this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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I'm in the process of getting rid of as much Google-related stuff as I can. Yesterday I already started with moving everything I had stored in Drive (backups and other stuff) to my Nextcloud and the like. Now I want to change my main email, the one I'm going to use for, my accounts here in the fediverse and so on. So I'm looking for alternatives.

At the moment, apart from Gmail, I also have an Outlook (from when it was hotmail), a Proton account (though in view of their CEO's recent statements I may not keep it) and a new one on Disroot.

Which of the aforementioned services works best for a normie not well versed in cybersecurity like me?

Do you know of any alternatives I'm not aware of (I've heard of Tuta, but nothing else)?

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[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 24 points 10 months ago

Tuta is fine, but very basic.

The stuff with Proton... It depends on what you need. Just an alternative to degoogle your life, it'll work for now, but they may slide into a more pro Broligarchy stance in years to come. For some people, they're still a little too invasive for what they want.

Email is inherently insecure, so its best to lock down a few and just fluidly transition around as you need.

[–] gay4dudes@sh.itjust.works 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I am using Tuta and am very happy with it. I like the feature where you can send encrypted Mails to anyone and they're unlocked via a password (i dont know if others have it). Important for me at least is, that they're based in germany.

[–] jetsetdorito@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’ve been tempted by Tuta, it seems nice but I’m torn over IMAP access

[–] gay4dudes@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah it sucks but at least they have a good Linux AppImage (sadly no BSD). Their Android client is also fine and is on F-Droid.

[–] Fake4000@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Honestly, I was going to say Tuta, but seeing how proton changed, I would now add the option of self hosting.

I am unsure how difficult or easy it is, but it's becoming a very viable option now.

[–] Potatisen@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (3 children)
[–] mark@social.cool110.xyz 14 points 10 months ago

@Potatisen @Fake4000 Their CEO being pro-Trump

[–] LostWon@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago

There's been controversy over a founder's public backing of the US Republican party.

[–] Tramort@programming.dev 5 points 10 months ago

The CEO supports fascist policy in the name of business

[–] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fair warning: it's likely that your ISP will block attempts at self-hosting a mail server at home.

[–] Fake4000@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

They don't want their network blocks reputation lowered because some idiot is sending spam mail or has an open relay. Apparently some will allow it on request.

Personally my mail server is on a Hetzner VPS.

[–] devfuuu@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

All the reasons. It's a well known problem that it's super hard to host email.

[–] JetpackJackson@feddit.org 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm in the process of switching all my stuff to Migadu, you need your own domain though

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Who here doesn't have at least one unused domain?

[–] JetpackJackson@feddit.org 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Idk, just thought it was worth mentioning cause it's not like Proton or Tuta where they have yourname@proton.me or whatever

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Oh I was just making a light-hearted joke about the demographic here, it's definitely still good info to include.

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago

I know you don’t need the validation, but I have 6-7 domains that don’t have email on them at the moment.

[–] JetpackJackson@feddit.org 2 points 10 months ago
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[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

migadu seems very cool, especially with that pricing, but i'm kinda concerned about the mail limits.

Edit: Seems like they're soft limits, looks like i might be moving to migadu

[–] JetpackJackson@feddit.org 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Btw if you're a student, shoot them an email and you can get a nice discount!

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

i am, Thank you so much for telling me!

[–] JetpackJackson@feddit.org 2 points 10 months ago

You're welcome!

[–] mcamp@lemmy.aicampground.com 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I would probably stick with Proton for the time.. Gmail isn't private, Outlook I see as being about the same as Gmail.. just blue.. and then Disroot from this Reddit post suggests it is not encrypted at rest.

[–] bunkyprewster@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Isn't Proton a little.. fascist?

[–] compostgoblin@slrpnk.net 4 points 10 months ago

Less than Google is, for now. But still bad enough for me to be switching to Tuta

[–] 56_@lemmy.ml 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I've been using mailbox.org for a while, and I'm happy with it. It costs 1€ per month at it's lowest. They have also been developing an open source video conferencing thing (included in the 1€), which from my experience is much better than jitsi.

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[–] 7rokhym@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago

Mailbox.org works for me.

[–] exposable_preview@slrpnk.net 6 points 10 months ago

had the same question. after some research, I'm planning to switch to posteo.de

[–] LostWon@lemmy.ca 6 points 10 months ago

I'm also considering alternatives to Proton myself. I've seen the privacy-oriented communities give a bunch of options. Search "Privacy" and you'll see them listed. Tuta probably isn't bad as a paid account but the free app left a lot to be desired the last time I checked (no message search or sorting like Proton).

[–] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

I just moved away from Proton to Posteo for mail and calendar and Addy.io for email aliases.

[–] nick@midwest.social 5 points 10 months ago

I use Fastmail with ten custom domains.

I was going to switch to proton but im glad I never out in the effort.

[–] wiccan2@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I've thought about doing this myself but my GMail account is so ingrained in everything I don't think I'd be able to untangle the mess.

Are there any big issues you see coming up with doing this, long standing accounts not letting you change email, etc?

Do you plan on keeping the old account around for a period to catch any services you might have forgotten about?

Be interesting to see a follow-up once you're done to see what kind of pain it causes.

[–] NONE_dc@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

The process will not be abrupt but gradual. I will stay with an email service that seems to be the most functional for me and I will change one by one first the accounts and services I use the most and then the ones I use the least. When my old email is unlinked to most things in my life, I'll leave it abandoned for about half a year or so, to adapt, and then I'll delete it definitively (if it's possible without anything exploding or Google sending a Drone to kill me lol).

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

When I switched away from gmail, I found it to overall be pretty straightforward. Whenever I would log into a service, I update the email. Any service I didn't log into clearly doesn't matter enough to me. My gmail is now a spam account for old shit I don't care about.

[–] kyoji@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago
[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

I'm really happy with Posteo. It costs like 1€/month.

[–] sandwichsaregood@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Happy Fastmail user here. Has a lot of extra features.

[–] Venicon@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

I use iCloud as I’m in deep with the Apple ecosystem but opened Tuta and have been happy with it so far!

[–] dicksteele@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

I’ve used posteo for years now. It’s a small cost and never have any issues with it.

[–] photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Can anyone comment on the viability and difficulty of self hosting email?

[–] mark@social.cool110.xyz 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@photonic_sorcerer @NONE_dc It's not something you'll get perfect straight out of the box, but receive only is fairly straightforward. The difficulties come when you want to send something that won't get immediately rejected or thrown into the spam box.

[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

If your server goes down you'll miss incoming emails, and IMO residential ISP and power service isn't reliable enough for your main email address. If mail can't get delivered people get the impression you gave them a fake email address, which can be more than embarrassing.

[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

It's the only service I don't self-hosted, although I do backup my email on my home server. Email protocols don't tolerate downtime, if your server is temporarily unreachable you won't get messages and people will probably assume the email address/domain isn't even valid.

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