I was wondering if anyone uses a different email providers to the usual main ones?
I currently have most of my mail on Outlook but I want to move to something else, mostly as I just want to move away from Microsoft gmail. I have done research but I wanted to know if anyone here in particular had any opinions, doesn’t matter if it’s paid or free.
Just as an example you can self-hosted but I know there are services such as Tutanota, Protonmail, and various others. And some you can make multiple email addresses etc.
I use Tuta and Proton for important stuff, and Mailo for spam. So, Mailo is essentially my real gmail/outlook/yahoo replacement.
There have been reports in the past of Mailo suddenly banning users, though. So I’d advise anyone to just use it for spam. I would assume that the banned users are a result of breaking Mailo’s rules, but I can’t confirm that.
Just an FYI, both of the services you mentioned have had scandals in the past.
I use Protonmail for filtering spam (with ProtonPass and mail aliases), but nothing important, I do not really consider it “secure” as its marketing suggests. That’s because some of the points made during the allegations where 100% factual (e.g: ProtonVPN mobile app was 100% digitally signed by Tesonet). (Reddit Summary)
Tutanota has been reportedly mentioned in court as being a HoneyPot by Cameron Orits who has been jailed for “leaking secrets” (claim and sentencing).
It’s 100% your choice if you trust those claims to be true or not, just thought I’d mention it.
I heard about the scandal regarding these two. There were about 7 other providers I read about too (Not for scandal I should clarify, just other providers I come across) but I didn’t want to make the initial post too long but I know these two are most well known. Thanks for mentioning this though, for anyone else who reads this.
This was some of the reason why I made this post is if there are possible issues with these who then who else do other people use. But I suspect most providers have an issue of some sort.
But anyway, I imagine all email providers have something shady about them, and the only way to truly guarantee no snooping is to self-host. The issue with this is needing to have a constant internet connection or some emails will not be received.
Another issue is that some services will not accept your email address during signup. I remember this happening with Instagram in the past. They would not allow me to use proton as an email. It’s fine now, though (though I deleted my IG account little over a month ago, so it doesn’t matter anymore).
I use Protonmail. I have an account for personal stuff, an account for purchases/donations that might generate spam, and an account for banking. Fortunately, all are free. I set up social media accounts (aka superspam) with guerillamail.com temporary accounts. I deleted all the yahoo and gmail stuff - just a dumbphone here.
You should start with what your personal priorities are.
Does it need to be free?
Is privacy a priority? If so, privacy in what sense? There is a difference between all my emails are fully encrypted and I don’t want my provider aggregating and selling my data.
Do you need support for aliases?
Do you need support for multiple domains or want to host your own email domain?
I would say that self hosting email is not going to be worth it for most people. It is a pain to maintain and many ISPs block the common mail ports inbound.
Fastmail. Been with them for decades. Lots of open support for third party clients like Thunderbird. Great basic web UI with a crap load of keyboard accelerators. Aliases, family plans, etc etc. Did I mention the filter rules are better than Google’s? You can bring your own domain, or register a domain with them.
Thanks for the information.
For me free or paid doesn’t matter, but paid does give you extra stuff with some companies so it’s is why I am open to both.
For me privacy is half and half, I usually don’t consider email to be a secure or private method of communication, and I know that even while your email is encrypted if you send it to a different email address that uses a different service then any encryption may be gone so this is really just a compromise for me really as it will never be completely private.
The reason to change is I just don’t want to use Outlook or Gmail as I am not supportive of a load of stuff they do as a company, of course I’m not out there to go against everything they do (Such as using YouTube unfortunately) but if there are other options with emails I thought why not and give them a go, a bit like what I done with Linux.
Aliases and domain was potentially something I was considering, but otherwise simply just having multiple aliases is okay to make it easier to have separate emails to split types of emails up. Such as a separate one for job searching as I know some places are put off by someone with a random email alias, and another for communication with family, and another for website accounts.
In terms of self hosting it was something I was thinking off because why not but I admit there is more research I need to do with this one, but was curious anyway if anyone actually tried this before.
Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, etc. are no-nos if you care about privacy.
Protonmail also accepts crypto for payment so no need to provide them any personal info.
I have mail from multiple e-mail addresses arriving in a single FastMail mailbox. I pay for only one FastMail account. FastMail filters my incoming e-mail by target address and delivers it to separate folders.
I almost always use Thunderbird to access my FastMail account (and I have also used Evolution without problem). However, when I am not on my Linux computer, I access my mail via FastMail’s Web interface. FastMail’s Web interface is fantastic. It provides nearly all of the functionality of Thunderbird, but often more efficiently.
Yes, I know: FastMail is based in Australia, and it also has servers in the United States. Both Australia and the United States are Five Eyes countries.
If you are very concerned about your privacy, Proton might be a better option:
All [Proton] servers used in connection with the provision of the Services are wholly owned and operated by Proton or our subsidiaries. Access to our infrastructure and servers is tightly controlled: only employees of Proton have physical or other access to the servers. Data is always stored in encrypted format on our servers, which are exclusively located in Switzerland or Germany, under the protection of some of the world’s strongest privacy laws.
