For me, the main reason for the switch was to get my own domain. It’s surprisingly easy. This way, if I start to dislike the service handling my emails, I can easily switch it without changing my email address. Leaving gmail and getting somewhat more privacy is nice, but getting control was the main reason.

I’m happy with Fastmail, no idea about Proton, but the Proton CEO’s antics are a bit too tech-bro for me.

You dont know how the sender or recipient handles your mail, but handling your own with encryption is still a good practice.

An email provider can have an entire database of all your emails (e.g. Google with Gmail), which more valuable than individual people or companies having access to only a few related ones.

There’s also PGP support with some providers, so you could set-up encrypted emailing with people if that’s important to you.

Either way, getting away from the big providers is a good move, I’d at least want my inbox encrypted though, like Proton or others do.

Fully encrypted email should have been made standard a long time ago.

Proton is arguably the best option if you’re trying not to rely on Google, and they are slowly building a suite of apps with the goal of directly competing with Google Drive, Calendar, Sheets, etc.

If I send an email to a gmail account my information is still sitting on a Google server. So is Proton worth it?

Due to the nature of email, assume privacy is impossible and just use whatever is easiest (yea, Gmail). Like you mentioned, the message will be in their servers anyways. That is, unless you explicitly only email other Proton users.

Yeah, email isn’t private, but for me it’s usually that I don’t like my host reading all of my mail to build an profile on me and selling that data. Individual emails in isolation aren’t a big deal, but seeing every email and what company or agency sent it is as problematic as the content even if you encrypt the mail content itself. Emails that I sends I always assume are not private, but that’s a separate issue, IMHO. There’s a lot of private information like what protected classes I am part of, political leanings, places I shop, etc., that can be gathered simply from who sends mail to you and who you send mail to. This is why I self host for most of my email.

That being said I still use gmail as I need a backup option and I use it for things where I don’t want the junk sender to know my domain and spam all of my accounts.

But Proton is really not much more private than Google in several scenarios given their CEO’s stance on several sensitive subjects and willingness to give data on protected classes, journalists, etc., to hostile governments, as an example. They do say they don’t sell your data to ad companies, at least. I don’t know Fastmail at all. And self-hosting is not something I’d recommend if you don’t want to put a lot of time and effort into it. Lots of issues come up like blacklisted VPS IP addresses in addition to the setup itself.

I did it that last month, not because I have any expectations of privacy (I wish we could move away from emails entirely), but because I don’t want to be so much at the mercy of what google decides, especially with their recent push on id verification left and right, and ties to this dystopian government. I’m gradually moving away from other of their products too.

If I was browsing options today, I’d also look into calendar and contact management / importing. Proton makes it easy to import existing calendars and they are kept in sync. They’re still improving the calendar features though, so maybe you’ll miss a thing or two there. Contacts are also easy to import, but there’s no feature to keep them in sync with what google has, if you need a transition period. There is a merging/deduplication feature though.

And if you’re using google workspaces, I couldn’t figure out how to send an email from proton using the work domain, so that’s something I still need to use the gmail web client or e.g. thunderbird.

i have switched to another provider and tell people how good an experience it has been. a few have switched, so my emails with them are not on Google.

also gmail is slow as hell

For me, yeah, it sucks knowing if you send an email to a gmail user then your message is in google still. But, I take comfort in knowing I’m not signing into or using google myself. Just be aware your emails aren’t protected at all. I agree with the other commenter - use whatever is convenient. Emails are never a very private communication form, either way. I also use proton but have been a bit conflicted since they continue pushing AI integration and I’m not pleased knowing my money is helping fund that for them.

You could use pgp or s/mime.

You could email a link to a discussion that’s hosted elsewhere.

There is also a tutanota mail, worth to consider as well.