Third-party email service suggestions

August 25, 2009 12:42 PM

Recommendations for a good third-party email service provider please.

A client has requested suggestions for a better third-party email service (they currently use SquirrelMail). Searches of both AskMe and Google have not yielded recommendations or critiques from first-hand experience, which is what I would like to hear. Providers with strong anti-spam features a plus.

posted by supermedusa to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Google Apps for Domains is pretty great. It Just Works.
posted by Oktober at 1:00 PM on August 25

Seconding Google Apps. It took a load of CPU (and other) load of my server, which could not cope with the amout of spam any more. Saved me countless hours of work and is cheap or free.
posted by oxit at 1:14 PM on August 25

Google Apps.
posted by killdevil at 1:19 PM on August 25

Your question indicates that you may be confused about e-mail providers versus e-mail clients. SquirrelMail is not an e-mail provider, but rather an e-mail client. It's probably the default client supplied by your provider, but it's definitely a separate thing.

Who manages your e-mail currently?
posted by odinsdream at 1:19 PM on August 25

Squirrel Mail is a piece of web-mail software that anyone can install anywhere. It's not a provider or service. If they are "using Squirrel Mail", they're using that program installed on some internet provider / web host.

Google Apps (GMail for Corporate domains, basically) is indeed very nice, but might not be allowed by the corp's privacy requirements if the corp is outside the USA.
posted by rokusan at 1:23 PM on August 25

Nth Google Apps, it is fantastic.
posted by caveat at 3:03 PM on August 25

thanks all for the unanimous recs so far!
posted by supermedusa at 3:18 PM on August 25

Yea, I'll get on the Google Apps bandwagon as well. We love it.
posted by gemmy at 3:41 PM on August 25

I would consider a business product from http://www.fastmail.fm if you don't want to hop on "the bandwagon".

Google apps is good but I've found that fastmail is, well, faster. Fastmail is also a pleasant step for users from SquirrelMail whereas Gmail can be a bit of a shock.

Fastmail provide better support (personal attention, responses from humans), a more "open" platform, better/faster IMAP access and they might even be more cost effective for your client.

The only downside I find with Fastmail is the lack of a tightly integrated Calendar - I don't know if this is an issue for you.

Good luck!
posted by tkbarbarian at 4:50 PM on August 25