Yeah Gemini pro will connect to Gmail now, I'm planning on hitting my original Gmail hard
We haven't decided what to do yet. But we are looking it as a great opportunity to touch 250 customers, so we are building this to incorporate a notice of home services we are looking to offer outside isp. Rackspace sent notice Monday of the change hitting March 1. Kinda irritated. It's not a lot of money but its still money. On Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 6:43 PM Bill Prince <[email protected]> wrote: > I got my first private email address back in the early 90s through yahoo, > which has gone through some changes over the years. It was originally > unlimited storage for free, then became 1TB storage for $5/month. They > eventually changed that to 200GB storage for the same $5. I've had that > address now for over 30 years, but I still have quite a bit of room in > there. > > I got my gmail address not too long after that, but with only 15GB > storage, it's not as great a deal, so I forward all my gmail to yahoo mail, > and keep on trucking. > > I don't throw anything away, but after 10 years or so, I archive the email > to cloud storage which is a lot cheaper. > > > bp > <part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com> > > On 1/16/2026 3:24 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote: > > It took me 3 reads to realize 296 mailboxes, not 296 hardware boxes in a > datacenter rack. Doh! > > > > Not really answering your question, but I feel the responsible thing is to > give customers adequate notice to migrate their email (like 3 months or > more) and pay Rackspace the $4 until then. Now you only need to find a > solution for your own internal email, unless that’s already on a different > system. > > > > Best thing for these senior, longtime customers is some tough love, they > need to get a Gmail account. Not my favorite, but that way their grandkids > can do tech support for them. They should have migrated their email 20 > years ago, but they’re not getting any younger, migrating won’t get any > easier, and not giving them a shove is like continuing to sell drugs to an > addict. You could provide some instructions to migrate from your system to > Gmail and maybe other popular mail services. > > > > Another option although it wouldn’t appeal to me is to instead announce > that after such-and-such date, email will no longer be free, and price it > at your cost plus a little. This would cause most of the customers to > switch, but inevitably some won’t, and now you have a couple dozen > customers paying maybe $5/month for the legacy system just to keep their > email address or because of inertia. They would be better served with an > ultimatum. Although I remember lots of people paying $20/month for an AOL > account even though they no longer used dialup, because they didn’t realize > they could convert to a free account and keep their aol.com email address. > > > > Customers with the same email address for 20 years probably get tons of > spam, so you have a tough spam filtering task to balance false positives > and negatives, once you are getting 500 spams per day, the solution is to > get a new email address. > > > > There’s also the storage quota issue. People get their email on their > phone using IMAP and leave every email they ever got on the server, > including their Deleted folder. I used to think Gmail was unlimited > storage, at least it seemed that way. But I see that many people are > having to pay for extra Google storage, especially since the quota is > shared with Google Drive. > > > > *From:* AF <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *On Behalf > Of *Steve Jones > *Sent:* Friday, January 16, 2026 3:36 PM > *To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> <[email protected]> > *Subject:* [AFMUG] Hosted emails > > > > We still provide legacy email. Debating on whether to continue. Rackspace > just bumped our cost from .47 a box to 4 bucks a box and we still > have about 296 boxes. 85 are paid (weird, right) and about 211 are free. > Its was pretty hands off, with rackspace. Kind of irritating, we just went > through a family acquisition and ended up migrating to a new business > domain to get into a collaborative email environment without needing 300 > boxes. and now we may dump the email anyway. > > > > There is zero interest in self hosting, or managing an email server > whatsoever. Email stickiness isnt what it used to be. but I do feel for > some of these folks, elderly, been with us for 20 years. > > > > The following is our current list of contenders, any im missing, any who > are plague, and who are great? These are just set and forget imap boxes > > > > *PolarisMail* > > - *Pros:* Best fit. Base plan includes 25GB (supports our heavy > users). *Free managed migration services* (saves us ~40 hours). > Dedicated reseller program. > - *Cons:* Slightly higher cost than OpenSRS (~$1.50/mo), but > significantly lower than Rackspace. > - *Status:* *Inquiry Sent.* > > *Tucows / OpenSRS* > > - *Pros:* Lowest cost. Pay-per-tier model ($0.50 for 5GB users). We > only pay extra for the few heavy users. > - *Cons:* High admin overhead. We must manually monitor and upgrade > user quotas to prevent full mailboxes. DIY Migration. > - *Status:* *Inquiry Sent.* > > *DreamHost* > > - *Pros:* Simple flat pricing (~$1.67/mo) with 25GB for everyone. No > quota management needed. > - *Cons:* Retail-focused support (Chat only), DIY migration, less > "ISP-aware" than Polaris/Tucows. > - *Status:* *Inquiry Sent.* > > ------------------------------ > > *⚠️ THE "PROCEED WITH CAUTION" LIST* > > *Sherweb* (Existing Partner) > > - *Pros:* We already have a relationship; reliable infrastructure. > - *Cons:* Pricing likely too high ($2.00–$3.00/user) to solve our core > cost issue. > - *Status:* *Reaching out to rep.* > > *Namecheap* > > - *Pros:* Cheap first-year pricing. > - *Cons:* *"Trap" pricing.* Basic plan has low storage (5GB) and NO > mobile sync (ActiveSync). Upgrading to Pro for features/storage makes it > expensive ($42/yr). > - *Status:* *Inquiry Sent (Low priority).* > > *Zoho Mail* > > - *Pros:* Great interface, reliable. > - *Cons:* *Storage Limits.* Strict 5GB/10GB caps on cheap plans. > Migrating our 25GB users will fail unless we buy expensive enterprise > licenses for them. > - *Status:* *Inquiry Sent (Likely incompatible).* > > *Migadu* > > - *Pros:* Flat fee for unlimited users. > - *Cons:* *Critical Risk.* Uses a "Shared Sending Limit." If one > customer spams, *all* our customers get blocked. No ActiveSync. > - *Status:* *Inquiry Sent (Not recommended).* > > > > -- > AF mailing list > [email protected] > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >
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