this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
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Privacy

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Proton is seeming sketchier lately. What alternatives do y'all have in your back pocket? Especially for email, but really any part of the suite.

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[–] SincerityIsCool@lemmy.ca 35 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Seconding mailbox. It's a nice no bullshit provider so far.

E2E encryption is a bit of a distraction on email. You're not emailing people on the same provider most of the time, and if you actually need privacy just use a purpose built communication system. With that in mind, it just comes down to something that is in a jurisdiction that you're ok with, and has values you care about.

While you're at it I recommend getting a custom domain if you haven't. It's not much extra work, and will make it easier to switch in the future.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Custom domain 100%. And use a catch all so you can use any address on it, and give a different address to every service/place.

That should work with most providers, but I made Port87 to make that super easy to manage.

The best thing about doing email that way is no matter how great a provider is now they can always turn shitty, and like you said, this setup makes it super easy to switch.

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[–] kepix@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

you guys have created a new bigtech company

[–] tekdeb@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

After looking into it quite a bit myself, the ones that seem most promising are Mailbox, Posteo, Tuta and Fastmail. I've tried all of them except for Mailbox and they're all pretty solid options.

Each have their selling points, so I would recommend taking a quick look at all of them before deciding. Posteo for example is really cheap unless you need loads of extra aliases and storage, but does not support custom domains. Tuta does not support third party clients. Fastmail is kinda expensive, but gives you more storage than the others and some extra features. Mailbox seems really similar to Posteo to me in a lot of ways, but has more features in their more expensive plans.

[–] Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Tuta does support Thunderbird as client.

[–] tekdeb@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ehh... It has a plugin that lets you run their web client from within Thunderbird. To me that doesn't really count, but maybe it does for you and all power to you if so.

Edit: Typo

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (11 children)

Ive been pretty happily using tuta for email and bitwarden for passwords.

As best I know nothing has happened to make me regret going with tuta, which is nice. It just handles my email

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago
[–] j_elgato@leminal.space 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Migrated to Tutamail a year back when Proton announced their attention to gargle MAGA balls. No complaints.

[–] moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 8 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Biggest complaint is email encryption doesn't work for shit for non tuta people. They kinda fucked everyone by not supporting pgp

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[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've used fastmail since I de-googled during lockdown.

[–] JCSpark@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I'll second this. Here's my setup:

  • E-mail - Fastmail
  • Contacts - Fastmail
  • Calendar - Selfhosted Radicale w/ custom notifications
  • Storage - Home server with sftp access
  • Document editing - Libreoffice
  • VPN - Mullvad (general), OpenVPN (local network access)
  • Mobile - GrapheneOS
  • Browser - Firefox vanilla w/ uBlock Origin

My contacts and calendar are accessed via CalDav, with all calendars showing/editable on Fastmail.

Nice, slick, and Google-free.

[–] dragonlover@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just a head up on mullvad in case you are unaware, the cofounder donated a shitload of money to the far right political party in sweden. I dropped them for airvpn and havent looked back.

[–] JCSpark@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I've seen that, and thought a fair bit about it. Thing is, there has to be balance. I could have kept running from one service to the next, seeking one that perfectly aligned with my values, but that's a lot of expense, both in time and finances. I wanted to pick one that met the majority of my needs, and let me sleep at night. I'm not one to make a knee-jerk decision based purely on emotion.

I decided to go with a high quality provider, and reviewed their responses to this individual's donations. I like how they dealt with the matter, and remained impartial, despite the fact that VPNs are very political, in general.

Is it the right decision? Not sure. Does it fit my threat model? It fits like a thrift store jacket that just happens to be the right size.

[–] dragonlover@lemmy.zip 1 points 20 minutes ago

To each their own. I was only informing you in case you were unaware

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[–] durably465@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm thinking of how to leave proton ecosystem.

And luckily this time I'm not using as much features as I was with Google.

For the password vault, I will try this : https://www.aliasvault.com/

Mail and Drive : https://www.mailo.com/ 1,5€/month with 20 Go of storage.

I was thinking to get a domain name and use it with mailo.

For the mail alias, maybe this one. It's free and unlimited : https://duckduckgo.com/email

For the VPN, I'm still weighing if I will pay a subscription.

And for the rest, I already have something : Photo > Immich selfhosted Calendar/Contact > radicale selfhosted Authenticator > Aegis

[–] speckofrust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

With all the shady VPN providers out there, and considering they have access to all your online traffic, I think it’s a service worth paying for.

[–] durably465@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

True, do you have a suggestion ?

For android with split tunneling.

[–] Innerworld@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Kagi Mail is coming soon.

[–] CkrnkFrnchMn@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Wonder how long these alternatives will last for people who aren't happy with this current state of affairs...

[–] TheFool@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Currently working on that too. I mainly grieve over their mail and password management services. Bitwarden would be a solid ProtonPass replacement but I‘m considering hosting Vaultwarden on my tailnet for more independence from cloud storage.

E2E encrypted mail is very annoying because no one else seems to offer a bridge like proton so I‘m considering using a classic provider with a privacy commitment and just archiving locally to keep the bulk of my mails to myself. Mailbox, Tuta and others do offer similar mail experiences though.

[–] StumblingWasabi@lemmy.today 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I trust bitwarden these days since they sold out to a private equity firm, (temporarily) removed forever free from their website, and I believe still changed GRIT to include innovation and trust instead of inclusion and transparency. I switched over to KeePass + syncthing

[–] Nelots@piefed.zip 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, when a company's new owners tell you who they are, you're best off believing them. And it doesn't get much more... transparent than removing "transparency" from their company values.

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[–] D1re_W0lf@piefed.social 7 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I’m testing Infomaniak.

https://www.infomaniak.com/

Swiss tech company that seems to be privacy conscious.

Looked good until they advertise their Video Conferencing as secure, and then the fine print at the end says end-to-end encrypted calls is off by default.

That's not like proton or mega, where it's not possible for you to make a call that lacks end to end encryption.

Makes me loose trust in them.

[–] Mylemmypt@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

A privacy conscious company doesn't ask for copy of your citizen card ID, to recover your password! They don't ask it for signup so why they do it on password recovery? For me is just blackmail.
I've send them a fake one to recover my data. How would they validated it anyway? Lol

Been there and leave without looking back. Remember this when considering using Infomaniak!

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I created Port87. It’s awesome for keeping your email organized, and it’s been really good at preventing spam. Recently, one of my labels started getting spammed, so I got to use the block feature for the first time. :) The weird thing is it was an old label I didn’t use anymore.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)
  1. Your website frustrates copy and paste. That's kinda lame, dude.

  2. Labels sounds like plus-addressing with extra steps.

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[–] speckofrust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

I’ve created aliases and then somehow received spam on them years after I’d stopped using them. No idea how these spam losers pass around email addresses, but I’m happy people like you are building tools to thwart their BS.

[–] joeschmoe@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

I am using Zoho for serious stuff that needs (mail server) redundancy and for everything else I am self-hosting Postfix + Dovecot + Roundcube.

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