Gmail

In light of recent infamous IMAP email issues between Gmail and Mail App in OSX Mavericks, I finally felt that I needed to make a change for the better. This isn’t the first time Google  has messed with Apple’s iOS and Mac users. They swiftly removed push email sync from Gmail accounts and making them use their subpar IMAP service. This was a surprise to many.

Yes, services like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc. are free and for many “good enough.” However, you get what you pay for. These are free so expect there to be ads, commercials and offers to buy more things so that they can afford their bills too.

Google is also going to be embedding advertisements into their Gmail system. Furthermore, Google broke their promise in 2005, to never show advertisements in their search results. I am sick of this garbage. I just want my content. I just want my email.

Google is known to “kill off” high quality services with little to no good reason. Google Reader was picked off ? and most recently iGoogle, which I used as my homepage. Now I have Reddit set as my home page.

Even the likes of respected entrepreneur and developer Marco Arment ditched Gmail for another good paid service called Fastmail.fm. For me, I required something a little bit more such as push notifications.

Personally, I decided on Rackspace because they offered something unique that I cannot find anywhere else. Instead of purchasing a Microsoft Hosted Exchange account for $10 a month. I am able to purchase their regular Rackspace email IMAP account for $2 per month and add their unique “MobileSync” feature for an additional $1 per month. This MobileSync is based on Exchange’s ActiveSync technology. Essentially, it allows me to get emails pushed instantly to my iPhone without all the extra fancy frill of Hosted Exchange. I think having this feature is a gigantic plus.

Captain DeadBones Chronicles also shares my thoughts on the superb services at Rackspace.

“We live in a ‘Zero Time Communication Age’. Internal and external digital communication has to be fast and reliable in order to succeed.”

The only downside that I can see of using Rackspace is that your order needs to be a minimum of $10 USD a month. I decided to go with 3 business email accounts and 1 personal. And adding Mobile Sync to one business and the personal addresses to reach this minimum amount.

Changing MX Records to point from your domain host to Rackspace email servers is simple too.

Assistance from Rackspace is top-notch. I can get a hold of anyone there within 20 seconds. Rudy and Haley (a few others as well) at Rackspace are amazing customer service representatives and promptly guided and answers by questions. Thank you!

Spam filters are pretty much spot on and just as good as Gmails in my opinion thus far.

Once you’ve fully migrated all of your emails over to your new account at Rackspace, they will let you know. And from there, It’s very easy to setup MobileSync on your iOS device and Mac Mail. Did I mention you get a 14 day free trial to test out their service?

In conclusion, there are a plethora of free services such as Gmail and Yahoo that can offer adequate email functionally. But all of them are cluttered inorganic content and an increasing trend of blasting ads in your face. And it will only continue to get worse. There is peace of mind in knowing Google doesn’t have control over your mission critical email.

This is why I love companies such as Apple and their philosophy of not needing their customers personal data for their business.

Rackspace believes in the same concepts and have a concern and care for their customers personal data. I like and don’t mind paying for high quality services that allow me to get through my business related messages in a secure, streamlined and organized fashion.

There is truly something special and liberating about “owning your email”.