I've been slowly migrating logins off of a @gmail.com email and onto an email at a domain that I own/control for this reason. It's tedious and feels a little like an overreaction (presumably the odds of this happening to individual users are pretty low). On the other hand, the thought of some faceless fraud algorithm deciding that I should no longer have access to the credentials I use to log in to my bank, investment accounts, DMV, etc and having no real recourse beyond posting on HN and hoping that a sympathetic employee reads is pretty scary.

(I didn't want to actually host my own mail stack, so I just have a custom domain set up with fastmail and point the MX to them. Their UI is great and a breath of fresh air compared to gmail. I guess they could in theory decide to lock me out randomly too, though I trust them to have actual customer support and can just point the MX somewhere else in the worst case)

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afiori 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I too would like to make this move, but one of the considerations stopping me is the risk associated with payments

Google: anonymous inscrutable guillotine

Fastmail: payments fail and I do not notice for too long

	▲	climb_stealth 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Fastmail used to offer the option of depositing funds in advance. So I would always have at least a year worth of funds in the account. Unfortunately it's not possible anymore. It's certainly my biggest worry about using them.

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bsder 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I didn't want to actually host my own mail stack

Is there a way to only host the receive portion?

I'm happy to pay someone to handle all the idiocy around sending email and getting it through Google and Microsoft, but I'd really like to hold my emails myself.

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pja 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> > I didn't want to actually host my own mail stack > > Is there a way to only host the receive portion? > > I'm happy to pay someone to handle all the idiocy around sending email and getting it through Google and Microsoft, but I'd really like to hold my emails myself.

Sure. Set your MX to your own SMTP server but pay a mail delivery service to send your emails & use their SMTP servers as your outgoing server. You'll have to setup SPF & DKIM appropriately of course.

It's not trivial to do this, but it should be possible.

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bsder 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Set your MX to your own SMTP server but pay a mail delivery service to send your emails

Is there a paid mail delivery service that doesn't get marked as spam instantaneously?

Or is there a way to do this through something like Fastmail?

	▲	ropable 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		FWIW I've been using a personal domain hosted at Dreamhost and their mail server for many years and have not had any issues with sending mail from my domain.
	▲	3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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stavros 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you have your own domain, you can do whatever you want (including splitting sending and receiving).

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jjav 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Is there a way to only host the receive portion?

Sure. Set up your email server and have DNS of your domain point the MX record at it so you receive all email directly without any third party involvement. Then, set up outgoing email to forward to some third party which handles delivery for you. IIRC there are some free options even, if your outgoing volume is low.

That said, my email server handles incoming and outgoing email for a handful of domains for self and family, no problem.

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ahartmetz 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You could use a desktop e-mail client like Thunderbird and include its data in your backups and maybe occasionally export it somewhere in a standard exchange format for e-mail folders. You can even re-upload such local data to another e-email provider if you switch.

All of that seems easier than setting up a server to keep your e-mails.

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tobias3 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I use AWS SES. You pay 0.01 cent per e-mail.

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dmitrygr 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Two email addrs, with your TX email having a Reply-To header pointing to the RX one?

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bsder 4 days ago | parent [-]

No, that will get marked as spam super fast.