Looking to leave GMAIL and am currently testing Proton for a $1 a month. So far it’s pretty good and the issue I have is not with Proton, but with who I’m sending messages to. If I send an email to a gmail account my information is still sitting on a Google server. So is Proton worth it? Is something like Fastmail just as good over all due to how email works? With Fastmail I can get email for my whole family for $14 a month. I won’t have the VPN, ProtonPASS and other Proton apps, but are they worth the $12 a month for one person?
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.
It’s almost like we should not expect privacy. Tuta looks interesting, but again it’s the lock in and they use their own proprietary encryption
I originally started with Tuta and I found it too frustrating to use. The UI is lacking, notifications wouldn’t come in for extended periods (as it doesn’t use play services), and frequently, when opening the application, it would tell me I’m offline and disconnected and take a considerable time before eventually refreshing itself and showing me the contents of my inbox.
I went on the hunt trialling alternatives, including Purely mail, Infomaniak and Mailbox.org, but ultimately landed on Fastmail despite it being a more costly option.
Fastmail is just slick in its offering. I’m a heavy label user and the UI and UX just works for me. The ease of creating masked emails has me using that feature more than I ever thought I would.
It can still work on an IMAP connection but gives you the usual label to folder oddities, but I’m fine with their app offerings on Android/iOS/Linux/Windows.
The downsides are its cost and being hosted in a five-eyes country.