Anything better?
A couple months ago, I would have said Proton. But…
Here we are.
I switched to Proton about 6 months ago.
Wish I had waited. Ah well.
Domains are cheap, buy one and then you can jump between whatever services aren’t caught up in the outrage of the moment.
I did, but I already paid for two years (plus did a bunch of work to migrate files over). So I’ll be here for a bit.
I’m in exactly the same boat. Swapped both my Dropbox and emails over to Proton about 6 months ago and paid for 2 years, sigh
Sorry for the question but I’m a little lost here. What happened with Proton?
Supporting Republicans (probably because they’re porn bans drive VPN purchases), adding AI features and a crypto wallet while their drive still lacks basic features, and some other smaller stiff like their shitty article about Deepseak.
Ding ding! After the Proton fiasco, I got a domain and have started moving my accounts to that email, which connects to Tuta
I was looking at moving to Proton as this all went down. Those plans are on hold.
After reading through it, I am having trouble figuring out how to read his comments because I wonder if there is some different cultural references or simplification going on between the Swis exec and American readers.
It was absolutely a stupid comment and was then the response was handed badly, but I don’t know that I read it as aligning with Fascism.
This is the best writeup I can find: https://archive.ph/2025.01.29-213655/https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
What’s up with Proton?
I never trusted them 100% so I never paid for their services and didn’t really follow up with their privacy and stuff. Just used their free services from time to time.
In bed with fascists
And not subtly like banks were back in WW2. Straight up endorsement.
I’ve been using Tuta for damn near a decade, and it’s been great for me.
I just got an account and had no idea it’s that old
How about Tuta mail with a custom domain? They have unlimited custom domain addresses which is pretty nice
disroot and autistici have been providing decentralised communication services (like email) free of cost for many years. They are both run by activists and survive on donations, and they don’t spy on you or get any money from your data. Also they run freedom-respecting software, so all their code is publicly auditable.
I will always recommend Posteo. https://posteo.de/en
Besides the lack of custom domain support Posteo is cheap and great. Stellar support team.
Ahh, so it’s gotta be @posteo.de ?
If what you want is private/secure encrypted email that the provider itself can not even read, I recommend you arcanechat.me
I’m using Infomaniak Mail and am fairly happy so far. They are based in Switzerland and I get custom domain + 5 user accounts for 1.50 EUR/month. I’ve tried other providers but coming from Gmail I like that their webmail displays email conversation like Google does whereas most other providers just run rainloop or roundcube where threading support isn’t quite the same.
Their android app is open source too and can be installed from fdroid. It can be a bit sluggish sometimes though, but K9mail/Thunderbird works fine too.
tuta
As someone just barely scraping by month to month, I needed something free and Tuta was the answer. 1gb is not bad at all, and a good choice for someone starting their degoogle journey.
Protonmail
This dude compare quite a lot of email providers in term of privacy. I do not necessarily agree with all its critics but it is a useful resource:
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/email
I would recommend to buy your own domain in case you need to change again. That way, you’re not trapped by your email provider and you can change in case you’re not satisfied anymore
Are there any good free alternatives to Gmail or do all the good ones cost money?
I assume so since Gmail makes all its money selling YOU…
Posteo + Addy.io + Thunderbird
Mailbox Standard compared to ProtonMail Plus:
- Cheaper (€30/yr vs ~€50/yr; if you don’t need custom domains, €1/mo)
- More aliases (25 on mailbox, 50 on own domain. Proton has 10 TOTAL - why custom domain aliases are counted against Proton ones does not make sense to me.)
- Support for any number of custom domains AFAICT (Proton Plus supports only one)
- Trial account is not allowed to send emails, so fewer issues with services blacklisting proton.me and protonmail.com for spam (hasn’t happened to me, but I have heard of some cases)
- Can use a regular email client (security tradeoff for E2EE messages - but there already were plenty of discussions on whether E2EE has benefits, especially sending mail to other services)
If you’re using a custom domain, don’t use Mailbox.org, see below:
https://userforum-en.mailbox.org/topic/anti-spoofing-for-custom-domains-spf-dkim-dmarc#comment-1524
Thanks. I’m on my second year in my bi-year purchase and considering options. Where’s mailbox.org located and what are their privacy policies regarding government agencies requests?
They’re located in Germany and have to fulfill requests, they publish a yearly transparency report about that: https://mailbox.org/en/post/transparency-report-2024
protonmail, tuta or guerillamail. i’m using proton, it is great, even the free version
I liked proton. Until they announced their intention to gargle MAGA balls.
Have since migrated to Tutanota