I'm trying to get away from Gmail dependency, and I'd love input on other hosting solutions.<p>Things to consider: price, custom domain names, storage size.
I've had good experience with Fastmail.fm, moving for the same reason you did -- from gmail. It's an amazingly powerful system -- just check out the "advanced" configuration. As an added bonus, it has Dropbox integration, its own dropbox-like system, and a jabber server you can use for talk. The web interface is at least as good as gmail's; I would argue better.<p>Only downside: Even with a custom domain, you need a family/business plan to have jabber at your own domain instead of theirs.
Rackspace Mail.<p>$2/month/mailbox (minimum $10/month).<p>100% uptime SLA. I have experienced no downtime in some years.<p>24/7/365 support, by phone/email/webchat. If you need to talk to someone at 2AM on Christmas day, you can.<p>25GB mailboxes, IMAP push and POP3, configurable backups, good spam filters.<p><a href="http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/</a>
I'm using gmail with my own domain at the moment but given the state of CISPA and the fear of being locked out my account for good, I think I'll be kicking off my own hosting solution soon. The idea will be to build something fairly simple but with scalable storage, encryption and redundancy x3.
I run my own email.<p>Price: Already paying for internet connection anyway.<p>Custom domain name: Necessary - but not that expensive anymore.<p>Storage size: limited only by how much storage I'm willing to buy.