Trying to de-google and looking for an alternative to Gmail.

Don’t mind if it’s a paid service if it’s robust.

170 points

Proton Mail and Tutanota are great free options.

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22 points

Tutanota has limited features and i dont like the UI. But it is okay.

Try to go for protonmail

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24 points

I just opened my protonmail account for the first time in years and it’s really nice! Lots of great UI stuff now!

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8 points
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Tutanota is a bit more privacy focused, really useful for burners, because by default it will burn the account if you don’t use it for 6 months.

As far the UI, I kinda like it. Little more old school, doesn’t have the toy look so many apps have nowadays. But to each their own.

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5 points

Protonmails approach to requiring hCaptcha for everything, even their mobile apps, really turns me off. I can’t complete them. And I need another email to get in using their weird and creepy accessibility cookie thing. Nah thanks. If I need a second email to access my email I might as well just use that second email.

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5 points

You sure you are a human?

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5 points

Who the hell downvotes a person for saying “I have a hard time with Captchas because they don’t provide accessibility options that allow entry to someone with my conditions” ?

Like, guys, Captchas being ableist is a well known thing. And they’ve only been getting worse, as they’ve been in an arms race with AI, trying to become more and more distorted, and most AI text recognition software is already better at Captchas than most dyslexic people.

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11 points

Last I checked, the encryption in Proton Mail means you have to use their app, no third party apps allowed. Is that still true?

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14 points

Yes, that’s still true. If you want to be able to use a third-party mail app, I would look at Fastmail or Mailbox.org. They don’t have free plans though.

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12 points

Phone app? Yes you have to use their own app. On a computer besides the browser version you can use Thunderbird and other applications if you download ProtonBridge.

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4 points

To clarify, this is a paid feature and not included with the free tier

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2 points

Is that GitHub issue where the bridge just starts deleting emails still open? I am pretty sure it was open for over a year.

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8 points

Yup, and it’s kind if a pain since their mobile apps aren’t great. I’ve been using them for many years, and lately have been considering jumping ship.

Email encryption isn’t something I actually care about. If I wanted to send someone a super private message, I probably wouldn’t use email anyways since it’s just clunky, and it’s unlikely the other person is using proton mail too (which means the message wouldn’t be encrypted anyways). All I really want is to not have my email provider be scanning my messages to profit from my data.

But the effort to switch to something else is making me stay…

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10 points

You don’t use encrypted emails only to communicate privately. If they are not encrypted, your e-mail provider will probably scan them, whether it is for profit or under request from the NSA. That’s what Snowden uncovered.

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7 points
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Deleted by creator
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1 point

I’ve had zero issues with the mobile app for mail.

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1 point
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3 points

I’ll be honest, when it comes to online purchases you may find that a protonmail email will require extra processing/fraud checking due to the amount of fraudsters that use it. Combine that with a vpn and it will just be a pain here and there with online purchases like additional ID verification/delayed orders etc…

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4 points

Been using protonmail for my main email for three years, never had one issue. But I’m in Europe, maybe in the US it’s different?

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2 points

I’m more talking global purchases. Just the email will probs be ok but if you purchase using that email and a vpn it raises flags.

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3 points

I am always suspicious of free. How do they make money? Have to pay for things in life, and I’ve learned that you are either the customer, or the product. If your the customer, pay up. If your the product, your data is being dished out to somebody OR ad-a-palooza. If the free option is just ads, I can live. If every time I log on I feel like I am getting a vitual colonoscopy, pass.

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14 points

Proton is freemium. You can use the basic package but you only get 500 MB drive storage. Expanding that is cheap, which is how they draw you in.

They also offer package deals, like their VPN stuff.

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7 points

The Proton free tier is pretty limited compared to Gmail, in particular for me, you’re only allowed 1 label. The basic paid tier opens up a lot more. They definitely want you to upgrade to the paid tier.

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5 points
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How do they make money?

Buy selling a subscription that comes with more perks. For example, more storage for your email, custom email domain, etc.

Pre-paying for 2 years upfront is the most cost effective.

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3 points
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Your doubts are warranted, but with Protonmail and Tutanota there is no reason be suspicious. They are basically feemium products and their goal is to respect user’s rights

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1 point

Proton Mail just has 5 gigs for the free version. Doesn’t seem like it’s enough for me to switch to it long term.

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1 point

They also expand your storage every year, so it’s not like it’s stuck there forever. For reference, I’ve been on Proton for about 3 years now (paid plan) and I have a data storage cap of 540GB and I’ve never had to buy more. Also, I all my emails so far only consume 340MB - so even on the free plan I’d still have years to go before I reached even 5GB.

(Also, I’ll admit I don’t email much.)

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72 points

Try proton mail. I love it

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14 points

Yeah, Proton are working on delivering a privacy-focused replacement for the whole google suite. Mail, drive, calendar so far, plus VPN. OP could do a lot worse. :)

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9 points

Yeah I’ll go Proton. Was going to go with Fastmail but then read that they’re an Australian company, a Five Eyes country.

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4 points

It’s quite expensive whereas you get the same product even better for 12€ a year with posteo.de

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2 points
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Posteo doesn’t allow you to use your own domain, do they? I know OP didn’t ask for that but it’s a really, really good idea to put your email addresses on a domain that you own.

Still, it would be a definite step up from Google.

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7 points

Proton imo is definitely the winner here, since Gmail itself also relies on integration with a bunch of cloud apps

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65 points

I’m using ProtonMail and paying for it.

It’s decent. The best AFAIK in terms of privacy. Supports labels etc.

The migration process takes so long, I’m split between both still and slowly moving over.

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25 points

I just forward my Gmail and use it as a legacy service while using proton as my new primary. Allows me to very aggressively spam filter in proton.

https://proton.me/support/automatic-forwarding-gmail

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3 points

That’s what I do too, and any thing that I sign up for or use often I’ve swapped straight to proton

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0 points

I’m willing to use that mindset when I’m downhill mountain biking but for email… no way. You’re crazy man.

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2 points

I kinda get you, but I’m (not oc) using forwarding as a temporary solution until I’ve slowly moved everything away from Gmail entirely. It’s also good to import all past mails over.

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1 point

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4 points

Same. I use my gmail accounts for junk mail and have been moving everything actually relevant to proton through SimpleLogin aliases.

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1 point
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Deleted by creator
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53 points

I use Proton Mail. I recommend that whatever service you decide on, get your own domain name so you can keep your email address if you move to a different provider.

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5 points

Do you have any recommendations on how to buy a domain?

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7 points

Not OP, but I used Namecheap. Porkbun is also recommended I think. Setting it up is not dead-brain simple, but Proton does a very good job on explaining it step by step I believe.

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6 points

IIRC Cloudflare is the only registrar that doesn’t mark up from wholesale prices, or something like that. Basically makes them cheaper than most other registrars. I think the point is that they can then sell you their other (related) services more easily — the services that actually make them money.

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5 points

I use Porkbun for my domain. you can get a .xyz domain for only $2 for 1 year, though after 1 year its like $8 per year.

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2 points

I’m using namesilo and it was pretty straight forward to set up. I just got it a couple days ago and no issues so far!

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2 points

That would make it easier to target you though, or do you use aliases on top of that?

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3 points

I’m not sure I know what you mean by “target you”. Can you go into more detail about that?

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4 points
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By having a common email address that you give out to each service you sign up on you make it easier for them to aggregate the data and build a more detailed profile on you, in order to avoid it you would use email aliases (dummy address that serve the purpose of only forwarding emails they receive from and to one of your real address). If you use a custom domain name you can potentially create an infinite amount of them, but you expose yourself to being tracked anyway because they would all have the domain name in common e.g. a@mydomain.me, b@mydomain.me, etc. and they would notice that it all comes from one user for service, so it’s easy to guess it is actually just one real person.
To avoid that happening, you would have to use a public aliasing service so you can blend in with the other users

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45 points

I’m using Proton Mail and I like it a lot!

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