've created and forgotten just for activating smart phones. i think those few forgotten accounts are contributing to the billions figure of gmail users' count.

author: alex-sh
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2021, 08:24:57 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on January 24, 2021, 10:39:28 amYes, I used to do that for many years. But I did miss a few important emails but the ADSL line went down.Ever since I am using a Microsoft paid service )))

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 26, 2021, 09:58:27 pm
content: what ADSL line? if your ADSL goes down it won't matter who you have your email with.

author: fordem
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2021, 02:48:08 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on January 24, 2021, 10:39:28 amQuote from: Simon on January 26, 2021, 09:58:27 pmRunning your own hosting requires reliable comms, power & hosting equipment - no - let's make that redundant, rather than reliable - you get to decide how important your email is to whatever it is you're doing, because if anything along the chain goes down, you run the risk of losing emails.I ran my own email server for about a decade, I now use hosted email - if my ADSL line goes down (I no longer have ADSL, I have redundant GPON from different providers) I can still retrieve email from my provider using my smartphone and the telco's 4G service.I no longer have to worry about the UPS, the standby generator, or whether or not my mail server is up - I don't see myself going back to running my own server.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 08, 2021, 06:14:46 pm
content: I don't own the server, I have a hosting account with a top UK hosting company, it's cheaper and they handle it. But I get what I pay for, performance and no funny limitations and conditions or hidden costs, it's mine to do with as I please.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 10, 2021, 11:15:29 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on January 16, 2021, 07:20:04 pm+1! Very happy too. For what you get it is very cheap...

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 10, 2021, 01:37:31 pm
content: Is there a free service that's more secure than Google and supports Thunderbird so that it can be set to move messages to local storage?

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 10, 2021, 02:26:05 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on February 10, 2021, 01:37:31 pmhttps://protonmail.com/

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 10, 2021, 11:28:16 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on February 10, 2021, 02:26:05 pmUnless something changed, free accounts do not support Thunderbird.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 10, 2021, 11:50:49 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on February 10, 2021, 01:37:31 pmIf you care about security and local storage, I would suggest you purchase a domain and pay someone to host it. Otherwise you are the product, in one way or another.But to answer your question, I believe free-tier Zoho, Outlook and Yahoo! all (still?) support IMAP. Google is going to be just as secure as anything else, possibly moreso because Google knows what they are doing.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2021, 07:21:26 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on February 10, 2021, 11:28:16 pmYou are right, sorry for the mistake.I'm a happy (non-free) protonmail user. I prefer to pay a couple of $ per year instead ofseeing ads and/or my userdata being sold to third parties.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 11, 2021, 07:47:10 am
content: Quote from: ve7xen on February 10, 2021, 11:50:49 pmExactly what I did and do for people.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2021, 06:16:46 pm
content: Quote from: ve7xen on February 10, 2021, 11:50:49 pmI have been searching for an alternative to Google since without warning or reason, they cancelled the email account that I used for security access to other services, which means I lost access to everything which required responding to an email.

author: radar_macgyver
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2021, 03:50:07 am
content: Quote from: S. Petrukhin on January 17, 2021, 09:00:59 pmhttps://www.zdnet.com/article/yandex-said-it-caught-an-employee-selling-access-to-users-inboxes/

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 13, 2021, 08:18:41 am
content: You will always be at risk. whoever you use you have to trust them unless you know enough about their systems to know that any tampering will be logged and flagged. I can walk straight into any of my customers accounts the same as my provider can. That is what ISO27001 covers I believe, logging of all activity so that these things can be traced and people held to account before they go on.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2021, 01:17:46 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on February 12, 2021, 06:16:46 pmYep, tying accounts to email addresses or mobile phone numbers is a fundamental mistake done by most services. If a cyber criminal gets hold of your email credentials it's easy to reset passwords to gain access to the services you use, while the other services tied to your mobile phone number can be fooled by SIM swapping (via social engineering). In both cases the services simply pass on the responsibility of authentication and authorization to your email provider and to your mobile network operator. The other big problem is what you've mentioned, i.e. terminated accounts. And 2FA doesn't really fix that either because it's often done in the same bad way. Hardware tokens are a good alternative, but it's cumbersome to register two or three for each service, if supported at all. When one token is stolen or simply breaks you'll need another registered one to be able to access your accounts.

author: GodIsRealUnless DefinedInt
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2021, 02:26:36 am
content: I use protonmail, its on my desktop, my iPhone, Android phone, and tablet. PM is in Switzerland, being outside of US and EU jurisdiction.There are a lot of secure email providers, for fee that will advertise privacy or security or both. The problem you will find is the country they are located in, which many do not take into consideration. The country's you find most of the alternatives in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, France, Holland, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden and Spain. This means your email is at risk for privacy violations in the name of national security, you can be bulk hoovered in a sweep for one target and cross-shared amongst the governments of the aforementioned countries.Whatever you do, anything and I do mean *anything* is better than the free email providers/data harvesters of obscene proportions.As an aside I have had GMail since Beta, so it was hard for me to tear away from it. But I have moved all my real life and financial and personal to PM and I still use GMail for throwaway use cases now.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2021, 04:19:16 am
content: Quote from: madires on February 13, 2021, 01:17:46 pmIn this case the cyber criminal was Google.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 05:54:39 am
content: Quote from: ve7xen on February 10, 2021, 11:50:49 pmThis is the only answer that makes any sense.Also, if you are a professional, registering a domain name with your company name or d.b.a. or whatever and using that looks better than having mycompany@gmail.com.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 07:50:01 am
content: Yea, I do cringe when I see replies from Gmail, it looks like they cheaped out and can't be a very good business.

author: MIS42N
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 09:35:23 am
content: I bought a domain I think in 1999. The domain registrar provided a mail redirection service, it was part of the cost of registering the domain. I changed ISPs a few times, and was able each time to change the redirect to a mail address provided by the ISP. Consequently I've had the same email address for over 20 years.About 12 years ago I started running my own mail server, it lives on top of a bookshelf. It does not need to be up 100%. The mail protocol is store and forward, if the destination is unreachable it is supposed to try again. I've set the MX records in DNS so my server is tried first, the redirection is used second. The redirection sends mail to a mail address provided by my ISP. This happens occasionally. Thunderbird can collect from the ISP and using IMAP put the mail into my server.As far as I can remember, nobody has sent me email and it's got lost.I can recommend getting your own domain. Changing email address is a total PITA. I guess hosting your own server is a steamroller approach to having an alternative to Gmail. However, it has given me very little trouble and the server draws 600Wh (about 30¢) a day. The server is also a file server (I guess you'd call it a NAS box), web server, DLNA server so the mail hosting is just another service.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 10:51:27 am
content: Be careful with email redirection. SPF causes a lot of fun, especially since you can't change the SPF settings of the original sender's domain.

author: TomS_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 11:26:13 am
content: Quote from: Simon on February 15, 2021, 07:50:01 amWhether or not someone is professional in their work doesnt seem to be related to how professional their online presence is, in my view. It can swing both ways.With a couple of exceptions, so far all of the worst experiences I have had with trades people have been the ones who have the flashy modern looking websites. Maybe that is simply supposed to be a confidence trick. "Oh this business man is dressed sharp, he must be good at what he does". Or maybe he dresses that way to make you think that and really just scams you. Then again they can be very good at what they do and just like to dress nicely, or maybe they are still very good at what they do but look like they are in rags.In the past I would have bought into the "only professional people with a professional presence will be any good", but not any more. 2 years of doing rennovations has completely flipped my perception of that.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 12:49:59 pm
content: It's more a case of when they have a website but still use something like Gmail that I cringe. Just look at what happened "to" Dave. Person contacted a company claiming to be Dave from a plausible Gmail address. Dave also uses Gmail, how could the company have known? and they handed over information that they would not have to others.Although you can spoof the sender address having a proper email that has the same domain as your site does help with things.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 01:33:53 pm
content: Yep! And if you set up DMARC for your domain it becomes even harder for the bad guys.

author: perieanuo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 15, 2021, 02:57:24 pm
content: Quote from: radar_macgyver on February 13, 2021, 03:50:07 amyep, leave google for russian provider, I never see this as an option. maybe if you live in Moldavia you can be real attracted to this, they have the stocholm symptoms. let's get real and propose something serious. I use kaspersky but I can't swear for him too. the rule is, more poverty more risk. maybe protonmail worth to consider for examplejust tested protonmail on web, activate 2fa, installed on android, well, 'invalid credentials' caused by latin characters. latin characters, russian, extraterrestrial are ok, improves security. so for me protonmail is not really up to the task, the devs need to upscale their 'know-how database', not everyone like to tune some unfinished bussiness

author: ricard2k
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 16, 2021, 05:05:05 pm
content: As a really secure alternative and without concerns about privacy, I usehttps://protonmail.com.They save your emails encrypted, and only your password can decrypt them.

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2021, 12:19:55 am
content: gmail really pissed me off yesterday. I decided to login to an old account. Correct password, etc. Google decided to lock me out. I tried the recovery process, giving all the correct information it needed, like previous passwords, secret question answers, etc, and still decided it couldn't verify I'm the account owner. So that was a big "fuck you" from their end. Their system is becoming increasingly user hostile, so I'm thinking of changing email hosts.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2021, 07:38:38 pm
content: Quote from: AntiProtonBoy on March 17, 2021, 12:19:55 amThat is what happened to me on multiple accounts. I am still looking for an acceptable alternative and I no longer recommend Google to anybody, or even help them setup anything with Google.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 21, 2021, 09:03:31 pm
content: get what you pay for....

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2021, 10:31:01 pm
content: To Goofle you are a product to be sold. One of hundreds millions. If you yourself lose one 1/8W resistor from your stock, do you care about finding it? No. So why would Alphabet care about even less important item from their inventory being lost?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 01:55:01 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on March 21, 2021, 07:38:38 pmProtonmail is used by many journalists. Anything else is better. Plus they dont mine your email for data which becomes their property. . Welcome to the new Digital Apocalypse. Thats how the Internet companies "work" now. Extortion. They should all be broken up.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 07:38:52 am
content: Quote from: cdev on March 22, 2021, 01:55:01 amI'm sorry but you are talking rubbish. The only thing they ever did wrong was to show people that they could have free stuff. Now everyone expects everything for free. Now everyone wants it for free whilst dictating the terms. I prefer to pay for my stuff and have it my way. My google account email address is only used as a back for my hosting as it's a bit pointless having the contact point for a failed account on that account.

author: ssander
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 10:19:04 am
content: +1 for registering a domain name, buying some hosting that you can then set up your own email address.such as me@myname.com <-- not a real address

author: YurkshireLad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 12:01:32 pm
content: Quote from: ssander on March 22, 2021, 10:19:04 amYou don't need to buy hosting to set up your own email address. Unless you mean paying to host your own mail servers, which is really painful these days.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 12:50:46 pm
content: Just buying a domain name does not get you email service, unless the seller includes that in the deal, which typically is not the case. You need to buy hosting in order to get email service that the hosting company will provide to you, you do not have to set up and maintain the actual email server at all.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 12:58:45 pm
content: These days emails make up most on the site storage. Everything I am hosting is mostly emails by space. A wordpress site is not that big unless you go mad on the upload section with full resolution photos off a mobile phone and then keep changing your pictures.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 01:04:30 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on March 22, 2021, 12:50:46 pmQuite a few places selling domainsdoinclude a basic email service as well - shop around.If you want to do email yourself (it's not too difficult but you do need to read up on security a bit) then Kimsufi will rent you a basic low powered machine (Intel N2800) for €6 a month including VAT - there are places around which will do you a Raspberry Pi for similar money and either platform is plenty for email and maybe a small website.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 02:51:49 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on March 22, 2021, 01:04:30 pmYep, you'll find all kinds of combinations of services.Quote from: grumpydoc on March 22, 2021, 01:04:30 pmOr rent VMs for less than EUR 3 per month. But I wouldn't recommend to run your own MTAs, POP3 and IMAP servers if you aren't proficient in administering Unix servers and internet services, including security aspects. Reading a few how-to guides won't be sufficient, just giving you a few basic ideas. Today's internet is a war zone.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 03:12:52 pm
content: Quote from: madires on March 22, 2021, 02:51:49 pmNot far off, I agree.I run fail2ban on my sendmail logs - currently 16 IP addresses are on the naughty list.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 06:24:11 pm
content: Quote from: madires on March 22, 2021, 02:51:49 pmI would not recommend a virtual machine. that is the most expensive way to go unless you are running 10's of accounts. With a virtual machine you are renting a certain amount of ringfenced hardware: one or more CPU, ram and disk space and you pay for an IP address of your own. Unlike with shared hosting the first thing these resources are for is the operating system and any software like cPanel. So you pay for several GB of space just for a linux distro and then you pay for 2GB of RAM just for the machine to run and have to rent one or two more for your actual hosting. And then if you ever need a bit more resource you hit a wall. That is not a cheap option not to mention the skills to run the whole thing as you are responsible for it all. Been there, done that, got the badge. The flexibility is nice and I did it because I was sick of ending up on shared hosting that was over shared and not working due to lack of resources. Once cPanel put their prices up and I found that my hoster has limits and lockouts I gladly moved to their shared reseller hosting. It's cheaper, they take care of the maintenance, I am not paying to rent all the resources that are needed just to run the servers OS and because the resources to each account are controlled I never suffer issues due to other users hogging the server.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 07:20:34 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 06:24:11 pmSuppose you have a fast cable or fiber connection and you want to run your own web app or server at home, you'll find it hard to do that because they will assume you are a spammer and your email may not get through.Can you run a tunnel so your home server can live at home, with its big disc, and big RAM and be connected to the internet through this IP tunnel? Incoming web traffic and email can behave normally, with the traffic port forwarded to the right ports on your server, tunneled via a secure path?Or, don't small ISPs make arrangements with other internet services to relay traffic to one another (peering?) Has anybody ever done that? What are the issues involved if its your intent to offer some service, is it a better way to go if you want reliability? Back when I first got online in a medium sized city it was like that with only a few ISPs connected to the net. Businesses would have networking but it was slow, mostly email, and the web traffic that existed was very slow. An entire business might be connected via just one modem. When WIred started out they were all connected to the net via one Zyxel modem. Dial up connections via faxmodems were thenorm. Almost nobody had a fast connection. DSL when it arrived seemed blindingly fast. Cable even more so. Now many people have more bandwidth available than many small countries did a decade or two ago. How fast time flies.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 07:58:01 pm
content: Why run a server from home? my NAS cost me £200, I have a total of 10Mb upload so for a user not much and that NAS box is not the fastest server on earth. Considering that you can get hosting for £30 a year why bother to spend on the hardware, the time setting it up and the electricity to run it not to mention the no back up option as that just adds cost (second NAS that should be in a different location). My standard cPanel accounts offer daily backups for the last 31 days as standard, I don't have that on a NAS box apart from the fact that I would need to rent an IP address which when I had a VM was £6/m. If you have some niche requirement then go for it but we were talking about an equivalent to 1 gmail account and people keep suggesting solutions that are over complicated and will cost a load of money and require skills.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:02:17 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 06:24:11 pm2 GB RAM are plenty to run the OS and multiple services for personal use. A basic linux installation needs about 1 GB disk space. If you need more resources the VM will be more expensive, of course. However, it's the same for any other type of cloud/VM, server or hosting. If you need more, you'll pay more. cPanel & Co. are meant to help newbies and provide just very basic functionality. For more complex setups they are completely useless. Emacs/vi rulez.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:06:41 pm
content: yea, so your solution to replace one gmail account is 1 IP address, 2GB of RAM, 1 CPU and 10+GB of space

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:07:16 pm
content: QuoteYou'll find it hard because practically all home connections will filter port 25 traffic both to and from the Internet. CGNAT etc is also becoming increasingly common. And generally there are no guarantees about running servers on home connections at all, so even if it does work, it might get blocked at any time for any reason, and you will have to scramble to get your mail back online.Quote from: cdev on March 22, 2021, 07:20:34 pmYou can, there are a variety of ways you might structure this. If it were me, I would probably put an MTA on the remote server, build a VPN tunnel to home, and have the MTA do onward delivery to the MDA at home. This way your VM will queue the mail for a while in case your home server is down, and avoid your senders seeing deferral notifications or deliveries failing entirely. It will also give you a server you can do outbound delivery from. Many popular VM platforms like Linode are regularly on spam RBLs though, so sending mail via them isn't really ideal.Not sure it's worth the trouble though, when competent e-mail hosting is relatively inexpensive (around the same cost as that VM), and even hosted storage is cheap.QuoteNot sure how this is relevant to the conversation. Peering is done over BGP between networks at major traffic exchange points. Small e-mail providers likely don't operate their own BGP AS and wouldn't engage in peering, they most likely would just rent servers from someone else who operates the network. Peering is generally done for cost and path optimization, not reliability. Reliability is achieved through redundancy, whether that is multiple peering sessions at different locations, or multiple transit providers.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:14:21 pm
content: Quote from: ve7xen on March 22, 2021, 08:07:16 pmVM's cost 10's/month, shared hosting costs 10's/year. You get what you pay for. VM: dedicated IP address + GB's of RAM + CPU + GB's space just for the OS. Hosting: no dedicated IP address, you will only use 100's MB of RAM and that is shared with other users, the CPU is shared with other users so you are paying for a fraction of a CPU, you are sharing the cost of the OSes disk space with dozens of other users so are only paying for the space you use for your actual files.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:16:06 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:06:41 pmSeems cheap to not have Google trawl your email for advertising opportunitiesSeriously, if you don't want to use gmail, but don't want to run your own server (which is totally reasonable) you can go with Outlook, AOL, Yahoo! and loads of others. All have some downsides, some you have to pay for if you don't want ads thrust at you.Some of us still run our own servers, even if it is a minority game these days - and *that's* totally reasonable as well

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:17:54 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:06:41 pmNope! Read my reply on page #1 and the first one on this page! I was just commenting on some common misconceptions about running own servers. And I clearly stated that it's nothing for an user.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:21:01 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on March 22, 2021, 08:16:06 pmeven cheaper to just get shared hosting.....You people seem to be just off some fringe, it's a free email address or run an entire server for one email account! Oh and don't you think the others are not trying to learn all they can about you? outlook is microsoft, you know the guys that don't sell you windows, it's not a product, it's a service and they are highly controlling these days to the point I am looking at linux again as I'd like to have some semblance of control over the hardware that I own in law!

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:23:33 pm
content: Quote from: ve7xen on March 22, 2021, 08:07:16 pmAnnoyingly common I agree for mass market ISPs.However this is a question of planning ahead and it is quite do-able if you want to - one thing is to choose your ISP. Mine is niche and expensive but would *never* consider blocking a port because it has a stated ethos of giving you a totally transparent Internet connection.A /27 and /48 help as I can present fixed IP addresses on which reverse lookup works.The advantage of a dedicated server (if you have an ISP which blocks ports) is that they typically have a fixed IP address (though usually just one) and ports are rarely blocked.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:26:34 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:21:01 pmSorry Simon, you can't have it both ways here - you can't whinge that running your own email server is weird & too much work *and* complain all the free providers are spying on you. Also it's a free(ish) world - if I want to run an email server for one address I can do so - I'm not hurting anyone else by doing so am I?

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:26:57 pm
content: It's not your server that has the IP, it's your connection if it's a home server. I think on virgin in the UK you tend to always end up on the same IP but any reseller on openreach could be changing your IP address at every glitch and you are sharing it with other users.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:29:02 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on March 22, 2021, 08:26:34 pmNo you just sound weird, a user asks what can I use as an alternative to to gmail and your answer is a home server. And now you are putting words in my mouth, unlike you i am not banging on about one solution only, I am suggesting a third that you choose to ignore.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:30:07 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:26:57 pmYes, but I'm not on Virgin and I have a completely fixed, not NATed, won't change, publicly routeable IP address, plus an IPV4 /27 (30 addresses) block plus an IPV6 /48 to play with.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:33:12 pm
content: And I bet you are paying more that £50 a year on top of any other service provider. If you have use for it great but otherwise that is a lot to spend on one email address. Plenty of companies offer email only hosting and it will be cheaper than a full home setup.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:35:55 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:29:02 pmI could do without the ad hominem, thanks, if it's all the same to you; it's getting tiresome andIhaven't calledyounames.No I'm not suggesting you run a home server - I'm suggesting it is an option and discussing how it might work or what you might pay. I can see that you don't want the hassle whichas I said beforeis totally fine.But you do have to look at the options and choose what trade off. You've already dissed other providers like Outlook, Yahoo or AOL (and, apparently did not notice that I was suggesting routes other than running a server). So go to a smaller player, or find a paid-for service, or ...QuoteSorry, I lost track, what was that option?

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:36:24 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on March 22, 2021, 01:55:01 amProtonmail's client support is limited since it does not natively support IMAP or SMTP, or support POP3 at all. I have zero interest in web only based email because it indicates that the providers is being disingenuous about privacy at best:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Privacy_ActEmail that is stored on a third party's server for more than 180 days is considered by the law to be abandoned. All that is required to obtain the content of the emails by a law enforcement agency is a written statement certifying that the information is relevant to an investigation, without judicial review.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:36:30 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:14:21 pmFYI: You can rent a VM with 2 GB RAM, 20 GB disk space, 10 TB traffic, one fixed IPv4 address and a fixed IPv6 /64 for less than EUR 3 per month (located in a German data center).

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:37:23 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:14:21 pmI'm not a fan of cheap shared 'web hosting', and wouldn't recommend it for someone just after reliable e-mail service, as I wouldn't recommend running your own either. If one of the hundreds of other customers on the server can put Wordpress on it, and then immediately get exploited because Wordpress is trash, you'll feel the fallout. These services also tend to have no redundancy, regular backups, or high availability for their mail services, which tend to be run on the same single-shared-server as the web stuff. Who knows about their security or privacy practices or anything else. Some companies do this well, but most don't, and it's hard to tell the difference for someone not already capable of deciding how to host their mail.Dedicated mail hosting services like FastMail, ProtonMail, Zoho, Google Workspace, Rackspace Email etc. tend to be around the $1-5/mo/user mark, and that's what I'd recommend for the average user that just wants reliable e-mail at their own domain and without advertising. A reasonable VM just to host mail is also ~$5/mo, of the same order.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:40:47 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on March 22, 2021, 08:35:55 pmYou do it the normal way, like the vast majority of people do for a bit of hosting, just get a shared hosting account, they are cheap and do all you want in terms of standard hosting. I have outlined above the differences in price between a hosted virtual machine and a shared hosting account, a DIY setup being even more costly than a VM possibly unless you have some niche need like hundreds of GB of online storage.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:43:44 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on March 22, 2021, 08:36:24 pmProtonmail is not based in the US, that does not apply.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:44:56 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on March 22, 2021, 08:43:44 pmAh, well lack of mail client support still applies. I have no interest in web base email.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:46:41 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:40:47 pmSure, if that does what you want - I have no problem with that (I'd dispute "normal" though - "normal" is gmail these days).However as a (re)seller of such services you're not exactly neutral in this discussion are you?

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:49:51 pm
content: Quote from: ve7xen on March 22, 2021, 08:37:23 pmYes dedicated email hosting will be cheaper. With shared hosting it's easy to see who knows their stuff. If they have limits in place on what resource you can use then as those limits apply to other customers as well as you then other customers cannot swamp the server. In terms of security they are getting good these days, my hoster will just shut down an account as soon as it's an issue, they actively scan accounts seeking out the problem ones and locking them until the owner sorts it out. Wordpress not by default will auto update everything limiting the fucktards that can't be arsed to update their wordpress and buggy plugins.Why do you say these services do not tend to have redundancy or backups? you insist on not reading don't you. My provider provides 31 backups at all times taken once per day. Recently this allowed a customer of mine to recover their site that stopped working because two different plugins upset each other. I also doubt that there is one physical server, they work in clusters, never have I suffered an outage. on a virtual machine you are even more at risk as on there are no backups, that's your problem, it's your machine, it's up to YOU to pay for multiple virtual machines to cluster for redundancy.I don't know why you write them all off, I have had shit providers and good providers, they are not all the same.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:55:06 pm
content: I'd expect a VPS to be backed up, maybe cheap ones aren't - my old ionos one was.Yeah, if it's a dedicated server it's down to you.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:56:27 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:49:51 pmAnother misconception. You can have snapshots and backups for VMs.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 08:56:53 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on March 22, 2021, 08:46:41 pmYea I am neutral, I have nothing to gain here. "normal" is that you have a domain and some emails and maybe a website, You get a third party to host your few GB worth of data, that is what most companies do. If you take that functionality and it's price and try to DIY replicate it at home you soon find out how much it actually costs, for what? a few GB of hosting? If you are running a download service and need TB of space then sure it's cheaper to run your own although I am sure that a provider can sort you out.The first thing you gain using a company is that they will have offsite backups (mine does), how easy is that to replicate at home? having bought my one NAS box the only way I can protect from fire or theft is to setup a second backup at another house, now both properties need decent internet connections. Now I have to hope that whatever software came with the NAS to allow external access actually works or that is 2 IP's I am paying for and it goes on and on.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:01:09 pm
content: Quote from: madires on March 22, 2021, 08:56:27 pmOh for goodness sake. Yea sure, and that will cost extra, so you decided that backups are not standard for shared hosting but on VM's you just get themYOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. If you get a cheap service you will get no backups no matter what it is, if you get a decent one they will offer backups and for more money give you even more backups. With a VM you rent your resources and it's up to you, on shared hosting the provider will include you in whatever they do. You know bulk buying? when you get shared hosting you are buying into a bulk buying scheme. You don't get to have everything your way like on a WM but you are taken care of if you choose a decent provider. On a VM you are in charge of setting all of that up yourself or arranging a service outside of the basic VM with the provider.

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:09:07 pm
content: For email, I have my own machine in a datacenter, where I rent space and buy IP connectivity / power / cooling. It is not cheap, but it is very clear who is responsible for what. On top of that I've got my own domain names, hosted on my own distributed DNS servers, backed by my own storage, made resilient by additional VM's in other datacentres running metadata services and similar. At home, via a tunnel to my colo, I've got storage for various functions, and some other back end services. All important data is on RAID drives and backed up to another site via a professional backup service.There is no substitute for doing thingsright.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:12:58 pm
content: So how much space do your "emails" take up? It sounds like you are paying someone to do it and then doing it all yourself as well.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:14:15 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 08:49:51 pmIt's a fundamental risk of allowing arbitrary customer code from random customers to run on the same servers as you're hosting mail for other customers. You can try to limit resources, you can react, you can try to be proactive and scan for exploits, but you really can't solve this problem without completely sandboxing the users, and that means VMs or containers per user. Most shared web hosts don't do that, and when they do it tends to look more like Heroku or Google App Engine, not cPanel.Why do you advocate for random unsanitized web code running on the same server hosting your mail, when you don't actually care about web hosting?QuoteThe vast majority of shared web hosts throw cPanel on a bunch of servers and call it good. Each operates more or less independently. If that server fails, your mail is down until they fix it. They don't build a highly available mail architecture with multiple mail servers and distributed storage, your mail is hosted on the same single server as your web site. That single server *may* be hosted on a HA VM, but that still doesn't save you if it crashes, runs out of resources, has a major configuration error, etc. Nor does it guarantee availability during maintenance activities.Not all shared web hosting works this way, but it is the vast majority, especially on the cheap end.With regard to backups, on-host backups are common and generally pretty easy to access. It is usually completely opaque whether off-host or off-site backups are being performed, and at what frequency. Depends on the provider, but is difficult to verify and usually insufficient on cheap plans.I'm not advocating for VMs, I'm advocating for buying the service you want- mail hosting - from a company dedicated to doing that, and only that, well. As opposed to one where mail is an afterthought/addon and that tries to meet the needs of hundreds of different web hosting customers at once, and all the random stuff they need on the server, and lets arbitrary customer code run on the same box hosting your mail.QuoteUnfortunately while I'm sure there are good shared hosting providers out there, there are lots that look practically identical, and the vast majority of them aren't great. From the outside it's hard to tell them apart, and since you are talking about $10/year hosting, most of it is on the crap side. Your host's cheapest plan seems to be $70/yr and seems to offer only 10GB of storage at that price. That is considerably more expensive than FastMail, and astronomically more expensive than Zoho or Rackspace.If you care about reliable mail, just buy reliable mail. It's easy, costs the same, and you just don't have to think about it. Also easier for a layperson to manage.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:15:21 pm
content: We're drifting off into an argument here which is probably not solving the OP's problem.Simon - you are beingverydogmatic about this - email hosting is going to be the right answer for a lot of people who have concerns about Gmail, but is not going to be right for everyone. There are alternatives - either another of the big email providers (if they don't have the same problem for you as Gmail does), a hosted email service, or even running your own email on a server that you control be that a VPS, dedicated server or home machine.There are trade-offs involved in all of these solutions.FWIW I agree that I wouldn't actually recommend that people run their own email servers. I have a good friend who is 100x a beter Unix sysadmin than I am and even he thinks it is too much hassle these days, it needs a good knowledge of the tools and of how things work and of how to keep it all secure - but it is perfectly valid to discuss it as a solution if we are talking about alternatives to one of the big "free" email platforms.For me the marginal cost is slight - I went with my ISP because of their ethos (shift packets, be very good at it) - you are right but they are worth itto me, I have been running small email systems for various employers for 30+ years so was quite comfortable with doing my own, I had the VPS and subsequently dedicated server mainly as a web host so also using it as a 2nd MX host was a trivial addition.Just because you do things a certain way doesn't make it right for everyone.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:21:11 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 09:01:09 pmNope! I was just giving facts. I didn't say that snapshots or backups of VMs are for free or that shared hosting doesn't come with backups. That's what you've put in my mouth.BTW, email != shared hosting.Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 09:01:09 pmExactly!

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:40:43 pm
content: i host a mix of websites and email, there are no email only accounts. To most people the email account is a consequence of having a website. As far as hosting goes these people have been the best I have ever had. I have a friend who runs a local community centre that wanted to migrate to me from another provider - hostpapa - oh my fucking god I have never seen such a bunch of assholes. Their server is so slow, it's awful, shared hosting all right, it's like having to share the same piece of loo paper with someone. I left heart internet when they were bought out by go daddy, there came the point where they moved our accounts around the servers so often that they were giving us the IP address for email access rather than have to wait the time for the DNS records to catch up and the service speed was awful.i had some fun with LCN, I bought my first VM with them. In my opinion they set it up with a hard drive image copy of an old system, it came with PHP5....... when 7 was the done thing. It was a mess that i could never quite get right. I then moved to krystal where I had to run my own setup of the VM which meant that it was up to date and things were right but then I found that their shared hosting was much cheaper and that they are the best I ever had. Sure I would love to be on a VM still but it comes at a price that does not just give you all the stuff that you get on shared hosting. If you want them to run the VM for you they charge £60/m! but then they will be taking time to sort out your one little machine for you rather than do the same work on a machine/cluster that benefits hundreds of shared users.I don't know about security and sandboxing accounts but I think that things are better than they used to be and what most people will tell you is based on bitter experience of the past and not what things have actually been over the last say 1 year.Yes all I hear is that WP is the worse for security. Sure, firstly it's a well documented and published code and it's the same code running on millions of sites. As soon as hackers find one thing in the source code that applies to millions of sites. also plugins are a big problem. I use as few as I need and always warn my users about not having redundant plugins (some i have admin access to their WP site and do the updates or set auto update for them). I had all the accounts on my VM at LCN hacked except the 2 i was running as unlike my customers I was keeping my sites up to date. But now i see that wordpress has made many changes and improvements in the last couple of years, so if you are telling me about how unsafe it is then please tell me that as of the last 2 years you have tested your hypothesis. If it was that bad then no one would use it, sensible people keep up to date and don't install dodgy plugins and there are security enhancement plugins. These days a new setup of wordpress will autoupdate itself and the plugins you install as default. This i think is the biggest security hole. I refused to use one plugin on a site I was involved with because they had been warned about a security hole and ignored it. The plugin learnpress allowed a "student" user to elevate themselves to a "tutor" user and then admin. The company only fixed it when wordfence told them they were going public over a month after they tipped them off quietly. that is the risk of wordpress, plugins.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:45:49 pm
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on March 22, 2021, 09:15:21 pmNo i am not the one being dogmatic. We got into "go screw yourself on gmail" or "set up a replica of the world wide web in your home". I always said that there are different options but to turn your house into a hosting bunker over one email address is a bit excessive. I also do not have a problem with gmail, that is the OP. The reason I do not use gmail except as a backup address and a few other things is that I never used it as my primary address in the first place. I have been hosting my own emails probably since before gmail was widely available. If i had come alonf later my gmail account may have been my email account in fact my gmail account is just my google account that was my youtube login......

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2021, 09:53:05 pm
content: Quote from: madires on March 22, 2021, 09:21:11 pmI'm sorry but you made a lot of sweeping statements that are not true and now trying to say that it is otherwise. There are thousands of hosters out there, all offer all sorts of services with different combinations of features, usually the good ones cost more and the rest are just cutting different corners to get the price down and some offer slightly more specific services like email hosting only which is not guaranteed to be safer than normal hosting, it's just a way to get customers through the door by selling half the service for half the price but cheaper than the full service then sell you the other half when you want it. Emails I suspect are less resource hungry than websites so can be cheaper to run maybe on slower and cheaper hard drives. a few minutes of down time or overloaded server is not a big deal. Any mail provider will not baulk the moment it can't reach the recipients mail server, it will try later and only after 24 hours of no success will alert the sender. We just assume that emails are instant.

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2021, 09:02:42 am
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 09:40:43 pmThis gemis very old but nevertheless still relevant.Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 09:40:43 pmWordPress, being made from PHP, is forbidden on my computers.It is actually that simple. I do not allow PHP. If I want something more complicated than a static site, I first evaluate if it can be done with a static + batch solution and fool people into believing it's all "web %d.%d" Like 8 out of 10 times, that is the case.The rest I do in minimalistic Perl. (with more comments than code, so I actually can figure out WTH I was thinking.)

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2021, 10:06:09 am
content: Quote from: Simon on March 22, 2021, 09:53:05 pmUsers will complain if a service isn't responsive, no matter which service. Comparing email with web hosting resource-wise isn't that simple. A web page can be anything from a few static pages up to a huge platform with load balancers and database clusters for delivering dynamic content. For email you need MTAs, anti-spam, POP3/IMAP servers, and optionally anti-malware and/or a web frontend. Anti-spam and anti-malware need a lot of resources. And users can have IMAP mailboxes with many GB.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 23, 2021, 12:55:14 pm
content: Well I don't know PHP, i am just about conversant in C but yea I can imagine that there is a lot of stuff out there that is not great. Oddly enough that article describes PHP the way I would describe my employerThink about that, that is actually what I have to work in, literally making it up as we go along. I just had to go and sort out a stock issue because even the MD will just ignore the system when it suits him but someone else will be blamed and no one will be able to remember anything or dis/prove anything. "procedures" are made up on the hop and then disregarded. Needless to say we have a 150 page manual on how the company is supposed to run. It does not say a lot but keeps the ISO9001 auditor happy - does that sound like PHP?

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2021, 01:25:08 pm
content: PHP keeps webmasters busy and causes security nightmares. I fully agree with mansaxel, banning PHP is totally reasonable.

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2021, 02:19:03 pm
content: I'm not sure if it's been said here already. (Too many pages...)But do you have a WebSite?? If so, your Site Provider, (via the Control Panel), will virtually ALWAYS offer you optionsto create one/many email addresses for you, like.. fredbloggs@greatserver.com, or admin@mybeautysalon.com . . .Their Control Panels allow for quick easy access, without the need for generic 'gmail' or 'hotmail' or 'yahoo' etc!!! ?

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 28, 2021, 02:31:41 pm
content: apparently that is a bad idea that i have been trying to explain all these pages. The only truly secure solution is to create you own data centre at home