Proton is seeming sketchier lately. What alternatives do y’all have in your back pocket? Especially for email, but really any part of the suite.
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you guys have created a new bigtech company
After looking into it quite a bit myself, the ones that seem most promising are Mailbox, Posteo, Tuta and Fastmail. I’ve tried all of them except for Mailbox and they’re all pretty solid options.
Each have their selling points, so I would recommend taking a quick look at all of them before deciding. Posteo for example is really cheap unless you need loads of extra aliases and storage, but does not support custom domains. Tuta does not support third party clients. Fastmail is kinda expensive, but gives you more storage than the others and some extra features. Mailbox seems really similar to Posteo to me in a lot of ways, but has more features in their more expensive plans.
Tuta does support Thunderbird as client.
Ehh… It has a plugin that lets you run their web client from within Thunderbird. To me that doesn’t really count, but maybe it does for you and all power to you if so.
Edit: Typo
I’m thinking of how to leave proton ecosystem.
And luckily this time I’m not using as much features as I was with Google.
For the password vault, I will try this : https://www.aliasvault.com/
Mail and Drive : https://www.mailo.com/ 1,5€/month with 20 Go of storage.
I was thinking to get a domain name and use it with mailo.
For the mail alias, maybe this one. It’s free and unlimited : https://duckduckgo.com/email
For the VPN, I’m still weighing if I will pay a subscription.
And for the rest, I already have something : Photo > Immich selfhosted Calendar/Contact > radicale selfhosted Authenticator > Aegis
With all the shady VPN providers out there, and considering they have access to all your online traffic, I think it’s a service worth paying for.
True, do you have a suggestion ?
For android with split tunneling.
I use migadu. It’s the closest you can come to running your own mail server without rubbing your own mail server. You must bring your own domains and you can create as many different mailboxes as you want.
Check out purelymail. Similar to Migadu, but cheaper.
Seconding mailbox. It’s a nice no bullshit provider so far.
E2E encryption is a bit of a distraction on email. You’re not emailing people on the same provider most of the time, and if you actually need privacy just use a purpose built communication system. With that in mind, it just comes down to something that is in a jurisdiction that you’re ok with, and has values you care about.
While you’re at it I recommend getting a custom domain if you haven’t. It’s not much extra work, and will make it easier to switch in the future.
Custom domain 100%. And use a catch all so you can use any address on it, and give a different address to every service/place.
That should work with most providers, but I made Port87 to make that super easy to manage.
The best thing about doing email that way is no matter how great a provider is now they can always turn shitty, and like you said, this setup makes it super easy to switch.
I tried the different address for every service thing and found it way too much hassle. I think at the very least having only one you tell the actual humans in your life is important.
It normally is a lot of hassle. I tried to make it very easy with Port87.
I mostly mean the human side of it. Even without something like that the alias part was fine, it was not remembering which one I used when asked in person. Or family members being unable to remember my email because the answer wasn’t the same one time.
I understand why the idea is appealing, I’m just putting it out there for anyone else reading that the human element is a cost I hadn’t considered when I started. Personally I don’t have enough of a spam problem to warrant committing to it.
Migrated to Tutamail a year back when Proton announced their attention to gargle MAGA balls. No complaints.
Biggest complaint is email encryption doesn’t work for shit for non tuta people. They kinda fucked everyone by not supporting pgp
I honestly haven’t sent a single message to someone using pgp though, I rarely send emails at all. If I’m not mistaken, pgp can be used by any email carrier right? You’re just sending text and you decrypt it using a different program.
The decryption needs to happen client side, so that doesn’t work with these browser based email providers, unless they add support for it.
Also, proton has a public facing endpoint where you can enter the email address of any of their clients, and it will give you their public pgp key. Literally every proton account has one, even if the owner doesn’t know it. That allows me to send encrypted emails to every proton user encrypted, and it “just works”
With other email providers, I first have to ask the user for them to send me their public key. And >90% of the time, they don’t know wtf I’m talking about.
That’s why proton is the best (unfortunately). We need an alternative that “just works” like this.
If you use proton, you’re probably sending and receiving emails encrypted with pgp, and you don’t realize it. That’s the beauty. It happens automatically
I was looking at tuta as a proton replacement. Can you expand on what you mean? Does this mean the receiver can’t read the email or that they can but it won’t be encrypted?
In short, they can but it won’t be encrypted.
Whereas if every tuta account had a pgp key and they had a keyserver so anyone could download a given tuta account’s pgp public key, then anyone with pgp (eg anyone at proton) could send you an encrypted email, and it would “just work”.
I’m testing Infomaniak.
Swiss tech company that seems to be privacy conscious.
using a custom domain name for email is a paid option, other wise it looks fine.
Crap!! 👀😬
A privacy conscious company doesn’t ask for copy of your citizen card ID, to recover your password! They don’t ask it for signup so why they do it on password recovery? For me is just blackmail.
I’ve send them a fake one to recover my data. How would they validated it anyway? LolBeen there and leave without looking back. Remember this when considering using Infomaniak!
Looked good until they advertise their Video Conferencing as secure, and then the fine print at the end says end-to-end encrypted calls is off by default.
That’s not like proton or mega, where it’s not possible for you to make a call that lacks end to end encryption.
Makes me loose trust in them.
I migrated from Gmail and Google Drive to Infomaniak about a year ago and have no complaints at all. I really liked Tuta as well, but they don’t have a Drive replacement yet
Ive been pretty happily using tuta for email and bitwarden for passwords.
As best I know nothing has happened to make me regret going with tuta, which is nice. It just handles my email
What are the spam filters like?
Honeslty I haven’t used them, unless they’re there and working as intended. I never really get miscellaneous spam, except from people I gave my email to, and I just unsubscribe from those
Does it have a cloud service?
Can you elaborate on what you mean?
Proton did a package thing. Multiple emails, fake emails fed in, VPN, and cloud. Out of Switzerland instead of the US. What else does that?
Yeah, tutanota isn’t that. Personally that works better for me but I can understand feeling like nothing is a drop in replacement
I’m not here to be like an ambassador for tutanota or anything, its just what I use and I’m fairly happy with it 🤷🏻♂️
Not a single service, but ive been looking at replacing proton and tuta mail + Addy.io (email aliasing) + airvpn is cheaper than the proton package, so that’d what I’ll probably move to.
I already self host bitwarden, but both bitwarden and keepass are excellent password managers
Fuck tuta until the add pgp support. Until then, they’re not a replacement for proton.
Why is pgp so important? To be honest I dont really use it for the encryption, I just dont want my data being collected and sold. But thats just my use-case
I created Port87. It’s awesome for keeping your email organized, and it’s been really good at preventing spam. Recently, one of my labels started getting spammed, so I got to use the block feature for the first time. :) The weird thing is it was an old label I didn’t use anymore.
I’ve created aliases and then somehow received spam on them years after I’d stopped using them. No idea how these spam losers pass around email addresses, but I’m happy people like you are building tools to thwart their BS.
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Your website frustrates copy and paste. That’s kinda lame, dude.
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Labels sounds like plus-addressing with extra steps.
Lol, labels are plus addressing with fewer steps.
Port87 uses these labeled addresses to deliver your email into the correct label when it arrives.
Using labeled addresses has many advantages over traditional email:
- Email is organized on delivery.
- Labels can have individual settings, like notifications and mark-as-read.
- Labels can be blocked if that address leaks online.
- Phishing attempts are very obvious when they arrive in the wrong label.
Unlike other email services that support subaddressing (also known as plus addressing when the delimiter is “+”), Port87 automatically chooses the right from address when you send a message from a label. Port87 is built around subaddressing, so it is not treated as an afterthought like it is with other services.
- https://port87.help/#a-new-kind-of-email
At least, fewer steps you do to get the same result. If you think of it as extra steps that the software does automatically, then sure. But yes, Rick and Morty is great. :)
I don’t understand your first comment. Are you trying to copy something from the site and it’s not letting you? I don’t have any sort of copy blocker on it.
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I’ve used fastmail since I de-googled during lockdown.
I’ll second this. Here’s my setup:
- E-mail - Fastmail
- Contacts - Fastmail
- Calendar - Selfhosted Radicale w/ custom notifications
- Storage - Home server with sftp access
- Document editing - Libreoffice
- VPN - Mullvad (general), OpenVPN (local network access)
- Mobile - GrapheneOS
- Browser - Firefox vanilla w/ uBlock Origin
My contacts and calendar are accessed via CalDav, with all calendars showing/editable on Fastmail.
Nice, slick, and Google-free.
Just a head up on mullvad in case you are unaware, the cofounder donated a shitload of money to the far right political party in sweden. I dropped them for airvpn and havent looked back.
Very similar to my setup.
I use Fastmail’s calendar and it can sync with my work schedule.
Still on Android. Afraid to brick my only phone with low funds.
Desktop browser is LibreWolf w/ Ublock, Bye Rupert to block any sites owned by Rupert Murdock, and Privacy Badger form EFF. There are several more privacy ones but I’m sure no one cares.
Mobile browser is DDG.
I am using Zoho for serious stuff that needs (mail server) redundancy and for everything else I am self-hosting Postfix + Dovecot + Roundcube.
Currently working on that too. I mainly grieve over their mail and password management services. Bitwarden would be a solid ProtonPass replacement but I‘m considering hosting Vaultwarden on my tailnet for more independence from cloud storage.
E2E encrypted mail is very annoying because no one else seems to offer a bridge like proton so I‘m considering using a classic provider with a privacy commitment and just archiving locally to keep the bulk of my mails to myself. Mailbox, Tuta and others do offer similar mail experiences though.
I’m not sure I trust bitwarden these days since they sold out to a private equity firm, (temporarily) removed forever free from their website, and I believe still changed GRIT to include innovation and trust instead of inclusion and transparency. I switched over to KeePass + syncthing
Yeah, when a company’s new owners tell you who they are, you’re best off believing them. And it doesn’t get much more… transparent than removing “transparency” from their company values.
And replacing with trust of all things
I selfhost Stalwart for incoming mail with the free SMTP2GO tier for outgoing mail. This is for my personal email that I currently don’t use for anything. I use gmail for signing up for stuff because I’ve been using it for a very long time and haven’t picked an alternative setup yet for handling signing up to stuff with a different email. I also use Zoho mail for more important things like banking. Zoho makes its money from enterprise subscriptions and I frankly trust it more than Proton to not enshittify short or long term.
I am quite happy with hetzner storage share (their support is just amazingly fast!) and I am using posteo for email for more than a decade now. Easy, no bullshit, great spam filters… well worth 1€ a month… prices havent changed either since I started… bonus for hetzner… you can just leave… nextcloud has multiple good hoster and if the service sucks… just go to the best available…
Check out Infomaniak, they seem to make good on Proton’s promises.
Looked good until they advertise their Video Conferencing as secure, and then the fine print at the end says end-to-end encrypted calls us off by default.
That’s not like proton or mega, where it’s not possible for you to make a call that lacks end to end encryption.
Makes me loose trust in them.
