This is super basic but I need to find a better email option

Not that many people use email much anymore, but as you often need an email address to sign up for other shit... anyway, I need a better option than gmail, I'm sure you can appreciate why. Email is so old school at this point that most of the time I don't even think about it anymore.

Anyway, I need some email options that aren't gmail or otherwise attached to a billionaire. I'm not really interested in non-email methods of communication, I'm specifically asking about email.

Thanks in advance.

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Most if not all non-paid options will have privacy concerns similar to gmail, so you’ll have to pay. I pay for Proton, and though I’m not thrilled about some of the political bullshit their CEO has been up to recently, I think I’ll stay with them for now since they’re still good for privacy, and their other services are solid. They’re also very upfront about what they charge and why, and I think they still plan to transition to a non-profit.
- There's also Tuta if you're looking for an alternative.
- It's not just the pro-trump stuff though, there's also the case of being very pro-cop in that they helped get info about a french activist against their will or settings, we believe.
  
  God, I can't believe people are still spreading this nonsense. Proton complied with a legal warrant. Name another company on the planet that will receive a legal warrant and refuses to comply. I'll wait.
  
  sure, they must have shut down all services instead, that would have been the real solution!!
  
  That definitely sounds concerning, do you have a link or anything? Any company would have to comply with a legal court order regardless of their preference or ideology, so how they comply comes down to the amount of information they store and for how long. Just saying, the fact that they helped the cops (as much as I hate the cops in general) doesn’t necessarily mean they handed everything over or volunteered anything they weren’t legally obligated to provide. But I don’t know the specifics of the case you mentioned.
- I don't think leaving Proton due to their CEO approving Trump is that reasonable
Not that many people use email much anymore
Where do you live, because I want to go there immediately.
- IDK, what else do they use? Email has to be the least bad option. At least with email you can choose your provider (or be your own).
  
  Any of the dozens of federated chat services.
  
  I would assume Whatsapp or equivalent.
The ProtonMail CEO recently said that Trump "fights for the little guy". I know that's not a substantial critique of their privacy policy or encryption standards, but I wouldn't trust a company that says something so baseless, divisive, and in support of a fascist oligarch.
- Honestly, I know this is entirely subjective, but I never liked the vibes from proton especially in the last year. I’m going to use my animal instincts and just avoid them.
  That said, I really need new email service so looking at options
  
  Agree. They've been very persistent to sell their paid plans, e.g. the first thing I see after logging in to Proton Mail is their pop-up ads.
- And frankly, even if he's not a facist himself, the CEO saying something that fucking stupid makes me think that you shouldn't trust him to run the slurpee machine at a 7-11, let alone something sensitive like your email.
Who's not using email? I'm green with envy, but I think it's a ludicrous premise to think not many people are using email.
- I also wondered what kind of rock OP lives under. I use email every day, multiple times per day. I probably send more emails than texts.
- i don't use email much at all, only signups at a few places.
  at work, communications with my coworker or clients is by phone or in person, not email or very rarely sms. email is mainly the required communications with the state (business registrations, taxes and shit) and invoices and receipts for things we use or buy online. plus lots of spam. lots and lots of spam. oh, and scams. lots of scammers and phishers too.
i currently use tuta. it has a free tier, offers encryption, is open source, gdpr-compliant, and is 100% powered by green energy.
i have used mailbox in the past, which is paid (cheapest tier is ~€12/yr). i can recommend it as well.
I use proton and for registering on different sites I usually use addy.io. Also, I recently found a new mail service that looks nice and might give it a try soon, disroot.org
- ProtonPass will also generate aliases and forward the mail to your email account. But, as someone else mentioned, the CEO's politics seem sus.
I use Tuta mail. It is entirely open source. There are both paid and free tiers. I started on a paid tier, then downgraded to free. I like the option of a usable free tier when money is tight. I use addy.io for aliases.
- How do you use email aliases or what do you find them useful for? I've played around with generating unique aliases for different websites I use, but I'm not sure I did anything useful with that setup. Normally, if I get spam I usually just hit the unsubscribe link and that's been sufficient. Currently, I just have 2 emails: one I use for businesses and such and one for random websites that I don't care too much about. Is having more aliases better?
  
  If an alias receives spam, I can deactivate it. Future mail addressed to that alias will not forward to my email inbox. In essence, stop the flow of water instead of repeatedly mopping around the leak. Also, I am wary of malicious unsubscribe links.
  
  An alias can be used to see who is selling your address. If you give address B to only one organization and you get spam on B, then you know B sold your address.
  Not exactly the most useful information, but it's there.
- I second this. Fastmail has been a joy to use. Since the users are paying, the company has (less) incentives to enshittify. JMAP? Count me in!
I'm currently moving (for the last year) from Gmail to mailbox.org.
They have a free level, but I wanted aliases, so I pay $30/year. Worth every penny.
- I moved from proton to mailbox a few months ago and so far I'm really happy with it too
- I've been there for several years as well. Works great, and I get pretty much no spam.
  At one point they offered "envelope with money sent via postal service" as an anonymous payment option, IDK if they still do that.
- Same here. Moved from Outlook to Mailbox a year ago and I'm happy with it, using mostly custom domains with catch all. I havo also recently enabled encryption which wasn't hard to integrate into my mail clients at all. They dont have a free plan, but the cheapest plan is 1€/month (which doesn't allow custom domains).
- Been with MailBox.org for ages and it's been absolutely fantastic. Proton had very limited offerings at the time, but even now I haven't felt the need to move.
  I think the most basic email offering is €1/month.
Disroot - A lot of people in the know about privacy seem to really like it.
Really though email is a bullshit communication medium and unless you're insisting on using GPG for every message and make sure your or other people's keys never got compromised I wouldn't rely on it.
Really hoping Dark Mail actually becomes a thing at some point. If it was that with locally stored encrypted email then email might actually be worth bothering with.
- Really hoping Dark Mail actually becomes a thing at some point.
  The last commit was 2 years ago: https://github.com/lavabit/magma/graphs/code-frequency
  
  whomp
Tutanota or disroot.
purelymail.com
- PurelyMail is a great indie mail service. I love them.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/
if you wanna forget privacy and subscribe to a proprietary startup instead, use hey mail because it just sorts well. otherwise just use proton like everyone else said
proton.
Proton unlimited comes with unlimited everything on proton pass, including disposable email addresses
- Proton have shown recently they are very much pro-cop and pro-trump and so aren't that private or worthwhile any more.
  
  I've been a Proton customer for over 4 years and I'm leaving because of this. Don't use Proton.
  
  They're against censorship and in favor of free speech. If you hear about a VPN provider that blocks their users' access to certain things based on the owner's political beliefs that's a shitty VPN provider
  Full disclosure. I'm not a fan of Trump. I'm just a free speech absolutist and even if I hate what someone has to say I think they should be allowed to say it.
  There's already laws against threats, slander and libel and even doxing in some places.
- unlimited everything is not really true: storage for example
  
  read what I actually said. Unlimited everything ON PROTON PASS obviously the storage space you get on proton mail and proton drive is finite
While I'm using Proton rn, I'm planning to migrate to Posteo with Addy.io for aliases. However they all cost money. If you mean free email that's not tie to a billionaire, I can't think one off my head. You can achieve "free" by hosting your own email server as it sounds you're intended for receiving only, but the electricity still cost some, plus you are doning free labor to make sure it is happy.
I'm currently using Migadu. It's $20/year for their cheapest plan. They give you a lot of control over the email service, so it might not be the best if you're a noob. In fact, they require you bring a domain name. But, they let you create unlimited users, aliases, have fancy routing, etc.
https://purelymail.com/ looks interesting too. And is cheaper at $10/year.
If you do decide to get a custom domain, just some tips:
get something that ends in .net or even better .com because shitty companies with shitty IT departments will block other TLDs (I've had this happen with FedEx and my local garbage company). There is no spam folder for them, the email just explodes.
probably don't pick a domain with one of your names it in for better anonymity, unless I guess you have a popular last name? john@smith.com looks cool, but consider if you want random sites like lemmy to have that data.
don't pick a homophone or weird word because at some point you'll have to speak your email to another human and it's really awkward to tell your bank that your email is john@piggy.park or john@maill.com or was it john@male.com?
Also, the web interfaces of some of these other email services might not be as good as Gmail's UI. It helps to use an email client instead. Thunderbird is fine or you could use something simpler like claws-mail or even something like mutt.
Riseup.net Private, free, encrypted
- Invite-only and no clear way to get said invites
- Looks interesting, but seems you need an invite code is needed to sign up.
  
  I have about 5 invites if anyone is interested
tutanota is pretty good
mailbox.org
I use proton for a while now, its been great and well supported. The proton pass lets you use unique emails to register too. Its paid, for that anyway. I've been in love, I still don't keep my passwords on it opposed to a USB drive, but some i've started to just out of simplicity and lack of need of serious security for those.
Protonmail. I have over 25 different online accounts/identities (each one for a different topic gaming, movies, music, coding etc.), all Protonmail based.
- Proton has a good service
  
  Absolutely. But one thing I didn't like was it locked me from using Proton services (even free plan) once my premium plan ran out until I paid $6 cancelation fee BS.
- Proton is run by a fascist. Its only a matter of time until they too will Start sucking Trumps balls
  
  LOL. Proton is absolutely not run by a fascist. You should learn what fascism is and what they do. Proton CEO is way WAY more tame than actual fascists. It's actually not even close IMO.
  
  look up what fascist means dumbass, it's more than just someone you disagree with.
  
  do you know of alternative? I wanted to leave them because of this but found they most other options were not as close as good.
While we're at it, anyone got a good site for temporary addresses that are basically used exactly once? And ideally don't immediately get flagged as spam addresses.
- To DIY you can buy your own domain and attach it to any paid email provider, then you get an infinite amount of temporary addresses. e.g. if you own @ rumschlumpel.blahblahblah.org then you can create abc@ , xyz@ , abc123@ , etc. as much as you like.
  Just about all the email provider suggestions in this thread have a paid tier that you can configure your own domain with.
  
  Mailbox.org already provides 3 different aliases even at the lowest tier, but I've already filled those with non-temporary aliases and I don't really want to pay three times as much just for throwaway-aliases ...
- https://www.byom.de/trashmails/
  Decent functionality, and it didn't get flagged most of the time I used it.
Rise up has changed their invite policy to one every 24 hours. I am sending out invites in order of request, but have had (to date) 21 DM’s. I have to draw a line and will send one per day until I am cut off.
Thanks
posteo.de
I have two. One account is through Protonmail and my main email account is through Private Email. Both are paid accounts, though Proton does have a free tier if money is tight.
ProtonMail is run by a non profit foundation based in Switzerland. It's also end to end encrypted
I really can't speak on the security or data privacy of it, since I'm not knowledgeable enough in these topics, but I pay 1€ per month for Port87. I just love the ability to easily create sub-adresses and never have to worry about my "main adresses" receiving the spam I get for e.g. online shopping

107 comments