Started to move off Google (not strictly self-hosted)

60

Thank u for using a transparent gif. It’s refreshing and delicious.

42
- Wait till you try transparent pngs. It'll be like it should have always been.
  
  13

If you have Proton Premium point your domain to SimpleLogin and use it. Its included with Proton Premium. Its helped me root out 2 places so far that have sold my email address or were compromised and failed to disclosure.

26

i also use proton, but i just use a custom address with every unique vendor/account. i know almost immediately who sold my address. it also prevents hacked systems from matching addresses in other systems.

10
- For anyone who wants to do this easily: afaik (ymmv) most mail systems will accept aliases to your account if you put a + after your email username. for example, if you're foo@example.com, then foo+bar@example.com would still route to your inbox but you'd be able to see that it was sent to a different address than your own. i do this for any email i put into a website I don't trust (which is most) and if you use the company name it's a really easy way to see who sold your data
  
  4
- Yes that's what SimpleLogin does and its part of the Proton umbrella. You can use your own custom domain or a SimpleLogin domain to create email addresses. It also enables you to send from the custom addresses so the end user never learns your true email address. SimpleLogin also has mobile apps so you can create addresses very easily.
  
  3
Serious question, why SimpleLogin vs Proton aliases?

3
- You cannot turn off the proton aliases, one of my aliases (those with +) got compromised and I’m still getting phishing emails on that one. You can create a rule for that mail but you cannot completely disable it. There is also Proton Pass which does the same as SimpleLogin and also stores Passwords. You should check it out as well.
  
  9
- if youre running a full domain, you dont even need to manually create alias' unless you need to reply/send as.
  
  i've found i rarely need to do that, so you can literally just use an email address literally off the top of your head, have it all forwarded to a catch all and youre done. none of this extra service stuff. again, unless you require 'send as/aliasing'.
  
  5
I've caught a couple but they weren't subtle about it at all. I got an email from Norton antivirus that referenced the seller directly. No shame.

0

My experience with Proton has been really great so far. Constant steady improvements to their services and UI/UX, I wish I had switched to them sooner.

13

I moved off to zoho

Much cheaper than proton and offers much more.

They're not doing like proton and close basic stuff like IMAP and SMTP as a way to force you on the official apps

I especially love the feature where you can bounce emails based on domains, keywords or TLDs. My spam folder is finally empty. IMHO bounce back spam is much better, as the spammers get a response that the address is invalid and hopefully stop wasting their limited computing resources on that address.

Zoho is not open source, but proton is a "fake" open source that is mostly used for marketing: they opened only the UI, which communicates with a proprietary protocol to a proprietary server - useless. They also reject or ignore any pull request on GitHub.

5

They’re not doing like proton and close basic stuff like IMAP and SMTP as a way to force you on the official apps

The reason Proton cannot do IMAP/SMTP is that they cannot read your emails which is required for both. That's a feature, not a bug.

PM works with any app as long as the app implements their custom protocol for which there are at least two FOSS implementations as a reference.

proton is a “fake” open source that is mostly used for marketing: they opened only the UI, which communicates with a proprietary protocol to a proprietary server - useless

While I'd also prefer their back-end to be OSS, it's not nearly as critical as the clients.
As a user, it doesn't make a difference. I'm paying for an opaque service either way.

All the interesting stuff (E2EE, zero access storage) happen in the clients anyways. The BE is fairly uninteresting; it's a mail server + zero-access encryption + Proton account handling. If you really wanted to build a mail service similar to Proton, you could build that yourself and probably would have to anyways.

7
- i think instead the opposite. The backend is the real interesting part, and the only way that we can be sure that "they cannot read the emails" (they arrive in clear, saved with reversible encryption and they have a key for it - if you use their services to commit crimes they will collaborate with the law enforcement agencies like everyone else)
  
  imap/smtp can be toggled with a warning, if that's really their concern. As of now i have the feeling that's instead blocked to keep users inside (no IMAP = no easy migration to somewhere else) or to limit usage (no SMTP = no sending mass email)
  
  1
What Zoho plan are you using? I can't quite tell what the difference between the free and lite tiers is except for IMAP/POP support.

I moved over to Proton earlier this year and have had a good experience so far, but I'm not married to it or anything.

4
- i started with the mail basic (10 euro yearly for 10gb) but then because i switched from "secondary email that forwards to gmail" to "primary email that imports from gmail", i had to move to the more expensive plan
  
  2
- Proton has been gradually closing down access to proprietary apps only. After they're done you won't be able to take your email anywhere else.
  
  If you have your own domain you'll be able to host it elsewhere but you would leave behind email, calendar, aliases etc. and restarting from scratch.
  
  At that point "encrypted" starts smelling more like "hostage". It's generally a bad idea to be tied down to a specific email provider.
  
  You could wake up tomorrow to find out Proton has been acquired and the new owners can charge anything yet want for continued service.
  
  1
Zoho and PM have two entirely different reasons for existence. If you don't want E2EE (assuming the other sender is on PM) then by all means, use Zoho. And IMAP isn't E2EE compatible in the slightest, what they're charging for is the decryption bridge that makes it work with an IMAP client. They had to come up with that, it's not just a switch you flip at PMs end that makes IMAP work.

2

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
DNS	Domain Name Service/System
IMAP	Internet Message Access Protocol for email
SMTP	Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.

[Thread #396 for this sub, first seen 2nd Jan 2024, 10:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

3

The one thing i use google is youtube and gmail. Idk how to move away from that…

2

For YouTube, it's probably not possible to not use its content, but you can try alternate front ends like Piped (and its wonderful Android client, LibreTube, if you're on Android.)

For Gmail, not sure if this works for you but I set the vacation feature to reply to every email I receive notifying them of my new email. I switched to Vivaldi Webmail (Proton doesn't let you use 3rd party clients w/o a subscription plan btw, I'd switched to Vivaldi first so not a major thing for me) but Skiff (paid) looks good, Kagi Search is planning an email service, Tutanota has an email service, and I guess you could self host. While you transition, use a client that lets you have a unified inbox (K9 works on Android) and just have both logged in.

3
- The only thing i have done so far is use imap into thunderbird…. All this is valuable. I want to use a self hosted solution but at the moment its all a surface level thought. Thanks a lot for this comment!!
  
  1
YouTube:

LibreTube

GrayJay

Gmail:

Proton

EZPZ what else ya got?
-1
- Mailbox.org > proton. Fite me
  
  4
- Proton is in the process of removing their PC bridge in favor of a custom app. After they're done you won't be able to migrate your email away from their service anymore.
  
  Which is ironic, when people are trying to flee from Google. Out of the fire and into the frying pan...
  
  -1

Not a good idea to use your own domain. Use Proton Pass with domains you share with all the other users.

2

I'm curious to know why, can you explain or point to an article?

3
- I could but it's pretty simple. You're the owner of that domain. Any accounts/communications with that domain can be traced back to you.
  
  3
Why do you think it's not a good idea to use your own domain? I've been doing it for years with Tutanota, it's great.

2
- I already answered this question
  
  0
What makes you think Proton is trustworthy?

1
- I don't trust anyone. You don't have to trust them. That's the point. Everything is open source and encrypted.
  
  But aside from that they've been audited several times and they have a good reputation in the community.
  
  4

I recommend transferring the Domain from your current registrar to Njalla, they allow you to buy domains anonymously

-11

Domain naming authorities require identification for the registration of domains. You cannot purchase domains anonymously. You can pay Njalla and they own the domain, and they'll tell you that you can control it, but you have no rights to it in any kind of dispute.

38
- It’s a risk that I’m willing to take, personally.
  
  But tbf I do make sure that I own my primary mail domain.
  
  Website hosting and such thing? Njal.la all the way. Never had an issue with them.
  
  Edit: oof, clearly some irrational hate for njal.la here. I state my personal preference and get downvoted… is this reddit now?!
  
  -3
All my are redacted and I still full own. in the .nz space there has to be a real contact person, and I'm ok with that as I'm a big boy that has been online for over 1/4 of a century now.

1