Anything better?
If you really wanna get started with your own domain I highly recommend just getting https://purelymail.com/ setup for the hosting provider. It’s going to be way cheaper than just about anything and you pay for what you use. I’ve been on it for a few years and never had a problem.
mailbox.org and posteo are my recs
Really liking mailbox.org so far!
If what you want is private/secure encrypted email that the provider itself can not even read, I recommend you arcanechat.me
A couple months ago, I would have said Proton. But…
Here we are.
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.
Wants you in their slow web UIs. Requires a middleman application just to use IMAP—which requires payment. Paid plans are pretty expensive if all you need additionally is CalDAV/CardDAV many will offer for $2 or less a month instead of $5.
…& these are gripes before the right-leaning heel turn.
In bed with fascists
And not subtly like banks were back in WW2. Straight up endorsement.
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.
deleted by creator
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
I personally use Disroot along with Thunderbird 😁
This, just plain old mail.
Zoho
Surprised this isn’t mentioned more because it’s one of the only true alternatives for all the google feature-set.
My only complaint is that, unless you pay for more users, all emails towards your custom domains end up a single mailbox (your xxxxx@zoho.com) i.e., you don’t get separate mailboxes in the “lite” plan. Not a deal breaker for my use case, though.
Tutamail, they have direct access by fdroid too
Proton, but I’ve been questioning that of late :-/
i get it… its still a quality service despite that one shithead exec
But the shithead exec is supportive of fascists which means privacy is secondary to the desires of the current regime. That’s just a standard part of fascism. And if the current regime is allowing untested backdoor code to be inserted in the Treasury department and NASA and the CDC and most major social media to strip out protections for people they don’t like, climate change, etc. Just imagine what someone who actually supports them ideologically would be willing to do.
Can you explain what happened/what they said?
Well, the latest development I’ve seen is they’re deleting (censoring) comments calling out the political bias of their CEO on their post about how they’re fighting against censorship:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonVPN/comments/1ij4qn9/behind_the_scenes_of_proton_vpns_fight_against/
Here’s an evidenced account of part of what their CEO asserted:
This is what the CEO posting as u/Proton_Team stated in a response on r/ProtonMail:
Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot:
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
Source: https://archive.ph/quYyb
To call out the important bits:
- He refers to it as the “official response”
- Indicates that JD Vance is on their side just because he attended an event that other invited senators didn’t
- Rattles on about “corporate Dems” with incredible bias
- States “Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses” which is immediately refuted by every response
That was posted in ther/ProtonMail sub where the majority of the event took place: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/m7ahrlm/
However be aware that the CEO posting as u/Proton_Team kept editing his comments so I wouldn’t trust the current state of it. Plus the proton team/subreddit mods deleted a ton of discussion they didn’t like. Therefore this archive link captured the day after might show more but not all: https://web.archive.org/web/20250116060727/https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/m7ahrlm/
Some statements were made on Mastodon but these are subsequently deleted, but they’re capture by an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250115165213/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
I learned about it from an r/privacy thread but true to their reputation the mods there also went on a deletion spree and removed the entire post: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1i210jg/protonmail_supporting_the_party_that_killed/
This archive link might show more but I’ve not checked: https://web.archive.org/web/20250115193443/https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1i210jg/protonmail_supporting_the_party_that_killed/
There’s also this lemmy discussion from the day after but by that point the Proton team had fully kicked in their censorship so I don’t know how much people were aware of (apologies I don’t know how to make a generic lemmy link) https://feddit.uk/post/22741653
I hadn’t seen all that. I may have to move my services again
if you distance yourself from every company that has a dick executive, youre going to need to go off-grid. good luck.
I distance myself from companies run by people who say or explicitly support people who say that I don’t or shouldn’t exist. There are a few other things that make me distance myself from companies, but that one is a pretty hard line. (I’m gender “non-compliant” and on the Autism spectrum among other things that have been explicitly said don’t exist, shouldn’t exist, or need to be “cured”). Otherwise, I try to distance myself from any companies who explicitly collect and sell my information and other things that I find problematic, but that’s not always possible.
Keep fighting the good fight!
(I’m trying to be encouraging, but obviously finding a baseline decent mail or other tech provider shouldn’t have to be a “fight” …)
People on all social media really can’t seem to understand that the choices aren’t exclusively “everything has a perfect open source, non-profit utopia” and “fuck it, everyone is corrupt so it doesn’t matter what service you use.”
You are able to do what you can, where you can, to mitigate risks and try your best not to support fascists. Especially when there are a dozen alternatives.
Then again, maybe people are just arguing in bad faith.
CEOs != everyone
Using the official company social media to double down on what the CEO said = company policy = how company will act
I think the more punchline phrasing for it:
Fascist = wants to have control over you.
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
Thanks for the link. I was about to extend my Proton mail subscription to the full monty, but backed out when I saw the original incriminating post (which did surprise me, based on what I thought I knew about them). The writeup does offer a compelling argument for that one post having been taken a little too far in todays tribal political environment.
Yeah. I am not ready to move to Proton quite yet, but this doesn’t feel like it was intended the way many Americans are reading it. They also have posts like this (not from the an executive I think, but official) that don’t sound like getting in bed with the government: https://proton.me/blog/trump-controls-nsa-fbi
All that is to say, I am planning to give this a little longer and see what else happens, but I have not ruled out Proton yet.
Someone mentioned Tuta…
https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver
cracked it for me
What hardware is needed if you want to run this cheap and quiet? What you are using?
I use the lowest cost vps and domain name I can find. OVH black Friday deals and lcn free UK domains as a starting point and practice moving host and registrar so as not to be dependent on either. Only after you are independent of vendors is it worth taking this approach IMHO. Beware if you “forget” to renew your domain many sharks about will take it, gather your data or ransom the name.
I recommended looking up the problems with self hosting a mail server first. Just go with Tuta imo, its cheaper and easier.
Just leaving my vote for fastmail. They are wicked.
I was with fastmail for more than a decade.
They’re the best platform.
Their spam protection is so-so. Not as good as Gmail but better than some others.
Their pricing is egregiously expensive.
Their tech support is painfully slow for anything above chatGPT level.
What a glowing review
Yeah well, it wasn’t intended to be all positive.
I migrated all my stuff (small business) to mxroute because I couldn’t justify the cost for fasmtail.
Glad to see a completely honest review. All I ever see is “Fastmail best mail” without much explanation as to why.
I really like and use fastmail.
Although I have just started to try to completely de-google. Its a bit frustrating that they don’t offer an apk download. I put in a ticket today saying as much.
They seemed to understand,but basically just said that all I can do is to use the browser version.
I’m using aurora store to download their official google play version for now but it feels icky.
They are obviously now the only ones that I am having trouble with but I thought that they might be more willing to help people distance themselves from Gmail and Google, as Gmail is their obvious competition.
I use the FairEmail client
ahh aurora store is perfectly fine. I use it with an anonymous session. I think there should be sites that let you download the APK directly, but you wouldn’t get updates.
It’s probably fine to use one of these methods, just don’t forget to update. 😁
The Fastmail app itself is mostly a wrapper around the web app with integrations for notifications etc. Sans notifications it works perfectly as an installed PWA on Android. Ive been using it like that for months.
Alternatively there are lots of IMAP apps available. I was testing Thunderbird for Android recently and that works pretty well too.
Disclaimer: I work for Fastmail. But any opinions I have on here are my own.
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
By any means, do you have a Riseup invitation code?
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.
My problem is the whole change of address thing. Unfortunately google had perfect timing when they offered a decent amount of storage. It was early enough that changing email was no big deal and late enough that soon it would be. I very much don’t like this because if google like just went dark all of a sudden it would be a bad day. Yeah I know its unlikely to the xtreme but still. I know privacy people do not like this idea but I really would like the government to run an email where all citizens are guaranteed one. To me this would make it much easier to have an official one and other emails. I don’t get why folks are ok with corporations doing it and trust that they will use safeguards but don’t trust the government would. The US postal service is a good example. Laws were well made to protect mail to the point where one way of safeguarding things from police searches was to put it in a stamped envelope. Man I wish our current society and government would be doing things like that again.
If you’re willing to pay money for it, you can get your own domain for $2-$15 per year, then use it with pretty much any commercial email service. That way you can change email providers without changing your address.
This is my plan going forward. I’m going to suffer the inconvenience of changing my address, but only one more time, not every time I want to change providers.
yeah but so thats the thing. that service still is the one running your email and its likely you are going to get more issues with it being blocked just from being an little used domain. unless you run your own server and deal with the mx records and such.
It’s the server that matters, not the domain.
That’s a little confused. From what I remember, it’s the server that matters, not the domain when being blocked. If you self-host this is a problem, but not if you use your own domain on a commercial service.
The “MX records and such” are all a function of domain management. You’ll have to do this whether or not you self-host.
Some TLDs that are well known for spam get blocked. If you stick with a .com, you will usually be fine if you are using a decent mail server.
I mean at least initially with things like nightmare host (im making a joke im not sure if dreamhost is still around) you did not need to mess with the mx records if you just went with their built in. We definately had some issues with email getting marked spam or blocked but admitadely that could have been from the services source servers having to much spam coming from it.
In my experience, this is more a problem if you are fully running your own mail servers, not so much if you are using an established email service. My MX record reflects my email provider, and my outgoing mail goes through their servers. So I’m as trusted as they are, in general. Your mail provider should have instructions on how to set up DNS for verification.
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
One of the biggest benefits with Mailbox.org is that you can create lots of aliases and trash mail addresses. Killer feature for me!
They’re a little swift about locking accounts for spam suspicion. They did so to mine before I had sent a single mail and demanded I contact them through the (locked) mailbox.org mail to resolve it. Had to dispute the charge with my credit card.
My vote goes to Migadu. Slightly complicated UI, but it all works, and they don’t lock accounts before they have seen any indications of misuse.
Runbox is OK too, though they don’t support bouncing inbound mail based on recipient address, so less useful with your own domain.
Murena mail, Nextcloud mail, Tuta, Proton, aything is better as GMail, only Hotmail is worse.
So it’s not hot anymore
Never was
aything is better as GMail, only Hotmail is worse
So yahoo mail?
Someone still use that?
It exists
