The move came after 404 Media published an investigation into how Proton CEO Andy Yen was aggressively pushing AI across Proton despite security concerns and the culture of fear he has created.
I’m slowly trying to degoogle. Mail is a big concern for me. I have a google business account to handle a few domains. I used a small shared host before and it was crap. Every couple months they’d make some change and all my shit broke. I switched to Google because I knew it would be reliable and largely set and forget. It’s been that. I hate Google though. So if not proton, then who?
Tuta uses walled garden closed source apps. Posteo does not support custom domains unless you do something like addy.io. Mailbox.org does encryption at rest but your client needs to support pgp to use it. They all have their drawbacks.
Personally I’ve started to move from proton to mailbox.org with addy.io for custom domains and aliases. Once it’s solid I’m moving addy.io to self hosted
Posteo does not support custom Domains, because it’s unsafe and inherently complicated to use with all the security settings of a modern email system turned on
Depending what you need and want, I can highly recommend posteo.de and while they are not as polished and use standard DAV, it works absolutely flawless, they are relatively cheap, based in German and have certifications for all kinds of security.
If you want something like Google Workplace, get a Nextcloud. Still not as polished, but open and if you want to change the provider, you can just do so. I recommend a combination of Nextcloud and Posteo.
And if you need a custom domain with everything bundled together, I can recommend xaweho.de. though they are not cheap…
The important part is to not put all of your eggs in one basket. This makes it so you can migrate off of one at a time rather than your entire life at once.
It is a trade off, but it’s well worth it, since most of it requires no actual maintenance (after you migrate of course) unless you have to leave for some reason.
Email is something we simply cannot live without. They are primary sources of communication to reach you like account notifications, what accounts you’ve registered with it and vice versa.
it may not be “beautiful” by what passes as “modern design” but i think it’s great, just the way it is. it’s the modern full page “responsive” scroll til you die shit designed for small screens that suck ass.
First time I’ve seen Mailo recommended, thanks for sharing. Does it support custom domains? And have you had any issues making accounts using a Mailo address?
No issues. I only use custom domains for years to be independent and they support it. Also they have nice ways for kids accounts with moderation of what’s getting into your kid inbox.
Except of shit web design that i don’t use, all works just fine. IMAP, caldav and so on. I’m super happy.
I moved over to Tuta personally for email. And Tuta is EU-based if that matters to you. If you use other Proton features there are alternatives there as well.
For Proton Pass and Authenticator, there’s Bitwarden (and self-hosted Vaultwarden). Which supports password storage, 2FA codes, and Passkeys across basically all devices. Also supports SSH agent forwarding if you work with that a lot.
For Proton Drive, Koofr seems to be a good option for cloud storage, also EU-hosted. They also have an additional locally-encrypted Vault for files you want additional security on. Things like 2FA bypass codes you get when you set up your accounts but don’t want want hanging around in the open at all.
Gmail was actually the easiest one to separate from, if you just count the transferring email addresses. It is a pain in the ass because so many services fight like hell to hold onto your google account you sometimes have to jump through hoops to remove it–a security risk in itself.
The big sticking point for me so far is photos… there are other options, but itś all integrated into my phone in weird ways I don’t want to bother with right now.
GMail is not that easy. Because, there are places and services that use e-mail clients that are easy to be sent to and received by GMail. I’ve experienced this with ProtonMail for a while, where there’ll be services and individuals that could not reach me through my Proton e-mail and I’ve had difficulty reaching out to them.
i can’t get mail from some places to mailfence. sending is fine. no errors with the connection. no bounces. senders have looked at their logs, they’re fine. mail is sent. it is received. mailfence just loses it somewhere before it makes it to my inbox and they won’t help with anything at all. so i gave up with them.
same. i started migrating to proton. and have my own domains. but use them through prot. now with this horsecrap i gotta get a third thing going… and migrate there. :/
if you’re already invested in apple devices, icloud for email is definitely worth the look. it’s often overlooked for that; hell, a lot of apple users don’t even realize it can do email.
I’m slowly trying to degoogle. Mail is a big concern for me. I have a google business account to handle a few domains. I used a small shared host before and it was crap. Every couple months they’d make some change and all my shit broke. I switched to Google because I knew it would be reliable and largely set and forget. It’s been that. I hate Google though. So if not proton, then who?
I did a pretty deep dive for my company recently. We are very data-privacy centric. Here was my Lemmy post on it: https://lemmy.world/post/51963153
Some of the items there are mentioned here, but after the evaluation, my hunch was correct and we are likely switching to https://runbox.com/
Good service, pricing, privacy focused but not so much that you need to host your own proxy like with Proton, and runs sustainably.
I think Tuta and mailbox.org are generally recommended, but I use Posteo which has been fine
Tuta is not everyones fave right now, look at my history for details…I havent followed up on everything yet but I thought the same as you.
https://lemmy.ml/post/53619601/28192074
This seems like a pretty good breakdown.
I’m testing out tuta and infomaniak. Since I don’t care all that much about encryption, infomaniak is looking good, in my opinion.
Tuta uses walled garden closed source apps. Posteo does not support custom domains unless you do something like addy.io. Mailbox.org does encryption at rest but your client needs to support pgp to use it. They all have their drawbacks.
Personally I’ve started to move from proton to mailbox.org with addy.io for custom domains and aliases. Once it’s solid I’m moving addy.io to self hosted
Posteo does not support custom Domains, because it’s unsafe and inherently complicated to use with all the security settings of a modern email system turned on
I can recommend mailbox.org
And you can get random junk emails that expire. Great for signing up to rando websites
I mean that should be a must have for private email services
I don’t have any fancy use-cases but Posteo has been good for me too.
+1 for posteo
Just looked into posteo. Great pricing (1 euro/month?) and they’ve got encryption. And organic vegetarian lunches!
Depending what you need and want, I can highly recommend posteo.de and while they are not as polished and use standard DAV, it works absolutely flawless, they are relatively cheap, based in German and have certifications for all kinds of security.
If you want something like Google Workplace, get a Nextcloud. Still not as polished, but open and if you want to change the provider, you can just do so. I recommend a combination of Nextcloud and Posteo.
And if you need a custom domain with everything bundled together, I can recommend xaweho.de. though they are not cheap…
The important part is to not put all of your eggs in one basket. This makes it so you can migrate off of one at a time rather than your entire life at once.
Ye, I’m finding that with Google. You don’t realize how tightly locked in you are until you try to leave.
A counterpoint though, is that putting 12 eggs into different baskets means having to manage 12 baskets. It’s a trade off
It is a trade off, but it’s well worth it, since most of it requires no actual maintenance (after you migrate of course) unless you have to leave for some reason.
Try Fastmail, you will be impressed
After using Tuta for a year and not really enjoying the experience I surveyed the landscape and picked Fastmail. I adore it.
It being in a five eyes country will certainly earn it some strikes against it among the privacy crowd, however.
Email is inherently unsafe. Privacy advocates know this. But we all still need it for managing accounts and such.
Any provider just reliably “doing email” and not actively harming its users in some way is going to look pretty good to most of us.
Email is something we simply cannot live without. They are primary sources of communication to reach you like account notifications, what accounts you’ve registered with it and vice versa.
It is unfortunate, but that is indeed the case.
Which is why I said:
Mailo.com. It’s ugly as 2005 websites but it just works. You get IMAP, family accounts. It’s just email. Old and reliable french company.
it may not be “beautiful” by what passes as “modern design” but i think it’s great, just the way it is. it’s the modern full page “responsive” scroll til you die shit designed for small screens that suck ass.
First time I’ve seen Mailo recommended, thanks for sharing. Does it support custom domains? And have you had any issues making accounts using a Mailo address?
No issues. I only use custom domains for years to be independent and they support it. Also they have nice ways for kids accounts with moderation of what’s getting into your kid inbox.
Except of shit web design that i don’t use, all works just fine. IMAP, caldav and so on. I’m super happy.
Cool, thanks for the follow-up. I think I’ll give them a go based on your experience, appreciate it! :)
I moved over to Tuta personally for email. And Tuta is EU-based if that matters to you. If you use other Proton features there are alternatives there as well.
For Proton Pass and Authenticator, there’s Bitwarden (and self-hosted Vaultwarden). Which supports password storage, 2FA codes, and Passkeys across basically all devices. Also supports SSH agent forwarding if you work with that a lot.
For Proton Drive, Koofr seems to be a good option for cloud storage, also EU-hosted. They also have an additional locally-encrypted Vault for files you want additional security on. Things like 2FA bypass codes you get when you set up your accounts but don’t want want hanging around in the open at all.
Here’s Lemmy’s reply from yesterday triggered by the same concern:
https://lemmy.world/post/53735981
Gmail was actually the easiest one to separate from, if you just count the transferring email addresses. It is a pain in the ass because so many services fight like hell to hold onto your google account you sometimes have to jump through hoops to remove it–a security risk in itself.
The big sticking point for me so far is photos… there are other options, but itś all integrated into my phone in weird ways I don’t want to bother with right now.
GMail is not that easy. Because, there are places and services that use e-mail clients that are easy to be sent to and received by GMail. I’ve experienced this with ProtonMail for a while, where there’ll be services and individuals that could not reach me through my Proton e-mail and I’ve had difficulty reaching out to them.
I like Migadu. You must bring your own domain and you can add as many separate accounts as you want
I’ve been pretty happy with Purelymail.
mailfence is pretty good so far. very basic but there are nice clients for IMAP these days
i can’t get mail from some places to mailfence. sending is fine. no errors with the connection. no bounces. senders have looked at their logs, they’re fine. mail is sent. it is received. mailfence just loses it somewhere before it makes it to my inbox and they won’t help with anything at all. so i gave up with them.
same. i started migrating to proton. and have my own domains. but use them through prot. now with this horsecrap i gotta get a third thing going… and migrate there. :/
iCloud does the trick and would work on google devices
if you’re already invested in apple devices, icloud for email is definitely worth the look. it’s often overlooked for that; hell, a lot of apple users don’t even realize it can do email.