Alternative to Gmail?

Take a look at Microsoft Office365 which although still in beta is due for release shortly if you need business grade email.

Office365

Otherwise Hotmail is actually remarkably good these days and the only real competitor for gmail for free personal email. At least it's free and so easy to take a look, and I think there is an option to get your old gmail email routed to your new hotmail account so you don't miss anything sent to the old addy.
 
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It looks like I've got access to my account again but I wonder for how long.

I will be looking to migrate away ASAP that's for sure!

There is nothing in my sent items, inbox or spam that is out of the ordinary. Also there is nothing on the recent activity that is dubious either :( I am truly at a loss as to why google decided to lock me out for over a day.
 
I use Gmail for personal email and Google Apps for business. Can't fault the service, especially as it's free, so I would recommend. With Google Apps I went through a validity process (do I own the domain etc) and changed the server address to that of Google's email servers and hey presto.
 
edscdk said:
exchange = massive support costs (compared to google apps) and 20x the down time...
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Really? I personally run an exchange server for 70 users at the company I work for and in the 12 months ive been in charge of it, the only time it's been down is if our power is down, and even then messagelabs are storing emails ready to forward.

My actually support for the exchange server has been 0.0 hours over 12 months except for adding users or changing permissions, so support has cost 0 and uptime has been 100%

Even my home exchange 2010 box that is running on a home made server has needed 0 intervention once it had been set up (2 hours?)
 
If it's for personal use and only one or two users personally I'd stick with GMail. I have a personal domain which forwards email to Gmail but the email is also stored on the domain host, so if I was to get locked out of Gmail I can still see new email. I also POP3 to Mail/Outlook so all old emails are kept offline if needed.

Keeps my options open.
 
rG-tom said:
PHP:

Google apps isn't free though?
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When I signed up it was free for <10 email addresses.

And I think it still is; an email from Google, "As of May 10, any organisation that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users".
 
rG-tom said:
Really? I personally run an exchange server for 70 users at the company I work for and in the 12 months ive been in charge of it, the only time it's been down is if our power is down, and even then messagelabs are storing emails ready to forward.

My actually support for the exchange server has been 0.0 hours over 12 months except for adding users or changing permissions, so support has cost 0 and uptime has been 100%

Even my home exchange 2010 box that is running on a home made server has needed 0 intervention once it had been set up (2 hours?)
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with 70 users you probably want an exchange server in house I would agree

but YOU are the support cost, without you someone would have had to set it up, install it, check backups and they would likley need to pay a support contract incase they have a problem.

Your 100% up time is as much luck as anything else, you have no redundency in hardware expand your model for 100% up time to 1000 companies, run it for a year and see what the up time and hours of support is then... in business you cannot hope to be lucky
 
Stick with Gmail, Just lock your account down properly.

Enable the Verification codes, and add your phone to the system.

That way you get 8 verification codes at the beginning, and once you run out you can either ask for another 8, or get them sent to your phone as you need them. Each code lasts 30 days.

So basically, You log in using your email and password, and then enter a unique verification code that only you know and its unique to the system you log in on. Also the code you enter, becomes void once you use it. So the spammers cant use voided codes.

So if someone in china tries to log in, they'll be asked for username and password, followed by a unique code. Which they wont know.

I had problems with people sending mail from my Gmail account, out to my contact list. So enabled the extra security, and I've not had a problem since.
 
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Another shout for Google Apps. No point having your domain's email forwarded onto your private @gmail.com address when you could have your [email protected] hosted by Gmail itself. I've been using the free Google Apps setup with my registered domain for years and it works flawlessly. It's lovely being able to login to mail.mydomain.com and be presented with the Gmail interface :)
 
rG-tom said:
Really? I personally run an exchange server for 70 users at the company I work for and in the 12 months ive been in charge of it, the only time it's been down is if our power is down, and even then messagelabs are storing emails ready to forward.

My actually support for the exchange server has been 0.0 hours over 12 months except for adding users or changing permissions, so support has cost 0 and uptime has been 100%
Click to expand...

Well good for you. You have had a lucky year with downtime only when there was a power cut. The fact that by the sounds of it you don't even have a UPS on it, I also assume there are no other redunancies to the server itself or the disk or to the internet connection etc.

How much downtime are you going to have when the server dies or when some builder somewhere cuts through your companies internet connection? Or when one of the many other things that can go wrong like dns/spf issues, getting on spam blacklists etc.

Running your own single mail server for a small amount of users is not cost effective and it's not reliable.
 
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