I'm pretty happy with Proton.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
37 points (100.0% liked)
DeGoogle Yourself
8717 readers
5 users here now
A community for those that would like to get away from Google.
Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!
Rules
-
Be respectful even in disagreement
-
No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.
-
No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.
Related communities
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Proton! They’re based in Switzerland (I believe), which is known for its privacy laws. Proton Docs is absolute shit, but it’s their newest product, so I imagine it’ll get better eventually. Their email, storage, and VPN services are fantastic and have both free and paid options.
Edit: I’m not American, just incredibly dumb…
I don't believe Switzerland is a Nordic country, but +1 for Proton here. A lot of their newer products like Drive need a good amount of work, but Mail and VPN are working great for me.
It is as far as Americans are concerned. It's over where they sound like the swedish chef
Mailbox.org and Posteo are good as well, in addition to Proton and Tuta.
I like Posteo. Affordable (1€/month) and with focus on privacy and FOSS.
Second posteo. It's simple and supports imap, caldav, carddav.
In addition to the above, they also use green energy, if you care about that sort of thing.
Tuta and Proton Mail.
Yeah, somehow not even considering others at this point. I did before. Currently using Tuta.
They both seem to be at the top of the privacy game, Proton for storage as well.
I use Proton mail. I like the suite of products (mail, calendar and storage), and it's been reliable. They also seem to be secure.
You can use your own domain with them which is pretty standard but a good idea if you want long term email independence/remoce vendor lockin.
I also like that Proton mail are going down a non-profit route and have open sourced their apps. I'm not suggesting they're perfect, but these moves and the scale of their set up makes me feel happier to use them.
Tuta.
as far as i am aware protonmail is pretty popular. I am hosting my own mail infrastructure but am considering to switch in the long run
I'm hearing about proton but they feel very scummy. Is proton(vpn and mail) actually privacy centered, doesn't log and doesn't sell data?
While I tought about self hosting an email, but doesn't that come with lots of problems, like you can't garantee five nines of uptime, or someone emails you cp, or websites not accepting custom domains? I also heard it's easly hackable.
Proton were forced by swiss court order to log the IP address of a climate activist, which led to his arrest, but as far as we know they never actually breached his encrypted emails.
Tuta had a similar incident, but due to being based in Germany, had to go farther, and allowed access to any emails that weren't encrypted for the court ordered individual.
That only matters if you believe you will be a person of interest for your government, and the lesson is that no email service is perfectly safe for things that require that level of protection.
For most of us, any of the private emails will be fine, and are certainly better than Google.
Yeah, they were able (and thus legally required) to hand over the user's recovery email address, which is what got them caught. You don't need to enter a recovery email address, and you can of course choose to use an equally-secure service for recovery.
One big technical issue to note is that Proton doesn't use end-to-end encryption for email headers, which includes recipients and subject lines, among other things. So that's potentially exposed to law enforcement as well. I believe Tuta does encrypt headers.
Yeah, I'm not "that guy". I'd just like to get my money's worth. Thanks for the highlights.
I’ve been using proton for a couple years now. I trust and like the services they provide. Plus they regularly perform third party audits and make the results public. https://protonvpn.com/blog/no-logs-audit
May I ask what triggers thr scummy feeling for you?
It looks way to much like big corp. And money corrupts. Why do I get a calendar, a vaul, a vpn, and a mail service for free. I know it's limited services, but for free? I feel like I must be the product.
I get when it's a non-profit, or living off donations, but Proton is either of those
money corrupts
This is exactly the reason that Proton became a non-profit:
https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation
Swiss foundations and their board of trustees are legally obligated to act in accordance with the purpose for which they were established, which, in this case, is to defend Proton’s original mission. As the largest voting shareholder of Proton, no change of control can occur without the consent of the foundation, allowing it to block hostile takeovers of Proton, thereby ensuring permanent adherence to the mission.
Proton is still a for-profit company. However, there is now the non-profit Proton Foundation that is the largest shareholder of the Proton company (not necessarily majority shareholder).
Plus, non-profits are not guaranteed to be positive. See OpenAI for example.
Edit: Grammar
I don't think the free accounts cost them a whole lot. You only get 1GB of mail space, and the free versions have minimal features (e.g. you can only create one email filter). They make their money on paid accounts, which seems legit to me.
That's fair. Though the free service is more of an infinite trial tbh
To be fair, the Proton Foundation is a non-profit and is the majority shareholder of Proton.
The foundation is the largest shareholder, but Proton has not specified whether it controls a majority.
I use Tuta and Zoho.
I like Proton or Tuta. Both have interesting free plan as well as pay plans for upgrade.
I use a proton paid account with my own domain so that if I ever decide to leave proton I can just switch my domain to the new email provider and all my email addresses stay the same
Mailbox.org is great! Has many benefits and can be fairly cheap. (A few € a month)
I like disroot
Migadu! Prices are fair in my opinion, and it's bring your own email client (ie no webmail iirc) and bring your own domain.. They also feel less "corporate-y" than Tuta or Proton. I have accounts with all three but I like migadu the most. If something happens, I don't lose all my emails/need to change emails cause my email will still be JetpackJackson@. Also, if you're a student, they have a discount that you can email them about.
Also, Disroot is cool too but I don't use them that much since I have three other emails to deal with lol
I use Infomaniak Mail for my emails and kDrive from infomaniak too as an alternative to Google Drive.
It’s a swiss company from Geneva (where I live) and it’s also used by the state of Geneva for hosting and other things.
I really highly rate their products and prices. The email is free.
~~I use K-9 Mail. It is made by mozilla which is becoming less trustworthy every day but at the moment it is fine enough~~
Misunderstood post. K-9 is not an email provider, just an app
K9 isn't an email provider? It's an email app. A good one but still.
I misunderstood the post my bad
I've been using fastmail which is pretty good. I also use mxroute sometimes. It's a smaller operation that is cheaper.
I recently started using Purelymail and love it so far.
- Cheap pricing with optional pay-per-use
- Support for standard protocols
- Unlimited aliases if you bring your own domain
- Website loads fast
- No annoyances
- No dark patterns
- No corporate speak
I use StartMail, and before that, Tuta.