A while ago, when one of the Proton CEOs made some questionable statements, I terminated my Proton subscription. I liked Proton, having all the services I need in one place was nice and I wasn’t sure whether I’d actually leave and had a year already paid left.
I thought about at least leaving my mail there, but 4-5€ / month just for mail isn’t worth it in my opinion. And I’m very pissed that mail-forwarding and IMAP are premium features, something I probably should’ve found out way earlier. They want to lock me in, which is a dealbreaker for me.
So with that in mind, does someone know a fitting alternative? I’d of course still prefer a privacy-focused service and would be fine paying <= 2€.
€: Bonuspoints if there are no “special discounts” (discounts for commiting to a longer subscription are fine, what i mean is special deals for new customers or black friday deals, stuff like that)
€€: Going to give mailbox a shot, thanks everyone!
The trick to avoid vendor lock in on email providers is to use ones that let you use a custom domain. This way when you move providers all you have to do is update the DNS records for that domain andall mail will start getting delivered to the new provider pretty much straight away.
Awesome approach, I’ll keep that in mind.
I do that, but still keep a proton mailbox for stuff like bittorrent trackers, a whois on my domains doesn’t give out my name, but well…
Still, I recently moved (mostly) off of gmail, and I “only” had to update the aliases to the new address… all 80-something of them
Why did I never think about that? I’m gonna do it ASAP
2,5€ for Mail + some storagespace seems like a great deal, thanks for the suggestion.
Can highly recommend mailbox.org, I’m very happy with their offering, and having a built in PGP Manager makes encryption very easy. As someone else has suggested, I use my own domain with then, and the whole process is really quick and easy. This also has the nice side effect of making your email address a lot shorter than it usually would be
I also use mailbox.org with my own domain. It’s nice that my family can also use the domain with the cheaper light accounts.
If you want encryption, they also support GPG encryption of incoming emails. As a bonus over Proton, you’ll be in full control of the key.
I am usimg mailbox but I am considering migrating my main email to OVH.
The email address with custom domain is 0.36€ per months and since I already have other email there it would make things easier to have everything at the same spot.
I use Tuta but unfortunately I cannot recommend it for a few reasons:
- They use a proprietary encryption algorithm so you can only a) encrypt emails going to other Tuta accounts and b) use their clients (no Thunderbird etc.)
- They’re glacially slow with feature developments. Case in point email import has been on their list since forever and they only came out with it last year, but it’s still in beta and exclusive to highest subscription tier.
- I don’t find their client very user-friendly.
Good to know, that’s indeed off-putting. Actually made a tuta acc a while back, haven’t used it yet.
Just going to put this here because idgaf about downvotes; i didn’t decide to leave proton despite those questionable statements. I’m reading all the alternatives in the comments and might check some i haven’t heard about out, but i am very likely to stay with Proton at least in the near future. For me they offer a good product. What i did do to make switching easier is not use their own mail forwarding or simplelogin but i use addy.io instead, can totally recommend it.
Well, I get where you’re coming from. I meant questionable quite literal, there surely is still room to give Proton the benefit of the doubt.
But I switched VPN providers already and 5€ for Mail only just doesn’t seem fair to me.
I can totally imagine, i’m currently on unlimited because that seemed a bargain compared to mail plus yet i barely use any of the other services. No judgement from me to anyone not staying at Proton though, the whole reason to look to European alternatives is because of Big Tech and US policies, so a CEO positioning himself too close to those is a big no no. But for now i continue to give them the benefit of the doubt, i’ll have to see what the future brings though.
i like posteo!
Always use a custom domain for mail, it’s cheap and most providers (that are good support it).
For those wondering, the Proton CEO (who is a bit limited in power compared to most CEO’s) agreed with a statement from Trump, doubled down on that and was generally stupid about it.
There are tons of others things to leave Proton, like you need to use their client or selfhost their bridge. There is a lack of proper Linux support (their VPN does support Wiregard and Openvpn though). They add features that nobody asked for like Lumoai and the Crypto wallet, but it is included in your subscription so that is good.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Even the worst people on the planet can have some points that people can agree with even if they are “from the political opposite”. Last time I checked the only way to get everybody to agree on political decisions is to make compromises. Not that you can do that with aseholes like Trump, but that’s a different story.
VPN does support Wiregard
A little addition, be precise if you go that route, the default config excludes IPv6 traffic.
Resource? As far as I know he only said that republicans stood for the little guys. He said this with regards to the previous rep. term before all hell broke in the new one. I bet you there is currently no person in proton who would be pro-republican. The thing is people just like drama too much and social media just echoes the worst in them. Maybe we should move on, I don’t know why people need to constantly return to old dramas. Pick some nice topic for once. Have you maybe praised someone recently? Do that. And if you feel too rigtheous, maybe remember how many times in the past you had a political opinion that didnt age well. I bet you won’t find any person like that.
The tweet in kwestion: https://x.com/andyyen/status/1864436449942110660
I don’'t believe in just two party politics. This whole debacle needs to move on. yeah, but I can’t stand people deciding not to go with somebody because they agreed with one statement of a politcal figure (and doubled down).
Yeah, so nothing new, as I said he praised one thing from the past and it was before all hell broke… We all make mistakes, I think we should just move on and not stir old dramas.
Yeah, that tweet aged well 🤦♂️
Yeah Andy is an idiot, even worse the post where he (they) doubled down on it
FWIW, LumoAI is the only non-self-hosted AI I know of that’s E2EE, so if you were going to be using an LLM anyway it’s certainly the most private and secure option if you don’t want your data scraped.
Infomaniak KSuite+ (email + cloud + a few other stuff): works great under Linux, unlike Proton Drive.
€: Bonuspoints if there are no “special discounts”.
Why would that be?
I mean, Infomaniak KSuite is not expensive (something like 2€/month) but I happily applied the neat discount I was offered by them a year ago. I just renewed for a year and they seem to be willing to keep the discount running, why would I not want to use it?
Might be a rather personal schtick. I should note that I mean stuff like the black friday deals at proton, if it gets cheaper if you commit to a longer subscription, that’s ok with me. Mullvad’s pricing philosphy e.g. is the super appealing to me.
If there are special discounts, it means the normal prize is higher than the product’s value. You practically get punished if you don’t take the deal or start when it’s not available. And it’s all adding to the game of advertising and baiting new customers. Special offers for new customers are another example of that.
Not trying to be preachy, just personal preferences.
I also hatte this special offers, especially when it is not obvious, what the real price will be later. If I have to make my way half through buying, just to see the final price I feel cheated.
Not trying to be preachy, just personal preferences.
I can understand that, no worries ;)
I never was a fan of Proton “discounts” to be honest. I much prefer IK’s reasonable price to begin with (and much clearer pricing, too). Their discount seems to have been a special event thingy I happened to be part of (but don’t quote me on that)
They have a free tiers that should let you easily test their services and see how the answer your expectations. There are a few things that irks me, but the positives are worth it imho.
I took a look, and it looks great, signing up right now. Their free alternative looks adequate for me to begin with. Thanks for the tip!
You’re welcome.
Indeed, their free plan is very usable.
I use Infomaniak for only domain reg, then use Runbox for email. I only access through Betterbird so I don’t really care that their web UI looks hilariously dated. Hell some of you may even prefer that lol. Been around since 2000 based out of Norway.
Infomaniak.
Free (make their money elsewhere renting web hosting and servers) Based in Switzerland, carbon neutral servers. Offer plenty of other cloud based services.
Mail: mailbox.org or systemli (if you know a user who can invite you)
Calendar: EteSync with DavX5 somehow, needs to be hosted somewhere, I dont know a provider
Notes: no idea, I personally use Syncthing with local notes, but the lack of symlinking on android makes this subpar to “sharing notes with others” on cloud connected notes
Drive: Nextcloud, NFS share, syncthing
VPN: AirVPN, Mullvad, maybe others like incognet
Mailbox also provides calendar and Contacts(?). There is also video conferencing and some storage for some more coins.
Yes but that is not E2EE so you need to fully trust them, other than their “encrypted mailbox” where you still need to trust them, but in theory even if the cops want access to the data, they only get the persistent data which is always encrypted (not the email headers and no past emails)
They should provide Etesync, lets write them
As one other already mentioned, i would think about getting your own domain and using it with e.g. mailbox.org. That way you become less dependent on the provider, if you wanted to switch in the future.
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Do you recommend a specific TLD to use for emails? I have an xyz domain I’m not using but I fear it will get marked as spam. I’d want a domain that is cheap still.
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Regarding Proton I’d also make use of Proton Bridge to have a local copy of your mails just in case something goes wrong.
How about fastmail? I’m on a demo account with them right now – with the exception of some relay restrictions that are especially annoying, it seems a good option, but I’m not familiar at all with them.
i love fastmail. i’m with them myself!
but you should be sceptical of them as far as privacy goes. they’re australian, and australia had a law introduced in 2018 called the AAA act which means that security agencies can compel technology companies (like fastmail) to implement circumvention mechanisms in their products… employees targeted by such orders may not even be able to tell their employers, let alone customers
oh also, no judicial oversight for any of that
I’ve been testing Forwardemail.net as my use case also involves being able to run mailing lists as well as personal and transactional email. I plan to switch over completely once they have set up servers in the EU, something they announced late last year and are actively working toward.
mailbox.org is it for me.
Standard E-Mailing - Use whichever client you want, or the web client, which is also pretty good. They also have custom domain support if you’re aiming for that. I use it like that too.
Calendar: Fantastic, create multiple calendars, subscribe to .ics via web or import .ics
Contacts: It’s just there, and syncs nicely with Android Apps like DavX5 and ICSx5
Drive: 10GB for Mails, 5 GB for Files. Webdav Support. Storage can be upgraded and downgraded on demand as you wish.
They even provide an integrated video conferencing system, so you can schedule calls, have them on demand, or have them created with your meetings, like f.e. Google Calendar or Microsoft Calendar does.Also their office suite is really good. So you can edit, in browser, DOCX, XLSX, ODF, etc, just like you can in Google Drive. I solely edit my Spreadsheets with their online solution, it’s great for 95% of the tasks. (I’m a developer + spreadsheet nerd)
For todos and notes I however go with superlist.com. Subscribed to their Premium version, and once you get the hang of it, it’s really powerful and great.
Not sure what else Proton offers, but Mail, Drive, Calendar, Contacts, Conferencing, light office work and Notes + Todos I can reliably manage with mailbox.org and superlist.com.
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