Zoho Mail Free

[CBA]

I would appreciate your thoughts on Fastmail (free) vs Zoho Mail free as email provider. I just set up Zoho Mail free to use with TB as a "backup" POP3 provider .. and as backup webmail (if/as required).

I'm impressed by Zoho's sleek UI (no ads) and privacy policy (I dumped Yahoo as a backup provider due to Oath). Geared mainly towards business, Zoho Mail by itself could be a good choice (albeit a bit complicated). I don't want to use Microsoft, Google or Oath related web mail. Comments/suggestions?

[tanstaafl]

I don't know how good Zoho's POP support is. Their IMAP support is fine, but doesn't provide any information about quotas. Zoho has been a safe choice, but seemed nothing special other than they don't use your data to generate advertising revenue, and they appear to offer 40GB of storage (though I think its really only 5GB). AFAIK you can't use the calendar/tasks in their webmail user interface with a email client, unless you pay for a account. Their online help tends to ignore free accounts.

I read in https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/ ... onger-free that IMAP and POP support is no longer available for new free Zoho accounts. https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/ ... bscription seems to confirm that. Forwarding and Active Sync is also supposedly disabled for new free accounts per https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/ ... paid-plans . Have you been able to use their POP server with Thunderbird?

Fastmail no longer offers free accounts. I'm comfortable with a free backup account but for my primary account (Fastmail) I prefer to pay for a inexpensive account with a company whose only business is email. That gets me real support, more features, eliminates some potential conflicts of interest (advertising etc.) and they have a strong incentive to make sure my data is reliably backed up. https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservic ... ility.html

All of the guides to best free POP/IMAP email providers seem like rubbish to me. None of them seem to mention the real risk of suddenly losing a free GMX account (without doing anything wrong) for example. I suggest you re-consider using a POP account. I doubt Thunderbird will ever drop support for it, but its a legacy feature nowadays. The Thunderbird developers go out of their way to make certain that Gmail IMAP accounts work well, while they tend to ignore inter-operability problems with yahoo and outlook (writing it off as the email providers fault). I suggest you consider using a Gmail IMAP account. Google no longer reads your mail to generate advertising. That doesn't mean they don't know a lot about you

https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-su ... ely-align/

[CBA]

Firstly, my apology for moving my query from an older thread (off topic) to this one. Secondly, many thanks for your detailed reply! Yes, I did set Zoho free up to use as a POP server with TB .. and it works fine so far. I read about IMAP/POP no longer being available with the free version after I set it up, but also that lots of people were/are miffed by this change, so maybe they have changed something under the radar screen?!

Zoho Mail free comes with 5GB storage only .. and to get more you have to get a paid version (starts at $2.00 per month), but as I'll use it with POP it doesn't really matter. Won't keep much storage online. That said, as trash is removed on a 30 days basis, for people with lots of large attachments it may be tight. I won't have that problem though.

I'm totally new to Zoho so I'm still in trial mode. I have sent a bunch of messages, partly with large attachments (max 25MB for free version), and what I notice is that the turnaround time is short .. so I think their servers are working well. And (unless I switch it off in Zoho POP setting), when I send a message with TB via SMTP a copy is kept online in the Zoho's sent folder. That's new to me.

I'll certainly take a look at Fastmail too .. even though it's pay only. I read good things about Fastmail elsewhere. As for suddenly losing a free account, I think Zoho Mail is pretty safe as it's part of a large business (workplace) package. Even though it's usable as mail only.

Probably overkill in my case, but I signed in using CPanel [ https://www.zoho.com/mail/cpanel-login.html ] and thereafter I got more information in Mail about used quotas, type of account, etc. Downside for me, there are too many options geared towards large organizations.

[CBA]

I suggest you re-consider using a POP account. I doubt Thunderbird will ever drop support for it, but its a legacy feature nowadays. The Thunderbird developers go out of their way to make certain that Gmail IMAP accounts work well, while they tend to ignore inter-operability problems with yahoo and outlook (writing it off as the email providers fault). I suggest you consider using a Gmail IMAP account. Google no longer reads your mail to generate advertising. That doesn't mean they don't know a lot about you

POP may be legacy .. but so am I! I have some 50,000 messages in my TB mailbox (archived using my own system) and I don't like the idea of having all that stuff (partly proprietary-confidential) online in an IMAP account. And I know Gmail IMAP works well for most people, but I'm not one of them. Thanks again.

[CBA]

I visited Fastmail's website and liked their business model (and safety-privacy policy). It doesn't hurt that it's Australian (Melbourne based) either with major server centers in New York USA and The Netherlands. I may take them up on their 30 days free trial.

As for Zoho Mail free, I checked settings and as far as I can determine the Forwarding function is there also for the free version. As to Active Sync, I'm not sure where to check, but that may be more an IMAP issue than a POP related matter. Not sure.

[tanstaafl]

ActiveSync synchronizes email, calendar/tasks, and contacts with Exchange servers . With Fastmail you would use the CardDAV (address books) and CalDAV (calendars) standards instead. That is what they are referring to by "Full mobile sync with push: mail, contacts and calendars". The CardBook add-on at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunde ... ok/?src=ss has better CardDAV support than the SoGo connector add-on at https://sogo.nu/about.html . The Lightning calendar add-on has built-in support for CalDAV.

[CBA]

As I don't use Active Sync I'm on thin ice here .. but as far as I can determine Exchange Active Sync is supported for all Zoho Mail accounts. And CalDAV is supported to sync Zoho Calendar with TB Lightning. More here: https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/search-r ... ctive+sync . Zoho Mail also provides Active Sync for Email, Calendar and Contacts sync with mobile devices: https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/access-from-mobile.html

Just to make it clear, I'm not pushing for Zoho Mail, I'm only exploring features and options in general. And some of the stuff referred to above may indeed only be available in one of the paid plans.

[tanstaafl]

"I'm only exploring features and options in general. And some of the stuff referred to above may indeed only be available in one of the paid plans"

That's the big problem with their online help. It barely mentions the existence of free accounts so its very hard to tell what features were available for free plans. I'm puzzled how you have a working POP account if you recently registered for a Zoho account since the limitations were made apparently over 174 days ago.

[CBA]

"I'm only exploring features and options in general. And some of the stuff referred to above may indeed only be available in one of the paid plans"

That's the big problem with their online help. It barely mentions the existence of free accounts so its very hard to tell what features were available for free plans. I'm puzzled how you have a working POP account if you recently registered for a Zoho account since the limitations were made apparently over 174 days ago.

Well, most of the feedback given came from my own account settings page after logging in to Zoho Mail. It's activated for POP and IMAP, although I have only used/tested with POP and it works really well. I sent another few test emails today (from/to my Zoho address), using my TB client, and the response time is excellent .. also with large attachments.

Perhaps it was magic, but I just signed up for a personal/free account and once reconfirmed I configured it for (activated) POP. That's it. I activated IMAP later and may use it for access from my mobile device. Right now it's just a backup as I removed some other ISP's due to terrible privacy policy updates.

[CBA]

All of the guides to best free POP/IMAP email providers seem like rubbish to me...

Whereas I certainly agree with the above, this write-up in the April 2018 issue of The Guardian (online) may interest some. Directed towards the layperson it doesn't dig in deep on the issues covered elsewhere in this thread, however, I think it's on target in some respect: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... -targeting

[CBA]

That's the big problem with their online help. It barely mentions the existence of free accounts so its very hard to tell what features were available for free plans. I'm puzzled how you have a working POP account if you recently registered for a Zoho account since the limitations were made apparently over 174 days ago.

To add to my earlier comment, having now perused a few Zoho Mail "community" threads, I'm not so sure online help is up to speed. Too many references to boiler plate FAQs rather than addressing the issues heads on. This won't affect me too much as I'll use POP with my TB client. One feature I don't like is the fact that I have no control of how long messages remain in the Zoho Mail trash folder. Default is 30 days and it can't be +/- changed.

As an aside, I signed up a 2nd (separate) free Zoho Mail account (5GB). Activation of POP/IMAP and mail forwarding, etc., worked fine.