Ask HN: What are options to replace “G Suite legacy” when it's retired in May?

Wow. No one here mentioned the obvious.

Transfer your domains to Google Domains. Use the free email alias feature to rewrite your custom domain users into Gmail users (or wherever else). Configure Gmail to send from your custom domain.

I do this. It works spectacularly.

maxwelldone · 4 years ago

Can you really configure to send from the forwarded address? From the faq[0] page: "When you need to both receive and reply to emails from a custom address, and unlock other professional features, upgrade to Google Workspace."

[0]https://domains.google/learn/how-to-use-email-forwarding/

charcircuit · 4 years ago

I've done it just fine without Google workspace and people get my mail just fine.

doctoboggan · 4 years ago

Can I do this for multiple accounts? Do you k ow if there is a description of this solution online somewhere?

minerva23 · 4 years ago

There's a limit of 100.

https://domains.google/learn/how-to-use-email-forwarding/

charcircuit · 4 years ago

Yes, but you have to manually set up each account (eg. name1@example com) you want to send mail from to verify that you own the account.

anon1094 · 4 years ago

Does this prevent the whole custom@domain.com via name@gmail.com thing?

charcircuit · 4 years ago

I'm not sure what you are talking about so I don't think it's a problem as my emails look normal in gmail and it doesn't show anything weird.

krehl · 4 years ago

I don't think that this will enable you to send emails that conform to the DMARC standard (using DKIM and SPF). Might be ok for a side project, but in my opinion not enough for a small business.

minerva23 · 4 years ago

Yes

seanwilson · 4 years ago

There's a special reason to use Google Domains or it's just an example? Don't most registrars have web forwarding and mail sending features?

minerva23 · 4 years ago

I don't know other registrars offerings, but OP was particularly concerned about using Gmail (or something like it) and having good deliverability, which makes Google Domains + Gmail the right solution in my mind.

davidgh · 4 years ago

Which SMTP server do you use for sending? Are you able to use Gmail's SMTP servers with your setup?

minerva23 · 4 years ago

Yes, gmail's. You set a SPF record authorizing it.

hammyhavoc · 4 years ago

Plenty of people would rather stick to dealing with ICANN's pricing directly via CloudFlare.

Can anyone clarify what G Suite covers and what's being taken away? If you sign up for a free Google account, you can use free gmail/docs/sheets/drive etc - that's not going away, is it?

jtdressel · 4 years ago

I believe you lose gmail/docs/sheets.

Based on the below comment, I think you can keep some services like youtube and photos. That said, I strongly recommend every do regular google takeouts https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1

https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/s7v4my/google_...

slantyyz · 4 years ago

Also, if you are using your GSuite account with Google Play, any purchases you made could be lost.

jstx1 · 4 years ago

> I believe you lose gmail/docs/sheets.

Do you have any source on this? It doesn't sound right to me. I'm talking about the base free services that Google offers to everyone, not about G Suite. Over a billion people are using free Gmail, I think it would have been bigger news if Google had pulled the plug.

prirun · 4 years ago

I have a free Google Gmail account and can use all those free features. I never signed up for G Suite or Workspace. I think the problem is when a personal domain name is used.

I'm glad I moved from Gmail to Fastmail a month ago. After they screwed me over with Google Sites V2, I just don't trust them with my email address. It's tied to too many things, and if something ever went wrong, I'd be completely screwed and could not get any help from Google. I clicked their "Report a problem" button when trying to migrate to Sites V2, to report several big issues. I'll let you guess how many responses I got.

rovr138 · 4 years ago

Using your own domain, you pay per user on the platform.

So if you had 5 users using it, you now have to pay for those seats.

Regarding workspace, there's different plans/tiers. Here's a list of them, https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html

On all of them you keep gmail, docs, sheets, drive. But now if you had 5 users, you are paying 5 x $6 x 12 months = $360/year

swansonator · 4 years ago

Fastmail is excellent. A bit cheaper than the new Google Workspace and less invasive. It supports multiple domains easily. Interface is great and the iOS app is just as great. I'm sure the Android version is good too.

trinsic2 · 4 years ago

Happy Fastmail customer as well. If you want to leave gmail behind, this service is the way to go. They have a great Web GUI, and accounts have the latest security features. Fastmail supports CalDav/CardDav which works great IMHO.

newsbinator · 4 years ago

I'm a happy Fastmail customer, except there's one major annoyance in the web interface: large images, like screenshots, completely break the viewport.

You have to scroll the browser horizontally for 2000 pixels sometimes, looking at fractions of the image at a time (or download each embedded image and open it in a local viewer to contain it to your screen size).

Fastmail support replied essentially "won't fix".

rastographics · 4 years ago

Another happy fastmail customer here. Switched from Google with custom domain. Calendar and contacts are better than Google's too

tut-urut-utut · 4 years ago

Aren't they an Australian company, which is from the data protection standpoint still worse than Google?

1_player · 4 years ago

The iOS app is meh, the webmail is much better but otherwise I'm a happy Fastmail customer and they're 100% worth the money.

nopenopenopeno · 4 years ago

The iOS app is almost identical to the webmail.

aprdm · 4 years ago

I only wish their iOS app worked offline

vhodges · 4 years ago

I am using Migadu (https://www.migadu.com/) For one domain and I am planning to move my Google For Domains domain over to it as well. It supports multiple domains and mailboxes (it prices on message volume inbound and outbound). For us our usage fits into the 19USD/year price point. Everybody else seems to charge per user/address.

alias_neo · 4 years ago

It appears they charge for mailbox capacity. e.g. 5GB for the $19/yr. Is that total, for all users/mailboxes? Even 30GB doesnt seem enough, I have 10-12 family members on GSuite but I certainly won't pay £600/yr for them.

We send emails with photos/videos to the kids addresses so capacity needs to be a little more than 5GB shared for us, even if I kick all of the extended family off.

PenguinCoder · 4 years ago

> it prices on message volume inbound and outbound

Sounds good on paper, but then you get charged for spam emails inbound. Is this the case? So you'll need to pay for unwanted inbound email as well as your outbound usage?

akoster · 4 years ago

Yandex Connect? https://yandex.com/support/connect/add-domain.html

Up to 1000 mailboxes per domain https://www.yandex.com/support/connect/create-mailbox.html

For free, for now (though they now have a paid-tier https://360.yandex.com/business/ which they have integrated somewhat into the legacy and still free Yandex connect)

sephamorr · 4 years ago

I use a personal Gmail account and my custom domain hosted on zoho (for free) . Each user on the custom/zoho redirects all the mail to Gmail. Gmail is configured to default use the zoho smtp server as the outbound. This has worked great for me for years. When my parents' custom domain needs to be migrated shortly, I expect to set them up with the same thing.

It looks like I wouldn't be able to use their free plan with more than 5 users, but $1/user/month isn't too bad.

You've never had deliverability issues using zoho's servers?

I haven't, personally, though there is always a chance that I have had low rates of failures that I haven't noticed. Said personal domain is a .hk domain though, and I have had an issue where US defense-contractor type domains silently block all email from China or China adjacent domains or IP blocks.

jimmies · 4 years ago

I am planning to move email to iCloud+.

- Provides custom domain support.

- Is cheap ($1 for 3 email addresses).

- Has email web interface and imap access.

- Seems to support contacts and calendar sync via carddav, caldav - standard stuff I can sync my other devices with.

- Apple is reputable enough with security.

Drawbacks:

- No standard two-factor authentication like Google, needs an iPhone/mac for two-factor.

- Migrating Google Photos/shared will be a pain in the ass.

I initially liked this solution but I don’t think it’ll work for me. There seems to be a hard limit on the number of emails. It also seems like you can only share the domain with your apple family (my extended family isn’t part of my apple family sharing plan.)

aranelsurion · 4 years ago

I assume by "hard limit on the number of emails" you mean daily sending limits, which is quite high for a personal user (500 per day)? If that's the case, Gmail also seems to have a similar limit.

Or do you mean there's a hard limit on total number of emails you can store?

unmole · 4 years ago

Does it allow having a catch-all email address?

oskarc · 4 years ago

Sadly, no. It also pushed me back from using their mail services (and far more complex issue where my @iCloud alias stopped working at all, but they fixed it after a few weeks).

da_rob · 4 years ago

I started looking for options yesterday[1], currently these are the contestants:

* Google Workspace

* Fastmail

* ProtonMail

* Zoho Mail

* Tutanota

* (Mailbox.org)

[1] https://roblillack.net/google-workspace-alternatives-for-fam...