I too deeply distrust anything Google, to the point of blocking anything it touches at the firewall and black hole any DNS calls to it...I realise in the face of the Windows 10 data scraping Microsoft is carrying out, my preferred email provider being Outlook.com might seem a bit two-faced, however, I have not had any phishing or spam emails to any of my three Outlook.com accounts save for one account where it was easy to identify the company selling my details by using the '+nnn' sub-addressing in the local part of my email address (I'm looking at you Royal Mail!)
Storage is generous for a non-business user, access via web interface or various clients works well across a mix of devices, the option of shared calendars is a big plus for us too.

Edited by deleted (Tue 22-Mar-16 21:12:09)

Gmail mail is fine but never really liked it. I would need to have mine associated with a domain name from now on for my own benefit.

Edited by derekdel (Tue 22-Mar-16 21:25:50)

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I would suggest having your own domain name and using an email forwarding service such as 123-reg. This allows you to change email service providers whilst retaining the same domain name.

if you have domain and email hosting, as some of us have recommended to the OP, you can change provider at will with no problem.

You don't even need to have the domain and mail hosts with the same provider.

I have my own domain for all the reasons that others have given. It puts me in control, without depending on any particular ISP or selling my soul to google. Actually I do have gmail and hotmail addresses but regard these as disposable.

When you have your own domain it can help with spam prevention. When I register with a company, let's say Amazon in this example, the email address I use is [email protected]. if the company gets hacked (several have been, though not amazon) I simply chnage to a different email address with them and set up a rule in Thunderbird's spam filtering.

I use 1&1 for a cheap and cheerful basic domain registration and email hosting package. Works fine. My webspace is free from Plusnet - I've been with them for rather a long time from the days when it was standard for all users.

In reply to a post by derekdel:

Gmail mail is fine but never really liked it. I would need to have mine associated with a domain name from now on for my own benefit.

I have several domain names and they all point to Gmail. But, if I get issues with gmail I can shift them off somewhere else easily (I do also have TSOHost account but I have that for testing a website at the moment rather than for email).

I have been a Fastmail user both personally, and in a number of businesses, since 2000.

They are now, I believe, one of the world's top 10 email providers and I really can't recommend them enough.

RunBox is a good alternative, but IMHO Fastmail is streets ahead.

NJSS

I use Runbox. I liked Fastmail when I tried that, but I'd been with Runbox for years and I didn't want to move everything over. Besides which, I've always been happy with them. RB and FM have forums at email discussions if you want to find out more about either. Lots of other email providers are discussed there too, as well as at the main website, email addresses.

I also use 1&1 but only for the domain.

1and1 for me, I have used them for several years and it has been faultless.

At last! I chose TSO's Lite package and have had a fine old time over the past couple of days trying to get it to work.

As I explained at the outset, I'm an internidiot wanting the simplest possible email system. On first visit to the TSO homepage I could see only the Exchange plans with no reference to the Lite package, until ian72 explained it in his post. I signed up and struggled for an hour before phoning support and being told that I needed a domain name as well � after this setup went fine and my new account was working well until I made it the default in Thunderbird and it ceased to work on either desktop or iPad.

At times like this one needs support and the TSO team (based in Bulgaria) has been patient and helpful. They had to be, as I spent an hour on three calls (all swiftly answered, it must be said) before it was sorted out. It seems to have been some inexplicable password issue. I might have been better with Fastmail which hosts its own email service with no need of domain or website etc, but I noticed they are based in Australia with no apparent phone contact.

After a long walk to cool down we set up my wife's account without problems so hopefully we can avoid electronic struggles for a while. As Bob suggested, both TSO and our outgoing BT accounts run together in Thunderbird until we quit BT next month. I'm pleased with TSO and very impressed with their service, which began with a welcome phone call the day after I signed up with them.

My thanks to everyone for your generous advice, it's great to know we can count on such a kindly community.

You did the right thing by getting your own domain name. Signing up with Fastmail and using a fastmail.com address is a bad idea, it puts you at the mercy of one company for email provision.

Edited by Oliver341 (Thu 24-Mar-16 20:45:16)