I’m waving a white flag. I give up. I’ve decided to no longer attempt to host my own email. I’ve hosted my own mail for years and years, and I’ve had enough. Why?
Hosting your email used to be pretty simple. You setup your SMTP server, got a mail client and used POP to access your mailbox. You set it up, and didn’t need to worry about it again. These days are long gone.
Today, hosting your own mailbox and exposing an SMTP server to the world, whether you want to or not, engages you in the global war on spam and phishing. To host my own email I had to deal with keeping 3 software packages current at all times, and pay a monthly service fee to a service provider to filter for viruses and spam for me. This simply takes up more time and is frankly too complicated to waste time on.
I’ve dumped this whole game and am now hosting thingelstad.com email using Google Apps for your Domain. Yes, Google now can index my mail and serve me ads. I don’t care. It’s tremendously easier, will save me a bunch of time, and cut my out of pocket cost by nearly $100 a year. This is a no brainer.
I’m happy to also say that I’ve been really impressed with Gmail. I find it’s actually faster than Thunderbird was for casual usage. And I can now give up the madness of trying to keep my address book synchronized.
I’m now a much happier netizen, and no longer am worried about versions of IMAP servers and SMTP daemons and having to worry about the latest spam, phishing and virus issues. Yeah!
Google Apps are great. I’ve been using them for a while now. Allowing you to set a personalized URL to access the Calender or Mail, is great as well! The admin interface is super easy to use and not having to manage the spam/phishing/virus yourself makes it a no-brainer!
Hi,
Interesting read! Doesn’t it worry you, that Gmail is so non-standard? If you ever decide to leave GMail you can’t carry your labels with you – nor the read/unread/replied-status of your mail. You could let an IMAP-provider such as FastMail host your e-mail. They will let you use your domain with your mail – just like Google Apps and if you ever wanted to leave them, you could just move to another IMAP-provider that let’s you use your own domain with the read/unread/replied-status of your mail intact.
Jannik,
I looked at a number of hosted IMAP providers and there were issues with that. First, almost none of those providers offers spam protection in the base price. It is typically a per mailbox fee added on top of the base price, and many times is outsourced to another provider and is almost never integrated into your “mail experience”.
The second issue is just plain price. These services were relatively expensive. This particularly became a problem when I have 3 separate mail ecosystems operating in 20 domains. This is free with Google Apps and would have been a bushel of money with others.
The other issue is I would still be tied to desktop email, and honestly I’m preferring GMail in a big way to desktop software. It’s really nice.
You are right about portability — it’s a one way step mostly — however I could POP my mail out and give up labels and such. I’m okay trading that potential issue with the above immediate issues.
Jamie,
I can see that GMail is good for you :-) Actually, the reason that I found your article in the first place is, of course, that I’m contemplating a switch myself. I have been forwarding copies of my mail to my GMail-account since July 2006 so I think I have tested GMail pretty carefully – and I like it a lot. Except for the portability-issue which really worries me! For one thing, it’s not just a problem if one should ever decide to leave GMail. It’s also a very real problem for me, if I should decide to my all my 400MB mail into GMail. This would have to be done by POP from GMail – which would mean that I would loose all my IMAP-flags (important, read/unread, replied) and customized IMAP-keywords (I’m using Mulberry, which supports stuff like that).
However, I suspect that GMail is worth all this trouble. The superior mobile access alone is worth an awful lot to me.
BTW, you wouldn’t be tied to desktop software with a provider such as FastMail. The offer an excellent web-interface.
Jannik,
You actually hit on one of the things that I’m not happy with the current setup at GMail. It is important to note that Google Apps for your Domain is actually a different version of GMail than the main GMail. Notably, it doesn’t have the feature of POP-retrieval from 3rd party mail services yet. This is a big bummer as I currently have no way to get my old mail, from an IMAP server, into GMail without the timestamps being lost. Losing the dates on the archive to me is a non-starter. So, at this point, my old mail is still on my local IMAP server for now and I hope that they rev the version of GMail that Google Apps is using.
And regarding webmail, I realize the IMAP hosters would provide something. I ran SquirrelMail at home. They all just pal in comparison though to Y! Mail or GMail in features.
I am a fan — and I do recognize that when some new web service appears that is 10 times better and I want to switch it will be really hard. However, I’m also pinning some hopes that GMail gets a real API and that tools could be made off of some future API to solve my issues.
Even if they aren’t, at least I’ll be in a big herd of geeky folks with the some problem and hopefully be able to find something that works.
Jamie,
I think it is pretty ransome which GMail accounts – or Google Apps accounts – that has the ability to import by pop. My GMail-account suddenly had it a couple of days ago – silently. No notification whatsoever of this very wanted feature. My wife still haven’t got it, though. Nonetheless, I feel pretty confident that the entire GMail/Google Apps system will have this feature eventually.
Like you I’m also pretty confident that other issues with GMail will get a solution at some point – just because the service is so popular.
I think you made the right move. Google has the scale to detect and deal with spam that you could never achieve on your own and possibly not even with 3rd party apps. The ads served are far from intrusive, so – as you put it – who cares?
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Jamie and others ,
I’ve been trying to get my old mail from an IMAP server into gmail without killing the timestamp information. Anyone find a workable solution to this?
Taximan