I never understood why people use Gmail.
That’s a lie. Actually I do understand. Gmail is convenient, works nicely, even perfectly, and above all – free. so why not use Gmail?
That said, there’s never any guarantee that a service that has been good in the past will always be good in the future. Siegler’s (and TechCrunch’s) problem isn’t that Gmail has been unreliable (which really isn’t new), but that there’s no good alternative once you’ve invested heavily in it — either by giving out a @gmail.com email address, depending on features that other providers don’t support, or growing accustomed to (and dependent on) the Gmail web interface.
For something as important as email, I’ve never trusted everything to a proprietary provider. My email address has never ended in someone else’s domain name, and has never been hosted in any way that would preclude me from easily switching to another provider.
This is a clear case of sweet honey pot. As time passes it becomes increasingly more sticky and painful to get out, in case a you want to (or required to).
I am using Fastmail for the past 10 years (even longer then Marco). $40 a year is a negligible price to pay for a crucial service. After changing email addresses due to internet providers switch long ago, I vowed “never again”; The show-stopper feature became “Does this provider allow for my own domain”?
I have my own @arielbloch email domain, and have complete indexed backup of all mails directly on the desktop – either Thunderbird or OS X Mail app. And of course due to IMAP, full access to the same email from my iPhone, iPad, home and work desktops.
Thanks Marco for illuminating this point!
I have moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress – and I am amazed of the richness, flexibility and looks.
My name is