Recommendation for Email-Provider

2 years ago by andylicious1337 to c/privacy

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 :)

shortwavesurfer 50 points 2 years ago

Personally i use proton with my own domain

path: 0 12372349, hotness: undefined, score: 50, children: 4

vu2tum 14 points 2 years ago

same here. Proton with own domain!

path: 0 12372349 12373041, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 3

SandbagTiara2816 13 points 2 years ago

I use Proton and really like it, but I don’t know how to go about using my own domain (though I am interested in it). How difficult is it for someone without webdev and self hosting experience to get set up?

path: 0 12372349 12373041 12374145, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 2

CatsGoMOW 13 points 2 years ago

You can start here: https://proton.me/support/custom-domain

path: 0 12372349 12373041 12374145 12374409, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 0

vu2tum 2 points 2 years ago

Step 1. Get your own domain. I bought from porkbun. This was a difficult choice for me, having heard /read cases of domain hijacking by unethical domain sellers. Porkbun had decent reviews. Step2. Follow instructions on protonmail custom domains. Wait for all the greyed out tags to turn green. I was impatient and my domain was marked as spam by Spamhaus. Had to open ticket with them to get off their list step3: enjoy!

additional steps. I moved my dns provider to cloudflare if you wish to go that route.

path: 0 12372349 12373041 12374145 12392833, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

GolfNovemberUniform 40 points 2 years ago

I only know 2 good providers: Proton and Tuta.

path: 0 12372323, hotness: undefined, score: 40, children: 2

chappedafloat 1 point 2 years ago

do they allow you to create anonymous accounts by paying with monero? And connected via TOR browser?

path: 0 12372323 12394283, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1

GreyCat 1 point 2 years ago

I think tuta does

path: 0 12372323 12394283 12474225, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

gaael 26 points 2 years ago

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).

path: 0 12375153, hotness: undefined, score: 26, children: 5

Dark_Arc 5 points 2 years ago

While technically true, bridge is ultimately an IMAP server you run yourself ... and they do have good reasons for this design.

path: 0 12375153 12385817, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 4

andylicious1337 3 points 2 years ago

do you know theit reason?

path: 0 12375153 12385817 12388127, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 3

hanke 7 points 2 years ago

Imap and end to end encryption are not possible at the same time.

Bridge exposes an IMAP interface but encrypts everything as Proton would, had you used the web client.

It solves a technical limitation.

path: 0 12375153 12385817 12388127 12388308, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 2

andylicious1337 1 point 2 years ago

oh so only when using their client I have the e2ee for the emails on their server? kind of makes sence but def. a point to take into consideration.

path: 0 12375153 12385817 12388127 12388308 12389211, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1

shaserlark 19 points 2 years ago

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

path: 0 12372800, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 3

EherNicht 10 points 2 years ago

This also provides you with more freedom as in freedom as you aren’t forced to use their Clients/Apps.

path: 0 12372800 12374281, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 2

shaserlark 6 points 2 years ago

Yeah I think it’s cool that you can even take control of your private keys. Although I’m thinking it also adds another point of failure / exposure if not done correctly.

path: 0 12372800 12374281 12374867, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

yonder 6 points 2 years ago

Yeah. One of the major reasons I never plan to use Proton or Tutanota is that none of my email apps will work and I will rely on whatever interface they provide.

path: 0 12372800 12374281 12380893, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

rhys 16 points 2 years ago

path: 0 12372736, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 5

Thetimefarm 8 points 2 years ago

Has any more evidence ever been produced to show Tuta is a honeypot? The guy who made the original claim is in jail for 14 years for passing on secrets while he was director of RCMP intelligence.

path: 0 12372736 12377589, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0

sabreW4K3 4 points 2 years ago

+1 for Migadu

path: 0 12372736 12372838, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

Reddish 3 points 2 years ago

path: 0 12372736 12377847, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

akilou 1 point 2 years ago

Why did Proton adding a Bitcoin wallet cause you to look elsewhere? If it's a product you're not interested in, just don't use it. Otherwise you're stuck using providers that offer exactly what you want, no more and no less, which seems like such a narrow needle to thread, you'll never find something or can't stick with it for long.

path: 0 12372736 12380900, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

chappedafloat 0 points 2 years ago

I dont think it matters if an email service is a honeypot because if you want E2EE communication then use Signal, not email. And if you are sending emails to other email providers then there's probably not E2EE and it's unecessary to be a honeypot because the metadata can be collected anyway very easily. Almost all data passes through Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Cloudflare.

path: 0 12372736 12394471, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 0

boerbiet 15 points 2 years ago

I have both Proton Unlimited and Mailbox. I prefer keeping my Mailbox account for mail, calendar and contacts. With Proton, I'd have to use their apps or some bridge, whereas Mailbox can be used with any app. I also have multiple domains connected with Mailbox and use plenty of aliases, so I don't really see why Proton would be better in that regard.

I don't have any suggestions to add, but as someone who subscribes to both, I was simply wondering what Mailbox lacks compared to Proton in your opinion.

path: 0 12373782, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 2

Dark_Arc 1 point 2 years ago

path: 0 12373782 12385836, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

andylicious1337 0 points 2 years ago

well the easy if use for the temp-emails is better on proton I'd say. and keeping files in Switzetland is better then saving them in Germany (i think).

path: 0 12373782 12374695, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 0

Quill7513 11 points 2 years ago

Proton, Tuta, Mailbox.org, Posteo

All are equal in terms of their overall quality of service, just different in what advantages they offer (except for Mailbox.org and Posteo. They're just offering standards compliant email servers without any bullshit and let you roll your own encryption)

path: 0 12372665, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 0

ExtremeDullard 10 points 2 years ago

Runbox, a privacy-focused email provider out of Norway. Our family has been using it for many years with zero issues. The prices are very decent.

path: 0 12373482, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 3

TrenchcoatFullofBats 10 points 2 years ago

Another vote for Runbox. Been using them for almost 5 years now with no issues. They are also an employee owned co-op if that is of interest.

path: 0 12373482 12377631, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

chappedafloat 3 points 2 years ago

Can I open an account with TOR browser and pay with monero without having to give any info like a secondary email or phone number?

path: 0 12373482 12394550, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

andylicious1337 1 point 2 years ago

I looked inyo runbox and it looks like a really good option. what concerns me is, that it is hosted in Norway and that Norway is part of the "Fourteen Eyes alliance". Would you still recommend it?

path: 0 12373482 12388144, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

OhVenus_Baby 8 points 2 years ago

Check out Posteo!

path: 0 12374600, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 1

chappedafloat 2 points 2 years ago

They are very cheap, only $1 for 10 aliases and then then $0.1/month for any additional aliases. But can't pay with monero.

path: 0 12374600 12394580, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

jet 7 points 2 years ago

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/

path: 0 12372644, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 2

NaibofTabr 7 points 2 years ago

Hmm... how does one anonymously pay an internet service provider with cash? Mail it in an unmarked envelope, with just your account name? Roll up to the front door and hand it to the receptionist?

path: 0 12372644 12372787, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1

jet 6 points 2 years ago

yes. mail

or crypto like monero

or prepaid credit cards

or voucher resellers, etc

path: 0 12372644 12372787 12372806, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

MangoPenguin 7 points 2 years ago

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.

path: 0 12390717, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 3

andylicious1337 1 point 2 years ago

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.

path: 0 12390717 12390860, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 2

MangoPenguin 1 point 2 years ago

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.

path: 0 12390717 12390860 12390953, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 1

andylicious1337 1 point 2 years ago

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 :)

path: 0 12390717 12390860 12390953 12392633, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

akilou 6 points 2 years ago

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.

path: 0 12380854, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 2

Ransack3 4 points 2 years ago

You get 10 aliases on mail+

path: 0 12380854 12383350, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

Blisterexe 1 point 2 years ago

How does the bridge work? Do i have to have it open all the time?

path: 0 12380854 12395382, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

RagingHungryPanda 5 points 2 years ago

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.

path: 0 12373249, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0

Feddinat0r 5 points 2 years ago

As a user of mailbox.org myself iam just asking: What dont you like about them?

path: 0 12372417, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1

andylicious1337 3 points 2 years ago

i like to have temp-adresses but it is a little to annoying for me to extend them after 90 days 🙈 with proton this is easier since you dont need to remeber that and you can find this option pretty easy when in tge webbrowser of choice.

path: 0 12372417 12374649, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

elperronegro 4 points 2 years ago

I have proton for many years since I started de-googling. Very happy with it.

path: 0 12373018, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

menemen 4 points 2 years ago

I use posteo.de which costs 1€/month. It is simple, but works fine.

path: 0 12395875, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

eramseth 3 points 2 years ago

Another thumbs up for tuta.

path: 0 12399721, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

FeelzGoodMan420 3 points 2 years ago

Was there any controversy with Proton email? I remember hearing everyone shitting on it ywars ago. Did they do something to piss everyone off, but later fixed it?

path: 0 12389974, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0

refreeze 2 points 2 years ago

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.

path: 0 12373576, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

melroy 2 points 2 years ago

Proton Mail?

path: 0 12374104, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

Charger8232 1 point 2 years ago

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!

path: 0 12375893, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 6

MangoPenguin 2 points 2 years ago

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.

path: 0 12375893 12390762, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 2

Charger8232 2 points 2 years ago

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.

path: 0 12375893 12390762 12393243, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1

MangoPenguin 1 point 2 years ago

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).

path: 0 12375893 12390762 12393243 12393675, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

TrenchcoatFullofBats 2 points 2 years ago

Proton purchased SimpleLogin in 2022 and the creator/dev has been working there ever since. Also, you can easily create random email aliases in Vaultwarden/Bitwarden via the SimpleLogin API.

path: 0 12375893 12377730, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1

Charger8232 4 points 2 years ago

Proton purchased SimpleLogin in 2022 and the creator/dev has been working there ever since.

I knew this, I'm trying not to keep my eggs in one basket.

Also, you can easily create random email aliases in Vaultwarden/Bitwarden via the SimpleLogin API.

This still requires a SimpleLogin/Proton account, so there's no added benefit. Plus, this is true for Addy as well.

path: 0 12375893 12377730 12377880, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0

andylicious1337 2 points 2 years ago

i already bookmarked the list, great work btw. I will look into the options you wrote.

path: 0 12375893 12380128, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

BigDotNet 1 point 2 years ago

path: 0 12380092, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

elude 1 point 2 years ago

Can anyone here comment on countermail.com ?

path: 0 12424376, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

possiblylinux127 -5 points 2 years ago

Email isn't a private system

path: 0 12380849, hotness: undefined, score: -5, children: 0

privacy

@lemmy.ml

login for more options

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

go to feed...

privacy

@lemmy.ml

login for more options

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

go to feed...