I’ve set up my email on Fastmail again. I was getting my email forwarded from Hover to Gmail, but some emails were just going missing. So have transferred my DNS hosting to Fastmail and now I’m waiting for the name servers around the world to update so the will be able to find my new MX server at Fastmail.
Previously, I had kept the DNS hosted at the domain host (not Hover) and set up all the DNS records manually to point to Fastmail. After @Leo said that he used Fastmail as the name server, I was happy enough to transfer to Fastmail’s name servers from Hover’s (domain still registered with Hover, but all the DNS records are held at Fastmail).
Now wondering if I should import all my email from Gmail or leave it all there.
I am not sure what tech level you are asking at so if I am too basic/not basic enough, please excuse me.
Fastmail is a great email service provider. You pay for the service so the idea is that your personal data/privacy is not sold on as Fastmail is financed by customer subscriptions. I hold the opinion that this is likely true.
While I was a customer the service was great. Great spam protection and speed. Easy to cancel subscription in your account page etc. The reason I left is that Fastmail do not do TNO(Trust no one) end to end encryption. Their service appears secure in all the usual ways like https etc. But they have access to your emails if they so wished.
The provider I am with now Protonmail provides TNO encryption. So the idea is I am the only one that can view my emails as I hold the encryption key not my email service provider if I send from and recieve from a Protonmail account. The downside is that if I lose my key, then my email is gone for good. Now if I send email to a non Protonmail account then then I believe the email is only sent via TLS in transit and not encrypted so the other email services can read the email, unless I use the password option or PGP.
I looked at the Tutanota email service too but they did not support IMAP clients like Thunderbird to collect email. You could use their apps.
That is my take on it. I am not an expert so do not rely on my thoughts/understanding. There is a lot of discussion on how secure any of these services are really and the way they implement things. Just like the Crypto AG story, you never really know. It all depends on your personal preferences and threat model/privacy stance.
For me, it is mainly about reliability. Some emails sent to me were never received using Hover’s email forwarder. I cannot say if it is the forwarding that was faulty or the reception at Gmail that was faulty. Switching to Fastmail removes that extra link in the chain for errors. Also, Hover’s email forwarding was not a catch-all that catches all email sent to my domain.
The forwarding problem (emails received) is a recurring problem. It is most likely the email provider at fault if they do not have sophisticated spam/security filtering as well as the necessary IT staff to monitor these issues. This results in network or firewall restrictions and/or blacklisting. If you make it onto a blacklist there is very little you can do about it on a personal level.
Google or Yahoo, as an example, does watch out for these spam targets and would block inbound emails without any notification.
Fastmail is OK with security and spam blocking. I would not say this is the case with all email providers especially those used for web hosting. ProtonMail also had their own issues with hacking and spam.
This is why I use Microsoft (or tenant hosted) personally as I am able to guarantee data security/integrity and watch for email transmissions.
It also looks like Fastmail supports importing email from Gmail directly. You could start there. Personally, I like to import my email into a desktop email client and keep it there for offline backup. IMAP would allow you to move you messages at your own convenience.
