Alternatives to DH for email?

I'm looking for a reliable email provider that will allow me to leave my sites at DH, for now, but start receiving email via IMAP.

Does anyone here have recommendations for mail service? fastmail.fm is currently my top choice, but I'd be curious about others. Has anyone used MediaTemple for any length of time? Or pair.com? The IMAP requirement rules out gmail for now.

And does anyone have ideas about the pros and cons of forwarding to another service provider vs changing the MX record? Anyone here tried changing their MX record?

I would also like to move a couple of lists without forcing everyone to resubscribe.

DH's troubles of the last 8-9 months are hard to explain. Did they lose someone good? Quit caring? Inadvertently hire a saboteur from SBC, who is secretly working to take them down? I've been happily recommending DH for a couple of years now, but I given four multi-hour outages in the last week, I can't recommend them in good conscience anymore.

Finally, aside from the continuous flow of apologies from DH tech support, does anyone have an idea of what specifically the company is doing to repair its systems and improve its service record? It's not clear from the blog.

I use spamcop.net for all my email. IMAP, SPOP, nice webmail client (horde-based), and excellent spam and virus filtering. I have my registrar forward mail to my spamcop.net address.

Steve

I just saw an article on the net that says MediaTemple is in the same data center as DH, and therefore lost power at the same time. Though, their email is probably STILL more reliable than DH.

I'm in the process of moving my sites to a dedicated server at VineHosting.com.

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Angela Gann
CrimsonDryad Web Design Services
Web Design, Custom Software Development
http://www.crimsondryad.com

Google has recently started offering a hosted mail service that I switched one of my Dreamhost accounts/domains to. It's very cool: the power of Google on your domain! My goodness, I sound like an advert! haha.

Anyways, check it out here: https://www.google.com/hosted

I signed up to be on the beta and within a few days they got back to me.

In reply to:
Inadvertently hire a saboteur from SBC

Now *that's* rich! I guess you have experience similar to mine with SBC (er, oops, I meant AT%*().

Sorry about that! the obscenity filter on my keyboard won't let me type "SBC's" new name. Arguggh!

--rlparker

I must say, thank you for this. They got back to me today, and I'm just waiting for it to update. But so far, its running smoothly

Alternatives to DH for email?