New email Astermail has gone live
 

Signup now (ref) for a new account :cool:

Free account currently offers 10Gb storage and 5 aliases (noref)

and 3 custom domains for free.
Thanks for your info.

Still exploring but looks good so far.

• Host custom domains
• Supports aliases
• Connect to external email (IMAP/SMTP)
• Supports MFA/2FA

Yes just found this out too, quite generous.

It has also many, many settings to toggle. Interesting!

To know more about Astermail would be nice. The only thing , or page to see first is the sign-up/login page. There is a strange message at the top announcing an "update is available".

Did you not go to: https://astermail.org/ ?

So a quick web search gave this:
https://astermail.org/

Ahh no mail filtering (or did I overlook?)

Also it has Skiff and Secria vibes all over it (I mean the UI), signing up just for its potential, who knows might be the next ProtonMail? But I don't have high hopes :D

See table at foot of: https://astermail.org/pricing/

Great, thanks! I see free plan only entitled to one. As I check there's a allowlist/blocklist under Mail Management, I think this is what they meant by "mail filters" otherwise I couldn't really locate where it's at :confused:

The thing is, the original URLs posted here were to the user login page at https://app.astermail.org/

That's a sub-domain (the lefthand "app." part) of domain "astermail.org". So the most obvious place to look for the website of the company itself is simply https://astermail.org/

Understanding that stuff dot-separated on the lefthand side of a domain denotes a sub-domain (owned-by the parent domain's owner) is important. Extra stuff on the right means it's not the same domain ... and is used in lots of phishing emails to get people to go to malicious sites.

So ... if you bank with "XYZ Bank" & their domain is "xyzbank.com", being taken to eg "www.xyzbank.com" is ok (that's the "www" subdomain of xyzbank.com) but "xyzbank.scammersareus.com" is owned by "scammersareus". Of course scammers don't usually do anything that blatant; but lots of people would fall for - say - "xyz.banking.com"- who knows who owns "banking.com"?

Also ... https://astermail.org/terms/ has:

These Terms and Conditions are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware.

and

Our contact details are as follows:

hello@astermail.org
131 Continental Drive Suite 301, Newark, Delaware 19713

which I think one shouldn't have to go looking for.

Some questions
 

• What is their long-term business plan and source of income?
• How stable is the service, and will it function well over time?
• Being based in Delaware, how does their security compare to EU/Swiss privacy standards?
• Is the interface user-friendly, and does it display sign-in history?
• Are there any other reviews or testimonies to prove that they could be trustworthy?

Just asking for a friend.

I am logged out every few seconds. :-) Impossible to test/use it.

pop3/smtp availible or only webinterface?

Web only. No IMAP4/POP3/SMTP. They plan to release a desktop/mobile app. It should be open source, but they haven't released any source code yet. I use it only for testing. No trust.

That's not good. IMAP & SMTP are listed as supported for the free service and the paid services in the feature table at the foot of:
https://astermail.org/pricing/

OK, then I don't understand how astermail works. :-)
But no server information.

I just did an anonymous login to their "community forum" (on discord) and browsed through bug reports etc. Someone there asked about IMAP & was told: not yet.

That means that the features table cannot be trusted.

Not exactly an answer to your question but possibly related?

https://logicmark.zendesk.com/hc/en-...id-smartphones

Looking at the list of related questions there ... I doubt it. These all seem to be about use of a bluetooth alarm button by which someone who has one of these buttons paired with an app on their smartphone can call for help. The app (without the button?) is marketed (by "logicmark") as a way for vulnerable people out & about to call for help discreetly; I'm pretty sure Android has that facility already. I think the BT button is just a way to scatter convenient wireless alarm calls around a house.

It looks like standard email protocols won't be supported; instead, you'll have to rely on apps (iOS/Android) or (as with Tuta) a separate Windows app. That rules this ?service? out for me!

It is so strange they disabled my account created yesterday.

I'm on a public computer, and the site is blocked, which isn't a good sign.

seems to be a service that can not be recommended.

My account is still active but I don't really use it (yet). No need for another app/web only mail service. But auto-logout seems to be fixed.

The inbox size, the focus on security, 2FA being enabled, ... all sounds promising.

But they're very new, and their offer is quite generous. So I indeed wonder how they're planning to survice financially. It would be nice if a new service would give a tiny bit of insight in their business plan. I tried some quite new services in the past, then to find out the service ceased operations a couple of months later.

But of course, every single service started off from scratch at some point, so if there is a solid business plan behind it ... If the service has a reliable business plan, then I'm willing to give them a try.

I quite like the domain.

I did a Gemini AI background search about the company. Here are the results.

https://gemini.google.com/share/5664bd30e6f6

I logged back in to Astermail today and noticed they've fixed a lot of bugs.

Now, "Force dark mode for emails" works like a charm, and outgoing emails no longer land in spam or get blocked by my other email provider like before. Great achievement, I would say :D

By the way, they're now offering 30% off the first 3 months with the STAR30 coupon if you're interested.

They upgraded the Star plan to 50Gb, which makes it a lot more appealing imo. No other service offer this much storage at this price range.
Either way... do I really need 50Gb of storage for emails?

The Nova plan does not make sense at all. Tutas Legend plan costs ?8, Proton Unlimited costs $10 and has way more features and services included.

Competition is always a good thing but Aster isn't worth it imo, it'll probably end up like Skiff did.

22 years ago Gmail offered 1GB which was between 10 and 100 times what other services offered at the time, and implied that you'll never need more. Soon afterwards they began to gradually increment this quota and said this way you'll always have enough space for all your needs. That stopped at 16GB and now they sell extra quota. So yes, eventually you'd need much more than 50GB.

My Gmail account was opened in November 2006, I've currently used 0.27 GB for emails. But then again, I don't store every EMD email received about a new post in a 'Human or Monkey' type thread.

I would never have the need for 50 GB.

That could change; but you might choose to put your money into something other than Google. Not to mean just emails, but documents, files, pictures, ...for some online storage.

It?s much easier to switch to another provider if you have 5GB of data rather than 50GB.

That?s the sticky trap designed to keep you tied to the service.

In the end, choosing another service, like to pay for, is a personal choice. Google lets user have 15 GB for free, all so Gmail and Photos and Drive can share that 15 GB. If you know you only want to store less than 15 GB, then may be just fine staying with the free Google account and services. If you want higher capacity storage, then time to investigate plan details in Google and in other service/online storages. Or, you might feel that storing on external device is good enough.

my main gmail has 8GB used for pure email.

I see just one custom domain name for free. Am I missing something?

I signed up for an account with them about a month ago, and asked them a technical question about their setting etc. Never heard back... I would not spend money for their service, in as much as the service seems promising.

Maybe it depends on which channel you used? Aster Mail are quite active on their Discord channel and I've had useful dialogue with their main man there.

I sent an email to their tech support... If I am considering paying for a service that looks a good value, I expect them to respond to my tech inquiries.