What's a good alternative to Gmail?
Trying to de-google and looking for an alternative to Gmail.
Don't mind if it's a paid service if it's robust.
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Trying to de-google and looking for an alternative to Gmail.
Don't mind if it's a paid service if it's robust.
Proton Mail and Tutanota are great free options.
Tutanota has limited features and i dont like the UI. But it is okay.
Try to go for protonmail
I just opened my protonmail account for the first time in years and it's really nice! Lots of great UI stuff now!
Tutanota is a bit more privacy focused, really useful for burners, because by default it will burn the account if you don't use it for 6 months.
As far the UI, I kinda like it. Little more old school, doesn't have the toy look so many apps have nowadays. But to each their own.
Protonmails approach to requiring hCaptcha for everything, even their mobile apps, really turns me off. I can't complete them. And I need another email to get in using their weird and creepy accessibility cookie thing. Nah thanks. If I need a second email to access my email I might as well just use that second email.
Who the hell downvotes a person for saying "I have a hard time with Captchas because they don't provide accessibility options that allow entry to someone with my conditions" ?
Like, guys, Captchas being ableist is a well known thing. And they've only been getting worse, as they've been in an arms race with AI, trying to become more and more distorted, and most AI text recognition software is already better at Captchas than most dyslexic people.
You sure you are a human?
Barely!
Last I checked, the encryption in Proton Mail means you have to use their app, no third party apps allowed. Is that still true?
Yes, that's still true. If you want to be able to use a third-party mail app, I would look at Fastmail or Mailbox.org. They don't have free plans though.
Phone app? Yes you have to use their own app. On a computer besides the browser version you can use Thunderbird and other applications if you download ProtonBridge.
To clarify, this is a paid feature and not included with the free tier
Is that GitHub issue where the bridge just starts deleting emails still open? I am pretty sure it was open for over a year.
Yup, and it’s kind if a pain since their mobile apps aren’t great. I’ve been using them for many years, and lately have been considering jumping ship.
Email encryption isn’t something I actually care about. If I wanted to send someone a super private message, I probably wouldn’t use email anyways since it’s just clunky, and it’s unlikely the other person is using proton mail too (which means the message wouldn’t be encrypted anyways). All I really want is to not have my email provider be scanning my messages to profit from my data.
But the effort to switch to something else is making me stay…
You don't use encrypted emails only to communicate privately. If they are not encrypted, your e-mail provider will probably scan them, whether it is for profit or under request from the NSA. That's what Snowden uncovered.
That's a good point, but also the more I think about it the more I realize it's futile. Google is 100% going to scan the messages I send to gmail users, and match it to me somehow.
With Tutanota the Gmail user only gets a link (optionally password protected). Google can’t scan the actual content of the mail.
Same with Proton if you enable encryption for emails to non-proton addresses
Same here. It's pretty barebones but fully functional.
Just off the top of my head: on iOS, the app is frequently slow to download new messages, occasionally (but not frequently) crashes or freezes up, opening a message from a notification is unreliable, it doesn't support landscape mode, the search feature sucks (no filtering, sorting, etc), and it has some questionable design choices. Like, why does it include spam in the "All Mail" category? And why is it that swiping a message right sends it to the trash when doing that exact same interaction in the iOS mail app marks it as read? I've adapted to the difference after all these years, but it's clearly a bad design.
Overall it's not terrible; I'd give it like 4/5 or 3.5/5 stars, however with the price I'm paying for this (IMO overpriced) service I'd expect something a little better. I will say that the experience today is much better than it was a year ago, so even though it takes a long time, it does seem to be improving.
I've had zero issues with the mobile app for mail.
I’ll be honest, when it comes to online purchases you may find that a protonmail email will require extra processing/fraud checking due to the amount of fraudsters that use it. Combine that with a vpn and it will just be a pain here and there with online purchases like additional ID verification/delayed orders etc…
Been using protonmail for my main email for three years, never had one issue. But I'm in Europe, maybe in the US it's different?
I’m more talking global purchases. Just the email will probs be ok but if you purchase using that email and a vpn it raises flags.
This has happened exactly once to me, and it was the VPN, and not the email address.
Paid plan folks can also make use of simplelogin.io
I am always suspicious of free. How do they make money? Have to pay for things in life, and I've learned that you are either the customer, or the product. If your the customer, pay up. If your the product, your data is being dished out to somebody OR ad-a-palooza. If the free option is just ads, I can live. If every time I log on I feel like I am getting a vitual colonoscopy, pass.
Proton is freemium. You can use the basic package but you only get 500 MB drive storage. Expanding that is cheap, which is how they draw you in.
They also offer package deals, like their VPN stuff.
The Proton free tier is pretty limited compared to Gmail, in particular for me, you're only allowed 1 label. The basic paid tier opens up a lot more. They definitely want you to upgrade to the paid tier.
Buy selling a subscription that comes with more perks. For example, more storage for your email, custom email domain, etc.
Pre-paying for 2 years upfront is the most cost effective.
Your doubts are warranted, but with Protonmail and Tutanota there is no reason be suspicious. They are basically feemium products and their goal is to respect user's rights
Proton Mail just has 5 gigs for the free version. Doesn't seem like it's enough for me to switch to it long term.
They also expand your storage every year, so it's not like it's stuck there forever. For reference, I've been on Proton for about 3 years now (paid plan) and I have a data storage cap of 540GB and I've never had to buy more. Also, I all my emails so far only consume 340MB - so even on the free plan I'd still have years to go before I reached even 5GB.
(Also, I'll admit I don't email much.)
Yeah, Proton are working on delivering a privacy-focused replacement for the whole google suite. Mail, drive, calendar so far, plus VPN. OP could do a lot worse. :)
Yeah I'll go Proton. Was going to go with Fastmail but then read that they're an Australian company, a Five Eyes country.
It's quite expensive whereas you get the same product even better for 12€ a year with posteo.de
Posteo doesn't allow you to use your own domain, do they? I know OP didn't ask for that but it's a really, really good idea to put your email addresses on a domain that you own.
Still, it would be a definite step up from Google.
Proton imo is definitely the winner here, since Gmail itself also relies on integration with a bunch of cloud apps
I'm using ProtonMail and paying for it.
It's decent. The best AFAIK in terms of privacy. Supports labels etc.
The migration process takes so long, I'm split between both still and slowly moving over.
I just forward my Gmail and use it as a legacy service while using proton as my new primary. Allows me to very aggressively spam filter in proton.
https://proton.me/support/automatic-forwarding-gmail
I'm willing to use that mindset when I'm downhill mountain biking but for email.. no way. You're crazy man.
I kinda get you, but I'm (not oc) using forwarding as a temporary solution until I've slowly moved everything away from Gmail entirely. It's also good to import all past mails over.
Same. I use my gmail accounts for junk mail and have been moving everything actually relevant to proton through SimpleLogin aliases.
I use Proton Mail. I recommend that whatever service you decide on, get your own domain name so you can keep your email address if you move to a different provider.
Do you have any recommendations on how to buy a domain?
IIRC Cloudflare is the only registrar that doesn't mark up from wholesale prices, or something like that. Basically makes them cheaper than most other registrars. I think the point is that they can then sell you their other (related) services more easily — the services that actually make them money.
Not OP, but I used Namecheap. Porkbun is also recommended I think. Setting it up is not dead-brain simple, but Proton does a very good job on explaining it step by step I believe.
I use Porkbun for my domain. you can get a .xyz domain for only $2 for 1 year, though after 1 year its like $8 per year.
Google domains are cheap and easy to maintain....... oh wait.
I'm using namesilo and it was pretty straight forward to set up. I just got it a couple days ago and no issues so far!
That would make it easier to target you though, or do you use aliases on top of that?
I’m not sure I know what you mean by “target you”. Can you go into more detail about that?
By having a common email address that you give out to each service you sign up on you make it easier for them to aggregate the data and build a more detailed profile on you, in order to avoid it you would use email aliases (dummy address that serve the purpose of only forwarding emails they receive from and to one of your real address). If you use a custom domain name you can potentially create an infinite amount of them, but you expose yourself to being tracked anyway because they would all have the domain name in common e.g.
[email protected],[email protected], etc. and they would notice that it all comes from one user for service, so it's easy to guess it is actually just one real person.To avoid that happening, you would have to use a public aliasing service so you can blend in with the other users
Any decent email hosting service should allow you some form of aliasing (whether it's plus addressing or actual aliases). Ideally there should be no "default" address associated @your.domain, it should be all aliases. Preferably with wildcards so you can make them up on the fly when subscribing to a random website, without having to go into the admin settings. And naturally they should also offer wildcard sending (being able to send from [email protected] – this is supported by most decent email clients).
Bottom line, as long as it's your own domain and you don't abuse things like receiving/sending limits, attachment size, total storage size etc. you should be able to do whatever you want with your addresses and mailboxes.
I'm using Proton Mail and I like it a lot!
Idk I'm still using my Hotmail that I got in 1995 so...
I'm still using an AOL email address that I got in the 80's, so...
Damn you just reminded me that I haven’t fed my Neopet in years. They don’t die, do they??
I thought I was cool because I recorded the ring from my flip phone and used it on every subsequent phone until I somehow lost the recording around the late aughts, but that beats me by miles.
Oh yeah?? Well I tattoo my messages onto my servant's scalps and send them out when their hair has grown, so...
My hotmail account is my oldest still in use online account.
My primary is gmail and my secondary is proton mail but I haven't ever warmed up to proton mail. It's been a few years.
I ask it to save my login and yet I always need log in again. Maybe their sessions expire by default, whereas gmail will keep me signed in until I clear my browser. Neither gmail or protonmail load very quickly, but proton mail is noticeably worse.
This is the way
Proton
Proton is my fav non Google email.
Proton Mail. https://pm.me/
Been using Proton mail a couple months now. Very happy with it.
I would recommend either Mailbox or Posteo simply because they cost 1€/m. For email I find that anything more than like $2 is a waste of money, but that is my opinion.
Both Tutanota and Protonmail offer freemium versions of their services.
Skiff or Protonmail.
Skiff gives you 10 GBs of storage and also comes with a drive and a Notion-like Pages app. They even let you add custom domain for free. The only disadvantages are the non-native Android or iOS apps that just feel off and the limits on folders and filters.
ProtonMail only gives 1GB of storage and stuff like custom domains, aliases, etc are all paid features. The Android app is decent but missing some basic features that you only notice when you actually use it (select and delete when searching for example). Definitely the most robust mail service there is though. With Proton Unlimited, you also get stuff like per-site aliases using SimpleLogin, Proton VPN, Proton Drive, Proton Calendar and Proton Pass. But if I'm being honest, only the Mail and VPN are truly complete products.
Proton drive also seems pretty compete to me, now that they have a desktop app that's working really well (at least for windows, don't know about other OS's)
No sync functionality on Android and no webdav or such, so no support for apps like FolderSync. Also, no client for Linux and macOS.
I agree, it's pretty functional. Only issue I've had with it is it's pretty slow, and if you need to upload a lot of files quickly your out of luck.
My boss had me take a couple hundred pictures with my cell, and I didn't want to waste my time trying to send via sms, so I uploaded then to my drive and shared them. It took 2 hours just to upload them.
(⊙_◎)
Seriously though, that's interesting. When I moved all my stuff over from Sync to Proton Drive, the upload took about as long as expected, with my uplink being used quite well, at least when larger files were being uploaded.
Yah, even as long as it took, there was no way I was texting him those photos.
I don't think it was limited by connection speed. I usually get about 1mb down and half that upload, and with each photo about 2mb that should have finished in less than five minutes.
SimpleLogin is fantastic with a custom domain. Game changer for signing up to websites, especially if you use Bitwarden because they integrate seamlessly. I have paid Proton so the premium version is included for free. Not sure how the free version compares.
SimpleLogin is integrated directly into Proton Pass and Proton Pass has the ability to save them as "Aliases". So that's been really neat. I've been finding myself using Proton Pass over Bitwarden lately due to how the Proton Pass app syncs the vault better on Android and how the Aliases feature works better with the in-page autofill that Proton Pass has.
I've not noticed any issues with Bitwarden on Android in the last 2 years of using it - what was happening for you?
Currently BW seems like a bulletproof solution, but it's good to have options.
BW does feel like a more bulletproof solution tbh. The Android app's autofill is what I'm bothered by.
This for example, https://community.bitwarden.com/t/add-a-button-to-refresh-vault-in-ios-password-auto-fill-view/32989/9
And also the lack of a UI-based autofill (edit: in browser) means that it's not possible to easily pick one among multiple logins for the same site.
On my Samsung there is an accessibility button at the far right of the navigation bar. You can configure this to wake up Bitwarden and make it available to autofill (long press). Once I set that up I haven't had any issues with autofill.
You can pull down in the Android app to refresh, so that solves the problem in your link.
The pull down action does not work in the "Items for" autofill menu
Agree on Skiff. It's like the app keeps reloading like if you used an ereader to check your mail
[email protected]
I moved to Fastmail last year and it's been entirely unremarkable which is exactly what I want. Mail in and out works, it's reliable, I have my custom domains.
It really depends on the level of privacy you're going for and what features you want. For me I needed custom domain support with catchalls. The only other requirement I had was to not be Google. I debated between Fastmail and Proton for a while (Fastmail for features/price, Proton for the "better" privacy.) Ultimately I ended up on Fastmail because I would have had to pay for a higher than necessary account at Proton for what I wanted.
I've been on Fastmail for 10 years. It's a great service.
I have been using Fastmail for a few years. No complaints. No issues. Entirely unremarkable.
Also since most other people aren’t using encrypted email, you kinda don’t really benefit from the Proton encryption afaik. I personally don’t understand the point.
Yep. It was a fun ooh look what I can do that I have exactly zero people to communicate with using those features.
In the same vein, not using Google is similarly silly. Most of my personal contacts use Gmail or o365 so they still get a copy of my email anyway. But at least this way my money isn't going to them and nobody's scanning my inbox to advertise to me (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
Ive not used proton, but Tutanota sends a link to the receiver if they don’t use Tutanota themselves. They have to click the link and enter a predetermined password to read the content
Would using proton keep the ads away?
I assume some since i assume gmail scans my inbox to serve me ads. But you’d get other ads from browsing history etc still. But Fastmail does the same thing i believe
Been with Fastmail for a year. Love their integration with 1password. Nobody gets my real email address. Even my 6th grader knows how to obfuscate email now. Too easy.
They have a similar integration with Bitwarden that I've used a bit. I ended up stopping though because I rely on a catch-all and just give out companyname@ or something generic like work@ or family@. Sure it's easy to guess but I haven't had any spam issues in the ~15 years I've been operating this way.
Nobody actually gets my Fastmail login address though. I picked a random string on one of their domains that's literally only used to sign in. A fun little added obscurity feature.
After checking out most of these services I think I'll go with Fastmail, has what I need, plenty of storage, can use third party apps without any hassle.
I used fastmail with a custom domain but random stuff from specific senders would disappear into the ether and never go through to my mailbox. Everything else worked fine though, but it was enough to switch me back to gmail for a while at least. LDAP is a requirement for me and most of the other popular providers now don’t have it.
Yeah I suppose I could be missing email and not know (because it never got delivered) but I get everything I expect to receive and I haven't had anyone reach out asking why I haven't responded to an email I never received. It's good enough for me for now though.
LDAP support isn't something that's ever crossed my mind for mail, definitely a legit reason to stick with the Googs.
I also degoogled to proton. Now one bill for VPN, drive and my own domain email address.
I’ve been on Fastmail for several years and like it a lot! It lets you use you own domain name as well. Their app is not particularly great, but you can hook things up with the default iOS/Android/whatever mail app just fine.
I agree, I'm a happy customer for several years as well. It's not the cheapest service, but it's no-nonsense and reliable.
I pointed my own domain to Fastmail and can use wildcard email addresses (like [email protected]) that all end in my inbox. Also my contacts are synced on the phone with Fastmail using CardDAV support, using the DAVX5 app on Android. It's really nice to have this much flexibility.
Fastmail is awesome
Protonmail
It has all the bells and whistles, is privacy protecting, and is free to use
I've heard of Proton, but I never knew you could get the whole suite and that they had the option to subscribe for 24 months, that's pretty neat.
I do like Proton, and I needed something like it for a forwarding problem with Gmail.
But it actually lacks one bell/whistle that Gmail offers. Both services work to receive mail for forwarding addresses, but, on Gmail, you can also send from your forwarded addresses. Proton will only send from a domain you own. So if you get mail forwarded from [email protected] or [email protected], you won't be able to reply or send from those addresses on Proton. Judging by how long people have been asking for that ability, I doubt Proton intends to ever provide that.
I imagine that only works if you also host the address you forward to with Google? Otherwise I can't see how Google can send email on behalf of a domain whose DNS servers it doesn't control. If that were possible spam would be a lot worse than it is.
It only requires you to demonstrate you control the address.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en
Proton, on the other hand, only supports you owning the whole domain, as their only verification is through DNS TXT records.
That's not strictly true. I don't know if it's part of the free plan but it's definitely a paid feature. With either their Simple Login or the built in hide my email alias, you can reply with your alias.
Ah, I should have said "from a domain you own or one of their own".
The use case I'm talking about, which is the use of arbitrary domains, not Proton-provided ones and not domains you own and control.
I see that Simple Login provides aliases from its own domains, but not a way to use an arbitrary domain.
Proton's address support overview mentions organizational addresses, but clarifies in the same doc that this is referring to a business plan where that whole organization will be using Proton.
Proton's switching guide discusses forwarding, and it only instructs the user to tell their contacts about the new Proton address, which defeats the purpose of forwarding addresses.
Here is further discussion about the missing functionality.
Meanwhile, Google lets you use up to 99 of your own email addresses from whatever domains they are.
Paid Fastmail User here since around half a year. Did extensive research on what provider to use and trialed fastmail for four weeks before buying. I went for a 3 year period. Fastmail has a fantastic set of features.
There are providers that are focused more on privacy (e.g. PGP. encryption, not being based in Australia) but that was not my top priority.
I have created a lengthy guide as part of my transition: I published the Markdown file to Fastmail at this link (it is a text file). As it was initially written just for myself, the format might not be very readable :)
Can you send me that to me too please? Do I have to give you my email?
Same, or maybe just throw a link up
I published the Markdown file to Fastmail at this link (it is a text file). As it was initially written just for myself, the format might not be very readable :)
me too please
At this point, I think it is safe to post the link.
I published the Markdown file to Fastmail at this link (it is a text file). As it was initially written just for myself, the format might not be very readable :)
I published the Markdown file to Fastmail at this link (it is a text file). As it was initially written just for myself, the format might not be very readable :)
What's the spam control like with Fastmail? I tend to get quite a bit and Gmail's been the only half-decent one so far about stopping it from ever reaching the inbox but I'm considering moving from Google Workspace.
FastMail user for 7+ years. Their spam filtering is good. I hardly get any and my email address is 20+ years old and have been used in public plenty.
@[email protected] @[email protected] Thanks for the information both of you. I realised my Google Workspace subscription lapses in a week so I've signed up for a trial of Fastmail and really liking it so far. 😀
🤜🤛
As my app posted the reply as a top comment, here it is again:
One important thing to take note of is: "Once your personal database has seen more than 200 spam and 200 non-spam emails, we automatically start using it to filter your incoming mail." This means, before you have received 200 spam emails (or marked them as such), the filter is going to perform significantly worse.
Personally, initially it was pretty bad compared to Gmail. However, it significantly improved over time. One thing that helps are masked emails (fantastic) - an email you can create, or is even created automatically for you, and then enter at dubious websites. If you get spam, you can simply block the whole email or fine tune it.
I've been using Zoho mail for a few years now with my own domain linked to it and it works flawlessly for less than 12€/y. (less than 24€/y if you also add the domain cost)
I have used zoho as well. Have great office tools also.
Hell, I'm using the free tier. Zoho has the most relaxed offerings for free tier of any email provider I've looked into.
Their Admin UI sucks though. It's almost impossible to find anything, and once you do find a link to what you need you're forwarded to some other new tool they've created in the last year. Giant pain in the ass.
Yeah I usually mention that whenever I mention Zoho, guess I forgot it this time :)
I'm very happy with them, but every time I need to add a sending email alias I'm looking through 3+ places to find the right one where I can do that.
Started with Proton then ended up at Zoho.
+1, Zoho here. Super cheap, and I feel a lot more confident that they aren't selling my data out the window, because I'm actually paying for the service.
I interacted with one of RMS's public emails last week (not sure if I talked to RMS directly or not) and it came from protonmail. That's about as good an endorsement as one can hope for, so that's where I plan to migrate to.
RMS?
Richard Matthew Stallman, who started the GNU and founded the Free Software Foundation 🙃
Ahhhh noted pedophile apologist Richard Stallman
For those out of the loop: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman-returns-to-fsf-18-months-after-controversial-rape-comments/
Hi there hate campaign, I see you're keeping at it. Here's a song I wrote, third verse is about you.
https://fair.tube/w/7Qkx9RW7ZikNATcqkHWbpm
Edit - while we're at it, for those who want to read up on this matter:
https://stallmansupport.org/
Keep drinking the Stallman Kool aid my friend. He said what he said, publicly, most revolutionaries have a fucked up side, we don't often hear it out of their own mouths.
For me saying that sexual encounters with minors isn't always harmful is beyond the pale and there's no take backs.
Quote his actual words in context.
Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization. [Reference updated on 2018-04-25 because the old link was broken.]
I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
[Many years after posting this note, I had conversations with people who had been sexually abused as children and had suffered harmful effects. These conversations eventually convinced me that the practice is harmful and adults should not do it.]!<
It took convincing from real victims to convince him that minors cannot in fact give informed consent for sexual relations with adults. It also took many years.
Forgive me if I remain skeptical.
Gotta go for ProtonMail. Have been running it for a year and I kinda like how it's doing.
An additional feature is SimpleLogin's "Hide My E-mail" Aliases, which are "burner" e-mail addresses to use with pre-determined SimpleLogin domains (you can add your own domains as well to go around Proton's custom domain limit). Those are included in the full suite and Family subscriptions. (10 a month when subscribing for a year)
There's also a cheaper variant for 3.50 a month but it lacks the SimpleLogin feature. You can get SimpleLogin seperately for 30 a year, however.
mailbox.org tutanota.com
I tried tutanota but I found it too cumbersome. I prefer Proton
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/
Another bump for Proton. My wife and I share an account with a few different addresses each going to their own folder. (One for me, one for her, one for shopping, one for spam, etc) Their VPN is great too and includes ad/tracker blocking.
Fastmail is great and has very fast user interface and lots of nice features, such as email address aliases you can create with a button click or integrate it with Bitwarden etc.
It costs money though, just so you know if you want "free" (nothing is really free).
+1 for Proton. I started with just Mail Plus but got the whole package later. It works well!
If you're moving your email address consider using a mail alias. If you move again in the future it will make the process a whole lot easier as you won't need to go to all your sites to update your email address. You only need to update the one email address with the alias provider.
I use simplemail with my own domain
I just set up my own domain for e-mail and I use aliases for signups. Why would I use an alias for my main email if I have my domain? Just trying to figure out if I should be thinking about setting that up
Yea i did this with proton and a custom domain. Alias freedom!
This is what I'm most concerned about with moving away from Gmail. I have literally everything associated with my Google email address and, since almost every website uses email as credentials, it means I'll have to create new accounts for everything. If I move to a new email, I'm worried if they go belly-up or just flat out close my account then I'll lose access to everything.
I'll have to look into using an alias, that would clear up a lot of my concerns.
I currently still use Gmail, but I am looking to move away. I recently signed up for simplelogin.io and purchased a cheap domain name to use with it. I then went around changing my Gmail email address to a different email alias for each and every site I use. It's a lot of work and I found some sites you can't change the email address, they refuse to allow email aliases or you have to contact support to get them to change it. All a pain. For the majority though most are now on my own domain's email address and all point to my Gmail inbox. At least now when I do switch I have done the hard work and only need to update the email address in simplelogin. Since I use my own domain, I shouldn't lose access to the email account should I need to move it away from simplelogin.
That's not called an alias, it's called owning your own domain name so you can take it with you to any email service.
Email aliases mean something different (giving a website an address like [email protected] instead of [email protected]).
I’ve been really appreciating Fastmail. It’s paid, but I was finally able to leave Gmail behind
Same here, I love how pretty and useful Fastmail is.
Not for everyone, but self-hosting isn't so bad.
I've found it to not be worth the hassle. I think it really isn't worth it for a very select few people who are super dedicated to self hosting it.
Depends on where you're from, but I had good experiences with mailbox.org
I would recommend them too. No problems in more than 5 years.
Proton and Tutanota are the most privacy-focused ones, offering zero-access encryption. The flipside is that they are a bit more expensive and less easy to use with third party email clients.
There are a number of alternatives like mailbox.org, Posteo and Fastmail which are cheaper, and less private than the above two but arguably still better for privacy than Gmail (in that their whole business model isn't built off capturing and monetising your data).
Personally I use mailbox.org and have no complaints. I use it with third party clients like Thunderbird for desktop and FairEmail for Android so can't speak to how good their web UI is.
I also strongly recommend getting your own domain name to use with your email. It means if you ever want to switch providers in future you won't need to change your email address.
Other people have mentioned Tutanota; as a user myself I can point out a few pros and cons:
Pro:
Con:
Overall, if privacy and control over your own email is important to you then Tutanota is a great choice. Just be aware that usability can be kind of a hassle.
Mailbox.org is what I've used for a long time, before protonmail even existed. The mailbox.org servers are powered 100% by solar energy too!
Their fine print didn't fill me with total confidence, but still seems much better for privacy than most email services.
What did you see in the fine print? I just picked it because it was recommended, I never read any of that
100% solar energy? They shutdown the servers at night?
The site says 100% green but hosted in Germany. I'd be curious to know how this is possible
I would assume batteries. They generate excess solar energy during the day and store it in the batteries for night, but that's just my thought process. No idea on what they actually do.
Mailbox.org
Its cheap and a single xsolution for replacing mail, calendar, contact sync, cloud drive, task list, etc.
Yeah, pretty happy user here overall. I like the email web interface with its different tabs for "General", "Shopping", "Networks", etc., spam filter is reliable, ... It works.
The only thing that annoys me a little is that they got me with their 1€/month offer with custom domain support and now for the new tiers custom domains are only supported in the 3€/month "standard" tier.
That 5GB cloud storage is a bit stingy though on their standard plan.
When I was doing the same research a few years back Fastmail was recommended to me and I’ve been very happy with it. It was fairly easy to set up with an email address from my own domain too.
Proton mail
In no particular order: Fastmail, Proton,
Outlook,iCloud,Yahoo, Gandi (free if you buy a domain), I've heard Hey is ok, but haven't used it.Gandi is getting rid of free email with domains. Was using them for a few years. Seems they got a acquired. Dumb move since it made me transfer all my domains as a result.
Gandi's pricing is in line with what most other quality email hosting services charge. And it is a very good email service. I was also sad when they announced there were dropping the free email tier but after shopping around for an alternative service I'm forced to admit it's what the market charges for the kind of features they offer.
It's true though that the pricing doesn't work for everybody. For example if you have multiple domains but very low overall email volume it's not going to make sense to pay $60/year/mailbox. In that case a service like Migadu is probably better suite because they let multiple domains/mailboxes share the same storage/email limits for a much lower cost.
I also wish Gandi offered a lower cost tier but it's their decision what kind of email users they want to target.
That's good to know, I don't think I've had any communication about this 😕
I've tried Hey, it's nice, but you're stuck with their workflow.
I decided to reproduce their workflow inside of Fastmail. Worked well and now I adapted it for my needs. Something I couldn't have done with Hey.
Even today, I'm exploring Proton and I'm finding that some basic features offered by Fastmail are not available in Proton. The idea of encrypted emails is nice, but I'm not sacrificing some features that I use.
What features in Fastmail are you missing in Proton?
There is another important feature too that I need, but I don't know if proton supports it. Fastmail currently manage the emails from 2 of my domains. I also supply an email address from one of those domains to each member of my family. I need to be able to forward every email received to a specific address to a Gmail address. The emails must skip my mailbox completely and not look as a simple forwarded email in their Gmail.
I share my Google Calendar with my wife (also on Google). If I wanted to modify or even view her calendar, is that still possible?
This is also what I do, I think it's impossible with Proton, though you can with Fastmail. This is the feature request for proton mail: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932842-proton-calendar/suggestions/42344065-read-write-sync-with-other-calendars-office365-g
I'm currently still using Google calendar with Fastmail, I can edit in fastmail and everything is synced with Google calendar.
I'm willing to stop using Google services, but I can't ask the same from others. This is why I still use google calendar and google photos. To share with my family.
So from Fastmail you can see/modify the calendar in Google that's been shared with you?
I'd like to be able to keep the shared calendar feature that I currently use in Google with my wife. It's so handy for organising things.
Yes, you can sync the calendars from a google account, so you can see/modify all the calendars that you have on that google account. Fastmail becomes a client for google calendar. But you can also have your own personal calendars inside Fastmail, not synced with google calendar.
Sad to hear that about Hey: that was how I felt about Basecamp. It's a shame they are repeating the same mistakes.
I'm halfway between proton and fastmail, mostly because I like and trust protonvpn. It's tough to choose. For pure email, I'd pick fastmail.
It's not a bad service, their workflow is restrictive, but I think it is a good workflow though. Their goal is to make their user change the way they approach emails.
It's ambitious, but I won't blame them. It showed me a way to manage emails that I didn't know before though and I adapted it for my needs.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned PurelyMail. Its technically in beta, but I've been using it without issue since the beginning of this year (2023).
Also using PurelyMail, tt's the cheapest non-free email service I can find.
It passes email delivery tests, setup SPF, DKIM and DMARC easily without issue.
The downside is that it's basically one man handling whole this service, but I assume this service has been fully automated because the margin of profit is so low.
One-man shows can be more innovative than big company services, but at the same time the bus factor is too high
I just started using purelymail with my own domain this week and its been good so far! Very happy to de-google a bit
Yep I signed up this year and been using it with no issues. Such a good service for the low price. If it was not automated then I don't think it could be that low priced.
I've been using migadu for almost a year now for mail, tasks, calendars. Works great for me.
Nice, I was looking for one like this, that has plans based on usage and doesn't charge for every mailbox.
I use ProtonMail
They dont really support normal mail clients so no, no alternative.
I would look on privacyguides.org
posteo.de, mailbox.org and others are also good
And dont forget about cock.li !
Have been using Posteo since degoogling for a few years now, can recommend.
ProtonMail supports mail clients in the paid tier I think
Yes it supports them on Desktop using the mail bridge. But unsure about Flatpak here. And none on mobile
Tutanota or Protonmail
Check out posteo. It costs €1/month (you can pay more for extra aliases). Seems like a cool company, and you can use it with your own email apps (Thunderbird, K9, etc).
proton mail is pretty decent.
not the most private solution but it's still better
How much more private than end to end encryption do you want? Unless you mean something else by private.
cross domain e2e is quirky. also mail strange itself cannot be e2e encrypted (obviously) so while email body is probably encrypted with password or srh derived from your password (not even sure about that would require client side js in the web client), the metadata is probably still stored unencrypted.
That is the fundamental problem with email as a protocol, yes?
Zero knowledge inbox, externally audited code, a company actually caring for user privacy definitely is a win for me when the alternative is Google hoovering up your data. Is this what you meant by saying it is the next best thing?
I use fastmail so I can easily use a desktop client and create aliases with bitwarden and it's a great service the only downside is it's not as private as proton mail, but I don't consider email private or secure
I just use IMAP through my domain hosted on Dreamhost (had it for about 13 years now??) and then use K9 and Thunderbird to read it.
Don't need to deal with all the hosting my own mail server spam and ISP nightmare :)
I'm on DH too but I find their webmail solution very outdated, especially compared against Gmail. Especially searching for old mails is bad.
I am happy with Proton.
Proton mail!
proton mail (if you wanna exclusively use it pay for it), tutanota and any eco focused one. if you wanna keep using some Gmail accounts use k-9
Also is there an alternative to Google Docs?
Cryptpad is pretty nice!
Haven't used it much, but looks promising:
https://skiff.com/pages
Nice, free custom domains are unheard of
I wanted my own domain and a good integration with android but I didn't want to give my data to microsoft so I went with https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/emails/hosted-exchange/
Had no issues so far for the last 2-3 years.
It's cheaper than protonmail and you're not locked to a specific application since Exchange is well supported.
OP is looking to move away from Google. Immediately getting locked into a different, arguably more restrictive, platform isn't a solution.
Now in general:
Pros:
free(paid plan only?)Cons:
Is it free? I thought e-mail is only in the paid iCloud plans
It is free and comes with 5GB of cloud storage. For $1 a month, you get 50GB of cloud, a personal domain, Private relay (basically built in VPN), and email relay (masks your email address when signing up for a site, site never gets your actual email address, apple receive an email at the masked address and forwards to you.)
It’s free but you need a Mac or iOS device to set up a new mail account
Couldn't tell you. I assumed it was free but I haven't used an apple device in years
Basic email is free, but you need iCloud+ to get support for custom domains and more than 5GB of storage.
Very happy with runbox.com. Hosted in Sweden, reasonable price, and - unlike proton - you can use your own frigging mail client
It's pretty easy to setup your own domain if you don't mind it being someone else's server. I first used one called ZoHo, you just need a domain and a txt record to validate control as I recall and they'll do the rest for free. That was a number of years ago though so it may have changed since.
I'm using Migadu and it's been great so far. Not many bells and whistles but it's just email. Also allows you to control your own email address and not be locked into a different platform
Protonmail but i prefer Tutanota made in Germany 100 % Privacy :D
Proton is too slow with updates usw
If I recall correctly, Proton is made in Switzerland. It's not the EU, but at least it's not the US either
I know :D However, the people of Proton take on too much instead of focusing on what is necessary.
I agree.
I'm using Posteo and have absolutely no problem with it. The base price is 1€/month and for my purposes I haven't needed to buy any extra stuff (like extra space or aliases). It also allows access via mail clients by IMAP and POP, which is something I've seen many popular gmail alternatives not providing, despite being IMO a pretty important feature.
You mentioned storage space is important for you. The default size is 2.0 GB, but you can acquire more by paying +0,25€/month for every extra gigabyte up to a maximum total of 20 GB.
It should be noted however that it is a German company and therefore has to comply with German laws.
The one thing I'm not really convinced by is their approach to spam. The web interface doesn't provide any way to define rules to filter out spam except for filter exceptions, but the service already filters out spam for you and it will never reach your inbox. I would normally think that's a bad idea, but I've never received any spam nor have I noticed any mail going missing (except for my lemmy.ml registration mail which I remember I had problems with but I don't remember if it was Posteo's fault and if yes if it was their spam filter in which case it could be allowed to reach your inbox by adding it as an exception).
But you cannot have your own domain on posteo as far as i know.
Underrated comment. Posteo is awesome, cheap, and has all the tools you need for mail and calendar things. Proton may give you more, but that's a different query.
Did you know IMAP and POP are antiquated protocols, password are passed in clear over internet.
That's why people wrap those protocols with SSL. Think https vs http.
You can always pay for your own mailserver. I personally like it that people can reach me a [email protected]. Maybe it is something for you?
Do you actually host your own mail? Because everyone tells me not to do that, it's too much of a hassle and that there are mail services where I can use my own domain.
I used to host my own mail server. Getting it up and running with iredmail wasn't too difficult, but maintaining all of the different components and setting up spam filters and autodiscover and stuff like that is an absolute nightmare.
I just use proton mail. I can point my dns to them, and they do everything else for me.
Only downside is that they don't expose pop3 or imap, so you have to either use their app, or set up their bridge and host that locally.
If you just buy the office 365 service through a domain provider its as simple as a few clicks. Namecheap charges me $6 a year for my domain and $5 a month for an Office 365 mailbox with 5 users. It was a few clicks and it was set up, and I can log into the Office interface to manage the accounts. If you are running your own SMTP server from your home, yes, it can be extra steps. But that's just silly if you can afford a cloud hosted email.
But then it's all Microsoft-y...
5 users is not enough for my family, and they don't offer additional users.
I've had something like that for a decade and a half now.
In fact the basic e-mail service came free with just getting a domain name (though I pay extra to get IMAP rather that just POP3 access for my mail client plus pretty much infinite storage).
Works in any e-mail client and also has a web client.
Notice that I don't even need to have a hosting account (so it's not hosting for a website), much less a full VPS (which I would have to manage myself): all I'm paying for is the domain name and a little extra for more storage and full e-mail protocol support beyond the basic tier.
I think there have been maybe 2 or 3 outtages in the entire decade and half I've had it.
Whilst I could do my own thing and manage it, this solution is pretty much the level of complexity of using Google Mail (I have more important things to spend my time on than manage a mailserver) with infinitelly more privacy and running 100% on open protocols (so I can move it to a different provider if I want).
Protonmail and Tutanota seem like your best bets, big providers like to sort others in the spam folder tho!
Been looking at mailbox.org
This actually looks pretty good.
Skiff
For me it would be an alternative to Google drive and it's office web apps.
For drive, Proton drive has been working well for me so far, and it actually integrates better with the windows file explorer
It's not perfect by a long shot, but Nextcloud works okay. I actually host it on my home server under docker and use ddns to reach it remotely. Besides my opnsense vpn, it's the only thing I have open to the internet.
Those domains don't seem very inclusive. Why is there a
dicksinhisan.usdomain but nodicksinheran.usdomain?mailinabox gives you email, calendar, tasks, and nextcloud apps if you're willing to setup your own VPS and suffer through some setup, about $10-20/month
Get your own domain and sign up with Opalstack.
Do all or any of these options offer filtering?
I use Soho, supports custom domain, plenty of good features, it's like £12 a year and EU based / privacy focused.
migadu.com, it's a Swiss company with servers in France (great privacy laws). You can host multiple domains and unlimited mailboxes on the same account, which starts at $20/year. They limit on numbers of emails sent/received (200/20/day on the smallest account) and on total account space (5 GB smallest), not on features. You can host multiple domains, multiple mailboxes, multiple aliases, individual login per mailbox, TLS connections, IMAP/SMTP/POP/webmail and all the features you can think of.
I'm using a combination of Postfix and Cyrus IMAPd.
Granted, probably not what OP was asking for, but privacy wise, this is almost certainly more water tight than any of the other options.
Same, Postfix but still using Dovecot for the IMAP server. Works just fine still though.
Please would you elaborate or point me in the direction of further information? This looks interesting.
Honestly, that was a bit of a wise crack. What I am doing with those two things (plus a number of other that are required these days, notably for DKIM) is running my own mail server.
Fair warning: Doing that costs money, time and effort, and messing it up can lead to... interesting results. (You usually don't want "interesting" for something as fundamental as your email.)
If you are still interested, join us in [email protected]. (Still figuring out how to properly link to a community on lemmy. In the meantime, look for it under "Communitys".)
The postfix mail server can be found here: https://www.postfix.org/
The Cyrus IMAP server can be found here: https://www.cyrusimap.org/
Additionally, I also use roundcube so I can have a web interface for email.
I self host my email and don't wish it on anyone!
Appreciate you replying, thank you.
The closest in features would be Infomaniak.
skiff.com is encrypted services with docs and drive too
I signed up for MailRoute lifetime* account when Google threatened to pull the grandfathered free workspace account.
It’s fine, I email using Spark everywhere anyway. Spam filter could be better. Other than that, everything is back to normal.
I have been using Hey for two years now and I like it a lot. Less about privacy and more about, “I don’t want all this junk mail and advertising”
I use my own domain on iCloud for Domains.
Zoho is a good alternative.
Been using tutanota for a while. Never had a single problem with it
One important thing to take note of is: "Once your personal database has seen more than 200 spam and 200 non-spam emails, we automatically start using it to filter your incoming mail." This means, before you have received 200 spam emails (or marked them as such), the filter is going to perform significantly worse.
Personally, initially it was pretty bad compared to Gmail. However, it significantly improved over time. One thing that helps are masked emails (fantastic) - an email you can create, or is even created automatically for you, and then enter at dubious websites. If you get spam, you can simply block the whole email or fine tune it.
You didn't specify what email provider you're talking about lol
He is probably talking about Fastmail since his other comments here are about Fastmail.
Ah thanks, I scrolled for a bit and didn't see another post from them.
Anything? Carrier pigeon?
I'm a big fan, but Thunderbird is an email app, not an email provider.
Why would you degoogle by exchanging Google with another Google wanna be?
There's only one solution, self hosted email or you might as well use gmail
Run your own email server.
Outlook
Why is this being downvoted so much? There's literally no other big time email provider right now that doesn't require you to insert your phone number or extra email address in the first week, and it supports almost everything gmail does.