If anyone has
any suggestions for good ISP-independent email services
then let me know; the reason I've used yahoo for years is so that I
don't get tied to a single ISP for receiving email, but there are
doubtless better offerings around...
Probably. My approach to that is to run my own mailserver (static IPs
and no administrative prohibitions on mailservers are non-optional to
me when selecting a connectivity provider). Not to say that that
approach is suitable for everyone, of course - I've seen it said often
enough that there are good mail-handling services out there, but as
I've never wanted one, I've never looked into any in detail.
I'm not sure if my solution is useful to you, but I use an internal
mailserver at the house. However, it can;t be primary, since it is only
on residential broadband. So, I use fetchmail to grab my mail from the
current ISP hosting my
jbrain.com domain.
Benefits:
* My mail sits on my box.
o No worrying about hosting providers going belly up and
ditching my mail (been there, done that)
o I can set up local spam rules and such once, no matter how
many times I switch ISPs or mail providers.
o I can run webmail on my local box, exported to the greater
Internet, which allows me to read email while on the road
without the ads. SquirrelMail is nice for this, though there
are others.
o I can read via elm on the local box. GUI email apps are
nice, but sometimes a terminal session and elm will get
through when nothing else will (or be reasonably speedy)
* I can switch ISPs/hosting companies at will. All I need from them
is a POP3 mailbox
* It was easy to setup, in Linux/UNIX, anyway. UW IMAP,
SquirrellMail, Fetchmail, are all pretty mature.
I also use OpenVPN on the home network to tunnel into it for IMAP access
when away from home, but you could open IMAP to the world if you were OK
with that (I was not).
Jim