I’m in the process of getting rid of as much Google-related stuff as I can. Yesterday I already started with moving everything I had stored in Drive (backups and other stuff) to my Nextcloud and the like. Now I want to change my main email, the one I’m going to use for, my accounts here in the fediverse and so on. So I’m looking for alternatives.
At the moment, apart from Gmail, I also have an Outlook (from when it was hotmail), a Proton account (though in view of their CEO’s recent statements I may not keep it) and a new one on Disroot.
Which of the aforementioned services works best for a normie not well versed in cybersecurity like me?
Do you know of any alternatives I’m not aware of (I’ve heard of Tuta, but nothing else)?
Mailbox.org works for me.
Happy Fastmail user here. Has a lot of extra features.
Tuta is fine, but very basic.
The stuff with Proton… It depends on what you need. Just an alternative to degoogle your life, it’ll work for now, but they may slide into a more pro Broligarchy stance in years to come. For some people, they’re still a little too invasive for what they want.
Email is inherently insecure, so its best to lock down a few and just fluidly transition around as you need.
I just moved away from Proton to Posteo for mail and calendar and Addy.io for email aliases.
I’m in the process of switching all my stuff to Migadu, you need your own domain though
Who here doesn’t have at least one unused domain?
Care to hand down one? I only have free domains, like stuff that ends with cr.hf or whatever
Domains are pretty inexpensive. I’ve used Namecheap but shop around.
Idk, just thought it was worth mentioning cause it’s not like Proton or Tuta where they have yourname@proton.me or whatever
Oh I was just making a light-hearted joke about the demographic here, it’s definitely still good info to include.
Ah gotcha!
I know you don’t need the validation, but I have 6-7 domains that don’t have email on them at the moment.
migadu seems very cool, especially with that pricing, but i’m kinda concerned about the mail limits.
Edit: Seems like they’re soft limits, looks like i might be moving to migadu
Btw if you’re a student, shoot them an email and you can get a nice discount!
i am, Thank you so much for telling me!
You’re welcome!
I would probably stick with Proton for the time… Gmail isn’t private, Outlook I see as being about the same as Gmail… just blue… and then Disroot from this Reddit post suggests it is not encrypted at rest.
Isn’t Proton a little… fascist?
Still 10 times less fascist than Google.
Andy Yen is also Pro-Ukraine, Pro- Hong Kong protesters, anti Russia censorship.
(And I think he donated money to Ukraine during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine if I recall correctly)
Andy Yen said stupid things, but he isn’t American to know the fact that just because Democrats suck, doesn’t mean that Republicans are any better. Its not like Andy Yen went full “Elon” mode and seig heiled, Andy Yen is a right-wing Libertarian that have no idea what he’s talking about.
Andy Yen is a right-wing Libertarian that have no idea what he’s talking about.
That’s enough for me to leave. Add on to the fact that Proton has been severely mismanaged since its inception. He’d rather prioritize crypto wallets and shoving AI into email than getting basic shit working.
I just want to swipe left and right to go back and forth between emails in my inbox ):
Less than Google is, for now. But still bad enough for me to be switching to Tuta
I’m really happy with Posteo. It costs like 1€/month.
I am using Tuta and am very happy with it. I like the feature where you can send encrypted Mails to anyone and they’re unlocked via a password (i dont know if others have it). Important for me at least is, that they’re based in germany.
I’ve been tempted by Tuta, it seems nice but I’m torn over IMAP access
Yeah it sucks but at least they have a good Linux AppImage (sadly no BSD). Their Android client is also fine and is on F-Droid.
Honestly, I was going to say Tuta, but seeing how proton changed, I would now add the option of self hosting.
I am unsure how difficult or easy it is, but it’s becoming a very viable option now.
Fair warning: it’s likely that your ISP will block attempts at self-hosting a mail server at home.
Any reasons why?
They don’t want their network blocks reputation lowered because some idiot is sending spam mail or has an open relay. Apparently some will allow it on request.
Personally my mail server is on a Hetzner VPS.
All the reasons. It’s a well known problem that it’s super hard to host email.
What happened to proton?
@Potatisen @Fake4000 Their CEO being pro-Trump
There’s been controversy over a founder’s public backing of the US Republican party.
The CEO supports fascist policy in the name of business
I’ve been using mailbox.org for a while, and I’m happy with it. It costs 1€ per month at it’s lowest. They have also been developing an open source video conferencing thing (included in the 1€), which from my experience is much better than jitsi.
I’m planning on moving to mailbox.org eventually. I was going to keep using an outlook.com until my 365 ran out but they are currently shoving copilot buttons all over the UI. I’ve been wanting to use my own domain anyway.
No lol
Isn’t this the same Purism company that scammed people using the “pre-order” shenaigan with the Librem 5 “Privacy Smartphone”?
Louis Rossman’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s
Edit: Yeah this is the same Purism scam company, scroll down to the bottom, click the website, it redirects to the webpage where you buy the Librem 5. Lol this company is a scam company.
Okay. I thought they were good.
I’m also considering alternatives to Proton myself. I’ve seen the privacy-oriented communities give a bunch of options. Search “Privacy” and you’ll see them listed. Tuta probably isn’t bad as a paid account but the free app left a lot to be desired the last time I checked (no message search or sorting like Proton).
I use Fastmail with ten custom domains.
I was going to switch to proton but im glad I never out in the effort.
I’ve thought about doing this myself but my GMail account is so ingrained in everything I don’t think I’d be able to untangle the mess.
Are there any big issues you see coming up with doing this, long standing accounts not letting you change email, etc?
Do you plan on keeping the old account around for a period to catch any services you might have forgotten about?
Be interesting to see a follow-up once you’re done to see what kind of pain it causes.
The process will not be abrupt but gradual. I will stay with an email service that seems to be the most functional for me and I will change one by one first the accounts and services I use the most and then the ones I use the least. When my old email is unlinked to most things in my life, I’ll leave it abandoned for about half a year or so, to adapt, and then I’ll delete it definitively (if it’s possible without anything exploding or Google sending a Drone to kill me lol).
When I switched away from gmail, I found it to overall be pretty straightforward. Whenever I would log into a service, I update the email. Any service I didn’t log into clearly doesn’t matter enough to me. My gmail is now a spam account for old shit I don’t care about.
