I want to abandon gmail and give my loved one pine.

January 16, 2012 12:37 PM

A question about webhosting and email.

I'd like to register [mylastnamehere].com and use it just for email. I'd like to have maybe... 7 different email addresses for family members, and have them be able to do the following:
1. be able to download the emails directly to outlook; or
2. use a webhosted email service through the webhost; or
3. use pine (yes, yes, I know. Pine).

Can I just register the domain and find a webhost that will do the above with email (are the kids still using dreamhost these days? will dreamhost do this? I can't find anything on their site that shows me a picture of what their webmail looks like).

(Basically, our family is rebelling against the new look and feel of gmail - so we don't want a host that uses google somehow. Someone else is lamenting their imminent loss of their shell account/pine through school. Way back in the day, I used to have a website hosted through dreamhost. This was probably back in.... 1997? I have not done anything web-related since then. Maybe I need more help than I think I do).

posted by dpx.mfx to computers & internet (8 answers total)

2 - A quick google shows that dreamhost uses squirrelmail.
3 - You should be able to use pine on your domain if you have a hosting package that includes shell access
posted by wongcorgi at 12:43 PM on January 16

Why not use a Google Apps implementation? It'll solve your (if you REALLY must) Outlook needs, and do excellent for web mail.

As far as Pine,...well.....good luck with that.
posted by chrisfromthelc at 12:51 PM on January 16

1&2: GMail supports POP, IMAP and SMTP. You don't have to use GMail's native interface if you don't want to.
3: Apparently it is possible to use Alpine to access GMail using IMAP: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.mail.pine/browse_thread/thread/4489410625100cb3?pli=1
posted by rocketpup at 12:54 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

Gmail does have themes you guys might try out. Regardless, Gmail's big benefit is that they have a killer infrastructure. You'll never lose your mail. I'd suggest a local email client that plugs into Gmail via POP or IMAP.
posted by bprater at 1:03 PM on January 16

And if you want to use your own domain, you can do it free via Google apps and still IMAP/POP via a local client.
posted by bprater at 1:04 PM on January 16

Fastmail is a great service. It's actually sort of comforting to pay someone for email hosting, because then I know they aren't making money off of serving me up to advertisers.

Pine is kind of a tall order for a hosted email service. I like freeshell a lot.

You could always run Pine/Alpine on your local machine/server and have it connect to an IMAP server (like Fastmail, or whatever).
posted by sportbucket at 1:06 PM on January 16

Sportbucket mentioned SDF's freeshell above. You want their VPM service, $20 a year. I've used them for a long time, with only a couple hiccups many years ago. They've been very stable for the past 5 or so years. They offer POP, IMAP, webmail via Squirrelmail, and Pine and Mutt access via shell.
posted by zsazsa at 1:24 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

Seconding sportbucket. Fastmail is awesome.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:15 PM on January 16