Forge email

In that case you can't. Use another email provider. Depending on your budget I can't recommend Google Apps for Work enough. Or, you can of course stick with another host that offers IMAP email accounts. Just point the MX records to that provider.

well with forge monthly fee, digital ocean and an email provider I would be paying more per month than a VPS at dreamhost.

btw no google stuff for me. I don't want them scanning my emails to display ads for my business...no thanks.

@rtorc it does add up but it is worth it, so seamless; and the two aren't comparable if dreamhost isn't using the latest tech.

On a different note, I don't know why you'd be bothered about Google scanning your emails and providing you ads that are relevant to you. You don't have to buy anything, no one is holding you at gun point saying "buy this that we found for you". You have a brain in your head so use it. I'd much rather see ads that are relevant to me and my business than to be served ads that are way off scale.

Does that mean you don't use Google at all? What about search? Do you use Bing, or Yahoo? They do the exact same thing. It is how they keep most of their services free. If it means I have to be subjected to a few ads that I may/may not be interested in; so be it.

Right now the only site i use of Google is youtube. I use duckduckgo for my search on all my devices.

It's pretty hard to compete with any of Google's services if they can scan your company emails. Just my opinion.

@rtorc why try and compete with Google? Create something different.

They don't and you would use the SMTP part of their service, not gmail site? Ad block also.

@bashy they do scan your emails, if you see their terms of use http://www.google.com/policies/terms/ and search the page for "email" (it only appears once) they are pretty clear about it.

Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.

There's no ads on SMTP side

You can't argue with someone who uses DuckDuckGo. I'm sure they're good, but I've never heard anyone say "Just DuckDuckGo it". I will give them a go though @jlrdw as it looks like they have improved a lot since I last visited their page.

So I noticed this thread went from answering a question to debating whether or not someone agrees with someone else about why they choose the search provider and services they choose to. That should be irrelevant to this thread since that's not part of the question.

Now I know the answer is marked and this is an after thought. I just thought it funny how caught up we get in things that at the end of the day, really don't matter and aren't going to change our workflow.

I'm with @rtorc here.

I don't think you should have to compromise your business (or any) emails by using Gmail or any other provider that has a reputation of not only scanning your email for ad placement, but also working WITH the NSA and American government to allow access to your data on any level - without judicial authorisation - and I don't mean the rubber stamp of FISC (or the FISA courts).

If you have a business outside of the US, and that business requires any form of real privacy, I wouldn't trust any US company (or any of the "five eyes" nations (look it up)) to have anything to do with my email, or hosting.

That's not the least of it though - it's a big subject for those concerned about privacy. Something I will expand on if anyone is interested.

Edward Snowden confirmed the NSA is snooping in on business regardless of national security threats. How are companies outside the USA supposed to compete?

for simple client sites no big deal, but if i was working on a Facebook, google or twitter killer. I would have to build my own servers and forget about any type of cloud hosting.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/snowden-says-us-nsa-engages-134007580.html

sorry i can't find the interview video.

So after reading this thread it got me thinking... I use Google Apps. I love it. But I also hate it for exactly as @sitesense and @rtorc state, I hate the fact that Google works with the government and everything is monitored and checked.

So I started looking for alternative and came across OnlyOffice (http://www.onlyoffice.com). It's got a ton of great features like Enterprise Email, Collaboration, Word Processor, Spreadsheets, Slide shows, etc... as well as Gant timelines, project management, invoicing and more. I'm thoroughly impressed with it. It's really pretty cheap compared to Google Apps as well.

But better yet, if you are still concerned about using a 3rd party service, they have an open source version for free you can self host at http://www.onlyoffice.org/. So you can fire up a server and throw it on there and you're good to go. I am considering firing this up and moving one of the businesses I work with that only has a few employees over to this system to give it a test run.

Just thought I would share. Enjoy.

@BENderIsGr8te I'm sorting out a smallish business at the moment, about 70 or so employees, I am looking into it now. Good find :) thank you.

My bad, I started off on the one site and ended up on the other in a new tab and forgot which tab I was reading at the time. Fixed.

There is an issue with the link :) you need to remove the trailing ")."

I thought I'd weigh in with my 2 pennys...

I like google apps and have it up and running for several larger businesses. I also have some clients that don't want to pay or don't want google so we use Zoho.com for them. It's pretty good for smaller accounts and pretty affordable too.

I don't have a problem with Google scanning my email. Your ISP is probably doing it if you're not using ssl and theres a chance people are seeing it if it hits the open internet. Besides that, there are a lot of people on gmail so if you're sending to them, they're still scanning it. I trust them to the extent that I trust nothing sent over the internet is 100% private.

@alexhackney well put. You can't avoid it, I'm not saying they are right to do it, but it is no different to shopping in a supermarket with a rewards card, and them tracking what you buy to ply you with offers (usually for things that you don't ever buy)!

@rtorc where has my "Tick" gone ;) This was mark as correct a moment ago. I think there is a bug if you delete a comment when you've been awarded a correct answer.

@mstnorris sorry i don't know why that happened. I gave a thumbs up to another comment. Maybe another bug.

I found zoho mail, maybe that is a solution for free email hosting.

@rtoc it looks ok, it is free up to 10 users. So if that is all you need then why not, can't be any worse than all the other email providers out there; at least they are focussed on one thing. Let us know how you get on.

I've used Zoho in the past. While they were okay at first, in the long run our company decided to migrate over to Google Apps because Zoho just didn't have the power we hoped it would. However that was a few years ago, maybe they've improved service since then.

@mstnorris actually you can avoid it, it's just not 'necessary' for everyone though, although it would help if it was.

For those that do require real privacy, for example - journalists with 'secret' sources, lawyers defending 'human rights groups' (who are targetted in the same way as terrorists by the NSA) - they would never send a sensitive email that required any amount of privacy via or to Gmail addresses anyway.

Like I said though, it's a huge subject and it requires nothing short of a revolution to reverse. Not really appropriate for this forum :)