Hosted email

[Spinal]

I currently host my own email - but have been considering migrating to either google apps or outlook.com/office365.

Now, in an ideal world I would like to use office365 - but at £2.60 per mailbox, per month it'll get expensive... (reason I like o365 is the encryption potential).

I noticed outlook.com/live.com has a free offering, like google apps... does anyone have any experience with this? What's it like?

Gmail I like the web interface - but have issues when combining this with outlook. I have been too thick to get it to work with PGP desktop too, which is my biggest bug-bear... (and I don't want to use POP)

Any thoughts? Who do people use for hosting?
M

 

[redbaron]

outlook.com is the new name for hotmail

Office365 is a proper commercial service with uptime guarantees and pro quality antispam etc...

Go Office 365.

 

[moonloops]

Question 1: How do you prefer to read email ? e.g. web interface or full on client such as outlook ?

Webmail wise google wins as its interface is cleaner and also the inbox rules are more sophisticated.

If you are preferring to use Outlook as a client to get email then booth google and office 365 are equal providing you aren't team working (Office 365 has better handling of shared calendars/contacts etc)

Question 2 - is it is a matter of budget? If so google wins even though their migration tools and outlook integration software is a bit clunky..

 

[bolide]

I'd love to find a good email provider or ISP offering IMAP mail with a decent amount of storage

Maybe Google is it?

Nick Froome

 

[Spinal]

Interesting point - my reading method of choice is outlook. That said, when it comes to searching for a long lost email from 1999, I use the web interface... but honestly, I tend to read emails on my android/iphone... so really, all of the above

Google does imap - but you won't get PGP working with it (at least not easily)
M.

 

[davidjpowell]

I always used Outlook and finally switched to Google Apps 18 months ago.

It's fantastic, and I only ever use the web interface now. So much better than the SBS server that I used to run with Exchange.

 

[b1g1an]

You can't get new free Google apps accounts anymore but you can hang extra domains onto an existing one you or someone else may have from before they closed the door though they have stopped Activesync for any new devices/addresses.

 

[Spinal]

So google's lost its allure...

I may just stick with what I have now... the only issue I have with my current solution is searching takes ages as it crawls through gb of old emails...

M.

 

[Beetnik]

So google's lost its allure...

I may just stick with what I have now... the only issue I have with my current solution is searching takes ages as it crawls through gb of old emails...

M.

Use Copernic desktop search. Free (for non-commercial use) and lightening fast.

 

[Spinal]

Use Copernic desktop search. Free (for non-commercial use) and lightening fast.

Wouldn't work - my inbox is quite large... large enough that outlook can't handle it all in a single file. (>5GB iirc)

Hence, I keep only 6-months of emails on outlook, and leave the rest on the server.

I've created a microsoft account, and kicked off the email import last night. It's still ploughing away this morning, but it's looking good. I think that I may go with that, but have my emails stored in my old account and get mirosoft to pull them from there... that way I have control of a copy should anything ever happen to the M$ account...

Haven't tried PGP with it yet, but as it's EAS that shouldn't be a problem...

M.

 

[Beetnik]

I have 5.6 GB of pst files (admittedly spread across half a dozen psts - largest 2.3 GB) and Copernic works fine. IIRC the pro, paid for version will index the server files as well (that is if it's on your server and not your isp's). Costs around £40 and you can get a 1 month free trial. Worth a try.

Outlook 2003 onwards should handle a 5GB file with ease.

 

[Spinal]

Thanks - I gave up on keeping a local copy of all my emails a few years ago. May revisit that.


That said, I'm very impressed with outlook.com. The only "issue" I have is that my google account doesn't play nice with it - so while it sync's contacts and emails from gmail, it doesn't do so well with the calendar. If only it did EAS pulling, then I could get all the stuff from Google/my server/etc and have a central collated version

M.