1 yr. ago • 98%

Which e-mail service should I use?

I've been wanting to move on from gmail for a while now, thought about self hosting but I'm afraid I won't have the time or ability to keep it running well for a long period of time. Which service would you guys recommend? I'm not an avid email user, I basically just sign up to websites and send support emails once in a while.

69 comments

Proton and Tutanota are both privacy-centric providers who have been around a good amount of time. I'd say both are a good option if you don't want to self-host.

44
- I totally recommend tutanota. I use the free.
  
  5
  
  Can I ask how you deal with it? Free tutanota lacks even the most basic features i.e. offline mode/search. I switched to proton after a month, it was infuriating
  
  5
- you can also have your own domain name in protonmail.
  
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  Same with Totanota
  
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I really enjoy https://mailbox.org, their custom software can be… esoteric at times, but the company and privacy commitments are top notch, and it has PGP built throughout natively, including an option to automatically PGP encrypt all plaintext emails you receive. I joined it originally as a cheaper alternative to Protonmail but these days I really prefer it.

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- Also, you can give it out email aliases for work or to other people without giving away that you're actually a conspiracy nut and privacy enjoyer. Much better when it's @mailbox rather than @tutanota or @protonmail
  
  5
  
  Or you can also not care what other people think. I think proton.me sounds pretty cool. I'm a physicist too so it kinda makes sense. Tutanota allows quite a few short domains; tuta.io sounds a bit funny but it's short enough to not be strange.
  
  When I am forced to give my email for electronic receipts in shops though...it's a full on {shop_name}@handle.anonaddy.me. No issues or weird looks so far.
  
  5
  
  Yep @mailbox.org sounds a bit more professional.
  
  3
- I tried it but the design just wasn't mine. I switched to protonmail then and it's a great value for the money. Vpn, password manager, files, mail, calender(, contacts)
  
  2
Check out Posteo.

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Proton Mail

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- Proton just keeps getting better, it seems like they're trying to create a suite to compete with Microsoft.
  
  Email, cloud storage, VPN, calendar and recently password manager.
  
  I do wish their VPN client for Linux was a priority sooner (they're working on it now). Also, I can't get email notifications on my degoogled phone because it uses Firebase for push notifications.
  
  Other than that, I love Proton. I pay for Proton Unlimited, I'm happy to support their growth for a great product range.
  
  5
- Could I ask how you find Proton's search capabilities versus Gmail?
  
  3
  
  I use their mail bridge to my PC, and then whatever client you want. I use Evolution.
  
  3
  
  I honestly don't use the search function. Our work emails are through gmail so that's what I primarily use, my personal email doesn't really have too much going on there so I don't really need to do any advanced searching, filters, etc
  
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Proton has a great free tier that may work well for you. I've used them for a while now and it's been great. They have what is probably the most feature-complete private email service out there (unless I'm forgetting something). The main nitpick I have with them is how little they focus on Linux, but that applies more for their other services than email.

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I'm a proton unlimited subscriber and it comes with proton vpn and simplelogin premium on top of the 500GB email inbox. I'm very satisfied with it. Signing up for lots of things with email aliases from simplelogin is very convenient and useful for cleaning your inbox of spam

16
- Same here but I’m using Firefox Relay instead of simple login. Will check that one out though.
  
  2
  
  I've made the switch from relay to proton pass aliases. It's great but with relay you can block spam which is not sth that you'll get with proton pass
  
  2
Proton, Tutonota, or Disroot

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- Proton. Free tier is fine. Consider using your own domain, cost a few dollars extra.
  
  2
  
  Yes, 4,99€ per month when one pays by month.
  
  1
- Disroot appears to be the most prominent non-profit email provider out there.
  
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I'm a Protonmail user (on a paid plan) and like it. The bridge application works decently well on Linux with my desktop mail client. Their 24 month billing plan makes it $3.5/month.

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- And, you can pay in BTC.
  
  1
fastmail

13
I'm surprised no one's posted about Skiff.

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- Permanently Deleted
  
  5
  
  Well, you know, e-mail gives you complete privacy only in special cases. There is a reddit's comments thread about this. Non-gmail e-mail is only needed to avoid monitoring by the mail service provider.
  
  TL;DR If you need complete privacy of communication, use Matrix-based software with your own server located in a neutral country.
  
  1
- After reading comments from their CEO on the protonmail subreddit I'm surprised anyone would use it in the first place. Also it's only E2EE with other skiff emails. They don't use PGP so their email encryption doesn't interoperate with other providers.
  
  4
  
  I don't use it as my default provider. Obviously, for some messaging, I use Proton. But if you need a FOSS provider, that will be used for registration in some services and password recovery, this is a very good option! They don't use this information for commercial purposes, that's already better than Gmail or Outlook.
  
  1
- Skiff uses discord, so.. idk what I think of that, they also lack support for pgp and are in the us afaik
  
  3
- +1 on Skiff. E2EE intra- and inbound. Great service, greater support. Free custom domains setup (& catchall aliasing!!!). Comes with a Drive, Pages, and Calendar suite.
  
  2
- Got excited and then immediately sad while reading they were involved in crypto.
  
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- Do they provide SMTP? So that I can use it in a Wordpress instance?
  
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  They don't.
  
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  No SMTP or IMAP as it's an E2EE service and unlike Proton they don't (yet anyway) have a "bridge" service. You get to use your own domain, a handful of aliases, and a generous amount of storage all on the free plan with higher limits on the paid plans.
  
  Anyone looking for standard mail protocol support and gobs of storage for free/cheap and who are cool with a very non-sexy 90s web UI, would do well to check out the European provider mail.ee . They've been reliable for me over the past year or so though I'm not exactly a high-volume customer.
  
  2
Unless you're a seasoned sysadmin, hosting your own mail server is going to be more trouble that it's worth. It's a lot of work, and when that was a common thing (companies having their own mail servers) usually they had dedicated admin teams (when they bothered hiring more than one admin, that is) to run it. It's a lot of work.

I migrated my domain over to Protonmail a couple of years back, and it's the best money I've spent in a long time.

5
I use proton and absolutely love it!

5
I use Proton with a custom domain. No need to manage another server at home, I get to have a nice professional email for personal use and I can spin up burner addresses on demand.

5
I use Migadu but you need your own domain for that and also it is paid.

4
- I also switched to Migadu recently, because Mailbox.org removed support for own domains from their cheapest package. Good experience (so far) with both.
  
  4
Not sure how many people know this but there is an i2p mail service too that can work with clearnet and inside i2p. The cleanet is @i2pmail.org and the i2p mail is @mail.i2p .

I have not tried it out in years but just wanted to make others aware in case it fits your use case.

4
I've been using Fastmail for almost a decade now, and extremely satisfied by the service, privacy, features and price.

If you're interested in signing up for it, I have a referral link (the above one isn't it, I'm not that shady) you can use for a 10% discount on your first year.

Good luck with the search.

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Permanently Deleted

3
- Another vote for tuta here. Very nice service and having my email @ be tuta.io is very satisfying
  
  2
- Skiff doesn't work with IMAP, so Outlook, Thunderbird, K-9-Mail and other Clients won't work
  
  1
  
  Neither does Tutanota, I have (cheapest) paid plan and their client is shit.
  
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  Permanently Deleted
  
  2
If you want access to some underlying knobs and buttons, but without running your own email server, then Migadu might be interesting.

2
I can recommend StartMail. It's from the same company that develops StartPage

2
I switched to disroot and am so far super happy with it. especially because it comes with a lot of nice features like file transfer and cloud storage. its also free.

2
- I'm considering moving to disroot as well.
  
  its also free.
  
  That it is, but please consider donating as it's also non-profit :)
  
  2
Been using purelymail.com, they’re pretty cheap and trustworthy imo

2
I recommend Proton Mail if you just want a simple, no fuss email service. It's free with some paid options, but the paid options are super unecessary and pretty much useless if you just use email to sign up and send support emails. Proton Mail also blocks trackers and cleans links in your emails.

2
Been using purelymail.com, they’re pretty cheap and trustworthy imo

2
Have a look at Autistici which includes free alias addresses.

2
Privacy Guides, a site I help maintain, recently updated their email recommendations. Hope this helps!

1
If you want your own domain name (i.e. yourname@yourbusiness.com) you can buy it from namecheap or godaddy. Then you can set it up for free on Zohomail. Its what I did for my small business

1
I absolutely would recommend purelymail.com as well. I do self-host but this is quite a big undertaking, and even then you can occasionally get deliverability problems. For business use I would definitely use purelymail.

1
Runbox is pretty good, webmail isn't amazing but just use Thunderbird and FairEmail with IMAP

1
is Apple iCloud Mail good to use?

-2
- Answering a question with a question 😂
  
  3
- As an email service, sure: it does pretty much all you would want. But from a privacy perspective there are better options.
  
  1
  
  hmm, a shame that this website is not listing anything on the icloud mail in regards to privacy. would be nice if it would show what problems are with it in terms of privacy
  
  1
I have been using ProtonMail for a long time now and have been completely satisfied with their service.

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