I shifted to Fastmail because people here tend to recommend it and I wanted less google in my life.
Two things I didn’t expect was a better web UI and better spam filtering. On top of that I can write to human support and they are both responsive and seem knowledgeable.
I agree with you on the UI, but left Fastmail and went back to Google workspace because of Fastmails poor spam filtering. 1-2 pieces of spam were hitting my inbox daily. On Workspace it's 1-2 a month.
Found the same with Zoho, and it's free. Used it because I didn't really care about the account and expected some shitty roundcube thing, but have been blown away. The app, website, and spam filtering absolutely crush what Gmail is offering.
> Used it because I didn't really care about the account and expected some shitty roundcube thing, but have been blown away.
For what it's worth, I self host a few e-mail servers and modern Roundcube is actually a pleasant experience, even if I like connecting Thunderbird directly.
I still very much rely on some cloud vendor e-mails for uptime and deliverability, though. Otherwise, with random VPSes you risk the IPs having bad reputation or having a plethora of issues (such as some providers not allowing e-mail ports).
Two things I didn’t expect was a better web UI and better spam filtering. On top of that I can write to human support and they are both responsive and seem knowledgeable.