Separate contacts and calendar hosting?

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Baboon

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#283909 19-Mar-2021 11:50

So, are _just_ contacts and _just_ calendar hosting, still a thing? I ask, since I keep discounting hosted email services as not worth my time, because they don't offer a calendar and their contacts are MIA or some incredibly basic part of their webmail.

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Zeon

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#2677139 19-Mar-2021 11:53

Service slike Office365 and Gmail should offer both of those with their email. There will be other hosting companies who support ActiveSync to have this data synced to your phone and some with MAPI/EWS to sync to Outlook if you want to use that too. I use Smartermail (self hosted) for this.

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michaelmurfy

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#2677151 19-Mar-2021 12:08

The question for you is why would you want this.

Yes, solutions exist (look at Nextcloud) but what are you hoping to achieve by doing this outside of a mail provider? The Contacts / Calendar features built into most mail providers are totally fine.

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Baboon

386 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2677156 19-Mar-2021 12:19

Well, an email host like MXRoute, to provide just one example, doesn't have a calendar, and only has basic webmail contacts, so their support informs me. I want to be able to have a calendar I can sync everywhere. Bonus points for being able to use my domain so people will see that when I add them to an event.

And I need contacts I can access from home and on the go, whose email links will launch the email client I've set as system default.

Google or MS 365 are obvious choices, but I'm trying to move away from Google after an appalling support experience, and I'm trialling MS 365 right now - but it is.... not good. Not awful, but it's like taking a step way back in time with web Outlook. And I do need a decent web client for the times I'm not wanting or able to install my own apps on a device.

I am about to try Fastmail which I've heard good things about, but as I say about - I wonder if I'm unfairly discounting email only hosts as being useful to me.

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mentalinc

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#2677160 19-Mar-2021 12:29

https://mxroute.com/docs/nextcloud-introduction/

NextCloud at MXroute offers:

File storage, Photo galleries, Notes, Contacts, Calendars, An email client

This should do what you need.

And arn't you just using an app on your with this as the backend?

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Baboon

386 posts

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#2677162 19-Mar-2021 12:33

For over a decade now, actually, I used Google's Apps/G Suite/Workspace as it's now called, in my web browser on the desktop, and really only used email client apps on mobile. Well, I do keep a desktop IMAP client running that handles my email backup.

Plus, it would be a pain for me to have to install an email client on all the machines I use. So good web UI is important to me.

MXRoute support gave me the wrong info, then? They _do_ offer syncable calendar and contacts?

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- Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)

mentalinc

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#2677200 19-Mar-2021 13:22

https://cloud.mxroute.com

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BlakJak

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#2680735 25-Mar-2021 21:34

I caved and used Google because in the Android ecosystem that's your native contact integration for phone, texting and email.

But I host my own email and I use K-9 as an email client.

There have never been a lot of well integrated contacts systems, because 'contacts' are used where?

Email - email client.

Phone - phonebook.

There are open/standard protocols for contacts (carddav) and calendaring (caldav) but there aren't a lot of successful implementations. You could look for someone who offers Open-Xchange maybe.

Or perhaps something Zimbra based. But I can't remember the last time I saw them cleanly integrate with a mobile client to let you readily use the same contacts for text messaging as you do for emailing.

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