What is the best email to use, free or paid, to communicate with the west and inside China?

[vellocet]

I am fed up with my existing(western) provider.  Apparently every time I log in from someone's wifi, it tags this as a "hacking attempt" and disables my account.  The other day was  the last straw when I couldn't receive an important message.  I'm sure coming from China doesn't help. 

Then, there was a problem with  12306 and I had to password reset. I used Qunar for years for train tickets with no problems. However, now, Qunar refuses to work unless your 12306 login works. I never bothered with using 12306 because it was the official train app and it sucked. I set it up a long time ago and never checked it again. 

So I had to go through 12306 password reset, and it insisted on not completing until I clicked on an email it sent to the email I have now.  No such email arrived. So I can't change my train tickets. I suspect, though cannot prove, the email 12306 sent was blocked by a spam filter used by my western email host. I had to go all the way down to the train station and spend a half hour with the lady explaining the situation until she agrees to totally delete my 12306 account so I can start over completely. Meanwhile, there are no tickets left so I had to buy commercial class for triple the price. 

I set up a Netease (126.com) email a while back but botched the signup process because I didn't understand its weird concept where you have to set up a "master email".  No other service I have ever used does this.  

What else is there?  qq.com but I do not like them since way back in the day. 

"why don't you just use Gmail" I cut Google out of my life some time ago and have never looked back.  Moreover the Great Firewall blocking is an issue, I want something guaranteed to work smoothly inside China.  Moreover, something that works smoothly in the west, too and doesn't get tagged as spam just because the email  originates from China.  

I don't mind paying, I don't want something like what happened with the train tickets to happen again. I also want to be able to receive emails from anyone's wifi without getting blocked for "hacking".  I want to set up my new fresh 12306 account with a Chinese email guaranteed to receive password reset emails. 

I read the 2018 thread on  emails. https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/56461-163com-email/

[Jim]

I use Outlook's free webmail and it's pretty consistently available here with no VPN, obviously works fine with all non-Chinese sites too. Does occasionally put something from a Chinese correspondent into spam so I do make a point of checking that regularly. So not a Chinese provider but excellent for free and should do the job you want.

[vellocet]

Hmm...is that locked to Microsoft in some way?  Webmail, or IMAP?

I should have specified IMAP because I need something that works seamlessly between mobile and PC.  And if it does use IMAP does it require Outlook as an IMAP client?  Sorry to be picky, I should have phrased my question better. 😓

[vellocet]

And while I'm at it, I remember Netease had some kind of issue setting up IMAP on my PC.  Thunderbird found it in its database and then it refused to complete for some reason.  Now I'm back to square 1.  I had it on my list of things to do to get a Chinese computer nerd to set it up but haven't found one yet despite asking around. 

[Jim]

Not checked out the IMAP possibilities. It does put you firmly in Microsoft's ambit, but I've stopped worrying about that (/abject surrender). The same web interface works fine on my phone using the browser, not bothered trying to find an APP.

[imron]

Outlook supports IMAP without issue.

 

I also have an aversion to gmail, and use Fastmail (a paid service) for my personal mail.  They're an excellent provider, and support IMAP and everything else you'd want (phone apps, webapps etc) and have a responsive support/servicing team.

 

The only thing is, I'm not sure if they work in China.  They have a free trial though so you could try them out and see - they have a bunch of different domains so maybe one of them won't be blocked?  You can also set things up to go through your own domain too if you have one.

[vellocet]

How about ProtonMail?  That seems like exactly the kind of thing that wouldn't work in China.

[imron]

Yeah, I thought about mentioning that too but didn't because I don't expect it to work it China given it's focus on privacy and security.

[vellocet]

On 10/4/2024 at 9:40 AM, imron said:

I also have an aversion to gmail, and use Fastmail (a paid service) for my personal mail.  They're an excellent provider, and support IMAP and everything else you'd want (phone apps, webapps etc) and have a responsive support/servicing team.

They have fastmail.cn listed, ever tried it? I'm interested to know if it can send mail freely without being tagged as spam. 

 

[imron]

Nope. I use my own domain. 
 

They have a 30 day free trial with no credit card required though so should be easy enough to test.