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Email-only Providers?
Amiralul writes "I feel that having GMail or Yahoo email domains on my business card isn't really a professional touch. Yes, I do have a work-domain email address, but it lacks IMAP and it's rather non-responsive from time to time, so I choose not to depend on it for the time being (the previous mentioned free services are actually more reliable). Besides buying a domain and using Google Apps on it (which isn't actually intended for home users), I was thinking on having a domain of my own and choosing a commercial email provider that should provide just that: email (POP3, SMTP, IMAP, with a decent storage space). I don't need storage for my website, I don't need an ugly web interface (if provided and looks decent, maybe I'll use it, but it's not a must-have). If it's free, it's ok, but it doesn't bother me if it has a decent monthly or annual fee. So, do you Slashdotters know any providers that would satisfy my email-related needs?"
Yahoo! Mail will be able to do that for you as well for $34.95 /year.
Only problem might be if Microsoft ends up acquiring Yahoo!. You'll end up with a webmail looking like MSN Hotmail.
Gmail supports mail for your own domain aswell. See here
It also supports existing domains so you don't have to register new one.
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Check out Rackspace. You can get just email from them or email and server space if you want. http://www.rackspace.com/solutions/mail/index.php
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that was too easy
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
I run my domain through google apps. Works well. You can have as many accounts as you need, 6gb mailbox, etc etc.
http://www.google.com/apps/
Give it a go, it's free!
I jumped ship from Gmail to Fastmail back when Gmail didn't have IMAP, and I've liked it so far. They're a fairly powerful, old-school mail provider -- they give you SMTP, POP, IMAP, and webmail. The webmail is the old-school bit -- no AJAX, but you can edit Sieve scripts and do lots of other fun stuff from the Options screen. I recommend them.
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besides Google Apps
So ignoring the most obvious free solution is a good idea. Google is popular for a reason. Setting up Google Apps takes about 10 minutes, you don't even need to host your domain(you can do it with just access to DNS) and it never goes down. Enabling POP/IMAP takes only a few minutes and you are done. The only reason not to use google apps is if you are paranoid about people looking at your emails. If that is the case then you should be setting up Postfix or Sendmail.
I've been using them for about 3 years now - I started out on the pay once plan and I've since upgraded the cheapest yearly plan (mostly for extra aliases). I've NEVER had unexpected down time, and only once has there been any downtime for me (a scheduled server upgrade that they notified me over a week in advance of; I think it was on a Sunday and only for an hour or two - no incoming mail was lost, I just couldn't access my mailbox). The sieve scripts are wonderful for automatically handling e-mail and the spam filtering has worked a charm (no spam has made it into my inbox as long as I've used them; a few false positives - all mailing lists that could very easily have been flagged by others as spam - but those are easily corrected with a single "mark as not spam"). The bandwidth caps kind of scared me at first (since I had no clue how much bandwidth I was actually using for e-mail) but it turns out I've never even come close to using half of what they've allotted me. Overall I've been very pleased with them.
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I recently set up my own mail server. It's easier than you think (well it was easier than I though it was going to be) and you can have your own domain permanently and sure that it'll never be yanked out from under you. I wrote a full guide on setting up the mail server using Debian and the outstanding mail server package Archiveopteryx. You can read it here:
http://www.mrnaz.com/?s=publish-blog&entryid=197
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I absolutely recommend fastmail. Fastmail is the system that I would have liked to design. They really understand IMAP and they have the only webmail interface that doesn't make my skin crawl. I am extremely picky about email (I professionally set up email systems for small and medium sized businesses, and I've been a happy fastmail customer for about seven years.
Even if you don't pick fastmail, you should get your own domain name that you use for email. Typically your domain registrar will allow you to set up forwarding to whatever addresses you wish. This way, you aren't locked into your ISP or other email hoster if you wish to change. If I stopped liking fastmail tomorrow, I could easily switch to another provider by just changing a few DNS records. I've had ISPs and hosting companies screw up my mail before, and I enjoy the freedom to switch if necessary. Though I don't anticipate switching from fastmail whom I've been with for about seven years.
Let me also state why one shouldn't use your ISP's system. Your ISP doesn't win or lose customers by the quality of their email service. For them, email is nothing but an added expense which they run because they "have to" and because it creates a lock-in opportunity. This also applies Gmail. Who knows what their business model is, but keeping email customers happy probably isn't the core of it.
Free services (yahoo, gmail, hotmail etc.) have the caveats of free services: You get little support; Terms and Conditions change more rapidly than most others; advertisements; crappy IMAP support; and they are used by spammers leading to all mail from those services being more likely to be filtered. Fastmail does offer a "free" (advertising supported) service, but I've never used that.
There are some competitors to fastmail. You should look them up as well. The last time I seriously looked at these (2004) to provide a recommendations for a client, fastmail was still the best bet IMO.
Other than being a happy customer, I have no connection to fastmail.
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I used to run my own mail server at home, too. It wasn't very hard, it didn't cost much, and it was very fast and responsive, eating spam like a champ with Amavis.
It was all very hands-off and worked just great, until the hard drive crashed.
And then, I realized I had to put it all back together. And, then, I realized that I needed to also put together and use a backup system. And then, I asked myself, "What happens if my house burns down?" And then I thought about carrying backups off-site, or automating backups to a box at someone else's house. I carefully considered all of the extra expense and ongoing maintenance that all this stuff would require.
And then, I said "fuck it," switched my MX entries over to Google, and haven't looked back.
YMMV.
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The webmail is the old-school bit -- no AJAX, but you can edit Sieve scripts and do lots of other fun stuff from the Options screen. I recommend them.
And apparently the owners read Slashdot. Oh wait, that's me! ;) OK, so that makes me a little biased...
But I should add to your comments above that a new interface full of Javascripty goodness is on the way - it should be in beta in the next couple of weeks. You can see a mockup here: http://mockups.neilj.fastmail.fm/revision30/inbox.html (some things like the images on buttons aren't working in the mockup). There's lots of keyboard shortcuts, like '/' to search, and '.' to bring up an action menu. And of course, being FastMail, it downgrades gracefully - so if you don't have Javascript you can still use every feature.
To find out what other folks are saying, see this thread on the (independently run) FastMail forum: http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=1560. It has over 300 comments about the service, written over the last seven years.