I’m trying to move away from Google and replace my Gmail account. But reading about the different options, I’m realizing I don’t really understand email at all - e.g. the difference between the client and the domain name, the different protocols, encryption.
Does anyone have articles or books to suggest as a “Basics of Email: 101”? Thank you!
I imagine going through a “setup your own mail server guide” such as https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/setup-basic-postfix-mail-sever-ubuntu will give you the basics or at least enough to allow you to ask the correct questions to get the answers you want.
It has short explanations of what the different DNS records do (A, MX, PTR, etc) and such woven into the guide.
Good idea, I will have a look at this. Thank you.
(Have read you’re not interested in self hosting - I think that’s very sensible. It’s a lot of work and even then, very difficult to do it well and be reliable)
Suggest finding a reputable email provider, and they will require payment.
I recently moved from gmail to proton. The migration process was very smooth, with proton copying over all my existing email and calendars from gmail. However, their web clients are very slow in comparison (since they’re encrypted - click on an email and it’s 3 seconds or so to open, an eternity!). I find that annoying enough that I’ve setup thunderbird via a proxy, but that has negated some of the ease of use.
There are quite a few good options around, maybe others will chip in with recommendations.
Once you have a new mail client, your user@gmail.com address will not be valid. However, if you want it to, you can keep your old email account with gmail as well, and have it forward all incoming email to your new home. That allows you to gradually move your accounts over at your own speed. I think this is important as there will be more than you expect of them, but the process isn’t hard.
Most of those new providers will also allow you to use a personal domain, and multiple users. So you can register a domain that stays with you - that’s the domain.org bit of your email address, and multiple users - the bit before the @.
The good providers will have guides and documentation about helping you through this also.
Thank you, Proton was the provider I was leaning towards. I’ve also heard good things about a small Canadian company called xyz and was debating waiting for Thundermail. But what I’m seeing is that maybe the way to get around this is to obtain and use my own domain so it’s not a hassle to switch if I choose to change providers.
For another email provider alternative, I would suggest Forward Email. I still haven’t used them yet, but my goal is to switch to them from Proton when I get around to it.
I was thinking of playing around with email hosting, at least for offline backups, and I’ve been interested in using Stalwart.
I also suggest Porkbun for purchasing a domain.
No problem, and yes, that’s correct - once you have your own domain then you can hop between providers a lot more easily as you don’t need to change a thousand web accounts when you do. It’s also useful if you move into self-hosting in the future.
In my opinion all that you need is a new mail provider/host of your choice and an own domain if you want to make future moving of mail providers easier.
Hosting an own mail server should not be your main focus when making an initial switch away from Gmail.
Thank you, yes I agree and I’m not interested in hosting my own mail server. I’m just realizing that I don’t really understand the difference between a mail provider and a domain, and I’ve run into issues before with different mail protocol settings (like when I tried to connect a school outlook account to Thunderbird and couldn’t get it to work because of (I think) IMAP settings).
It’s something I use all the time, and I’d like to better understand how it works.
A domain is a url, like oaksprout.com. A provider is a server/computer that the domain points at. Many services sell both together at an upcharge, but a domain itself usually costs like ~$15 a year
If an IP address is a mailing address, imagine a domain as a way to pay the post office so people can just address it to oaksprout. You could have them forward your mail to your house, or you could send it to a PO box or business address, and change it whenever you want
The provider is like the mailbox in this metaphor… It receives the mail and holds it for you
That’s helpful, thanks
In your case Google would be the host/provider of your Gmail e-mail service and gmail.com is the domain name of the Gmail e-mail service.
Having your own domain name would allow you to keep you e-mail address even when switching your e-mail host. Which means you would not have to bother with re-registering you new e-mail address for every service or newsletter again.
yourname@yourdomain.com would always be yours no matter which e-mail provider you choose, IF they support a personal domain.
This: https://mwl.link/run-your-own-mail-server.html
I don’t have this book by MWL, but, when I got my first Sysadmin job in 2015, I took over a network almost entirely run on FreeBSD, and I was gifted a couple of other books of his, in particular his ZFS volumes with Allan Jude, and I can say that his work is easy to read and good at giving you the most basic raw facts of the matter. If you really want to understand email, read this book and I guarantee you will get all the information you need.
I am not his marketer, just a person who was helped immensely by his work. He’s on the Fedi as well, you can search in Mastodon.
Looks like this guy has a ton of interesting books, I will check this out - thank you!
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