I should have extended my criticism on the “super discounters”. Which often aren’t the cheapest after clicking some options.
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Hover has had really good phone support for me, and they’re not constantly pushing an up-sell. If you’re migrating email, you may need the temporary assistance of a tech-enabled friend during the transition to help with that - but just moving the domain itself would be very easy.
What all do you have with GoDaddy?
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Only my domain name and associated website/blog.
No email? And isn’t your website just Squarespace? Or is there a different site you have there? Hover doesn’t do web hosting, but they do domains + email.
That is correct, no email and only the website on Squarespace. All I’m thinking of doing is to have Hover manage my domain and ensure that the website/blog remains active on Squarespace.
Of course, I’m assuming that Hover is a better company than Go Daddy but I’m basing that on David’s high praise (of course I know Hover is a sponsor of the podcast but David’s integrity is such that I’m confident he would only have sponsors that he believed in).
Yeah, easy to do. Just need to migrate the domain and keep the DNS intact. Last I checked Hover would even do it for you if you give them the codes and such for your account.
Hover has been a far better company for me than GD, and it’s where I do all my domain stuff.
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@webwalrus I could probably figure out how to make the change but I had a friend do it years ago so I’ll feel more comfortable having Hover do. I’ll reach out them—thanks!
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I always take these stories with a grain of salt. The person acts like they suddenly got shut down for existing and if I had to guess they probably got caught breaking a TOS either knowingly or unknowingly.
The issue that I feel for them is that they seem to have received no response from Google why this happened
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I’m guessing that’s what happened, but “got caught” these days is frequently done by a computer algorithm, and the logic behind those is fallible and error-prone. The issue with some overturned bans I’ve seen (usually influencers or celebrities) is that humans don’t review the initial ban before putting it into place, and you can’t contact them to review it, so an algorithmic issue can be pretty catastrophic.
People with “pull” can get the humans to look, but not everybody else.
Sadly, this is something I lack, barely have “pull” in my own house lol
I would have thought if you subscribe to Google One, you get support. I actually paid for a month and resolved an issue I had.
The thing, I don’t get is if your business depends on Google, why not pay them $5 odd dollars to buy the “pull”.
And make no mistake, I think this can happen to anyone. The Gmail subreddit is full of these kind of issues.
Just so I understand more, this is all because a developer used an @gmail address for all of his things rather than a $5 G Suite custom address.
I think the story only got more open because it went on Twitter and there’s a fanbase for Stadia or whatever the game was/is.
Which then makes me ask something odd…how do you have company, develop gaming, a big YouTube channel, etc with just @gmail. It seems odd that this problem could have been resolved or never happened if he paid $5 for a G suite address.
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The thing is, it could be argued that the business didn’t “depend” on Google. Lots of people signed up for Gmail even before GSuite or whatever it is now was available, and those people just kept their Gmail going forward because (a) changing emails is a huge PITA, and (b) there really wasn’t a reason to.
It’s one thing to have to call support because you’re having a basic problem with your email. It’s quite another to have to call support because Google intentionally deleted your account. The first isn’t a problem for most tech-savvy people; the second isn’t something most people (I’d wager even devs) even consider.
I agree it’s a bit silly to run a business from a free Gmail account, but I’m betting a ton of indie devs do exactly that.
And whether or not the dev made a good choice, that really doesn’t excuse Google torching somebody’s account entirely without a warning or even a note. We’re not talking about a terrorist group on a government watch list here - we’re talking about an indie dev.
As mentioned above, same for YouTube. You can have a huge YouTube channel, wake up one morning, and discover that their algorithm just shut you down because you mentioned a phrase that triggered their algorithm. And that’s not resolvable by paying Google $5 per month for “paid” service, as far as I’m aware.
The automated censorship algorithm with no notification or appeal is a Big Problem - especially since Google actively encourages people to build mission-critical assets on its platform(s) (YouTube being a prime example), and profits immensely from those assets.
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Basecamp/Hey support is really fast. For Hey, in particular, I noticed they will reply after hours if you email them with a serious problem. They also monitor security@hey.com 24/7 and promise urgent support at that address, presumably for relevant requests.
very much a gamer…but only PS5 and my Nintendo Switch. haha
So what are the optimal solutions for “owning” your e-mail? (Sorry if someone can spell it out a bit better)
- G Suite account (paid)
- Fastmail, Protonmail, Newton? Hey (just like G Suite, a paid email service but not using Google)
- Run your own mail server off of a NAS
Is it just these 3? Is one better over the other?
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Optimal? Anything where you control the domain. If you control the domain, you can always pack up your email and move it literally anywhere else in the world. Pretty much everything else is personal preference.
You may be right about that @cornchip
What I said was based on this:
Perhaps, they can say for urgent enquires, please contact us on this email address etc.
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I managed email servers for 25 years so trust me when I say you do not want to run your own server. There are several disadvantages to running your own email server if you are a small to medium size company, and even more for an individual. That’s why most businesses have moved to G Suite or MS365. Even major corporations are closing their data centers and moving to hosted services.
If you want your own personal email address, great. Purchase a domain and pay someone to host it. If you just want email pick one of the large providers. Google has 1.8 billion users, Yahoo has 42.2 million, and Outlook has 34.4 million.
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I don’t get it. How is that another reason?
they tell you your old app has a security issue but haven’t issued a new one seemingly because they haven’t got their privacy labels act together seems a pretty good reason.
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Maybe I’m missing something with how this applies to the general user, but as someone who tries to implement GTD and Inbox Zero principles I find it hard to understand how losing my Gmail would be a problem. The biggest inconvenience would be editing all the sites sending mail there, I suppose. The rest of the account isn’t too irreplaceable either - google photos is a soft backup of my iCloud library, Drive is synced so could be disconnected and extracted from a client computer, and YouTube is just a list of subscriptions to video feeds that could easily be rebuilt.