It’s me again with another question for recommendation 🙈 This time I am searching for a new Email-Provider:
Currently I am using mailbox.org (privacy-friendly provider based in Germany). Since my subscription is comming to an end there, I tought about switching to proton mail-plus. What I like about them is, that they have an easy way of creating alias-emails and also support the option to use your own domain.
But maybe you gals and guys have another great provider which offers good features for a good price.
Also: I dont need Cloud-Storage or anything like that, so just mail is fine.
Thx in regards :)
Just a reminder: with Proton you can’t use IMAP for your email client, you either need their mail client (mobile) or bridge app (desktop).
I only know 2 good providers: Proton and Tuta.
Somehow I always end up hating Proton. I was using TOR Browser to create an account and they wouldn’t let me. I had to give either another email or my phone number, and I’m not willing to do either. I even tried creating a throwaway with mailbox.org (works using TOR) and sending the confirmation email there but it never arrived, so I gave up on Proton.
I also tried Tuta and they wouldn’t let me create an account at all using TOR. So eventually I’m sticking with mailbox.org
Another thumbs up for tuta.
I have proton for many years since I started de-googling. Very happy with it.
Check out Posteo!
Hey, I outlined some tools in my list here! TL;DR is Proton Mail + addy.io is as good as it gets, with Tuta and SimpleLogin as close contenders. Good luck!
i already bookmarked the list, great work btw. I will look into the options you wrote.
Fair warning though, using a service like addy.io with randomly generated emails can go bad if they ever shutdown, you’ll be left with tons of accounts on email addresses that no longer exist.
It’s better than using the same email for everything, which still runs the same risk. I try to minimize the services I use that require an email for this very reason. I will note, self hosting + addy.io provides much more control with the same benefits and drawbacks.
Oh for sure, the better alternative is your own domain with either catch-all or self hosting something like addy.io, then you don’t have any risk of losing those email addresses (assuming you don’t let your domain expire).
Proton and its services have been pretty good. Some things to know about proton mail:
- Search is only for titles, as content is encrypted
- You can do search in the body in your browser. It downloads your email into the browser and searchers locally. It takes a while to do this and build up indexes. I haven’t had too much issue searching for things though.
- Since they don’t read your email, no automatic calendar events if there isn’t a .ics
The VPN had been great
The storage isn’t enough for me to be able to move off of my main cloud provider. There also isn’t a way to pin a file on Android for it - and the 500gGB of space is less than I use
The Pass app is handy and it’s easy to make aliases, though it often doesn’t know to fill in, doesn’t do it, or something, and I need to open the app to copy paste. Pretty trivial though.
I’m sticking with them. I don’t really have a reason to leave. The aliases are really nice, the catch is that it’s not easy to have them go to a sub email address that I use - it has to go to your primary email. Not a huge deal though.
I quite like Fastmail. It’s a bit expensive but the service is very reliable and they have a well established reputation. You can create masked emails using their domain or your own from the web interface.
removed by mod
Can anyone here comment on countermail.com ?
I don’t think the email alias thing comes with Mail Plus, it’s part of Proton Pass. You either need to get Unlimited which includes all of their products or pair mail plus with the paid version of Pass. There’s a chance I’m wrong because I have Unlimited and haven’t really explored it, but look into it before you commit.
You get 10 aliases on mail+
I use posteo.de which costs 1€/month. It is simple, but works fine.
they have an easy way of creating alias-emails
With mailbox.org and other normal mail providers you should just be able to set a catch-all address, then you don’t have to create aliases at all, just type “whatever-you-want@mydomain.com”
If an email provider charges you more to create ‘aliases’ run far away and pick something else.
I wouldn’t switch to Proton personally, they require that you use their own apps or use an IMAP bridge which doesn’t work on Android/iOS. Their ecosystem feels very restrictive.
I don’t see the point of an encrypted email provider like Proton, since 99% of the emails we all receive aren’t encrypted anyways, and sending encrypted emails only easily works to other proton mail users.
oh ok, I have not tried that yet. I have only set up one address which I use yo send and receive from.
about the encryption: I thought the point with e2ee encryption on proton is mainly, that the mails are stored encrypted one their servers so they can not read them or hand them out to anyone.
Basically all email is E2EE already since SSL/TLS is usually used for transport, even gmail and similar. But encrypted at rest in theory would help with stopping people from reading emails off the server.
You also have to trust that Proton truly doesn’t have your keys to decrypt, but I imagine they do since you just login with a username/password combo and that’s enough to decrypt the emails.
Although I don’t think it matters that much, my email is basically receiving notifications from services I use and occasional emails with a friend about planning a trip or something like that, nothing that particularly needs to be super private, just using a mail provider that isn’t actively scraping my data for ads (aka; gmail) is enough for me.
For private communications I would use something more suited to that, like any of the reasonable E2EE chat apps.
that’s why I love great communities like this one here. you aks one think, maybe totally overthinking and read an answer like this, which helps you realize the overthinking :)
thanks for that. what you say makes sence. I really NEED to make a threat-model to find out, what is worth keeping private and what isn’t worth the trouble.
Thank you :)
