What do you folks use instead of Proton and Google? Ideally I’m looking for:

  • Non-profit.
  • European-based if possible.
  • Paid is fine.
  • Low-risk. E.g. unlikely to disappear, unlikely to go bankrupt.

My reason to want non-profit is that it’s the best way to align mine and the provider’s incentives, I think. I’d consider for-profit as well, but it’s best if it’s a non-profit.

So far I like disroot a lot. But they are principled about being unpaid, so if the financial ends don’t meet each other my emails will be in trouble. I’m donating to them, but I have my worries. I’m willing to pay a little if I know that my money will go for a quality service, for expansion of coverage (new users) and for open-source technologies.

Proton and their founder Andy are just a piece of sh*t in terms of upper management, so that’s not worth discussing.

Posteo seems adequate. Tuta feels similar to Posteo with a bit more push for fanciness. Is there something similar but non-profit?

  • ElizaRulz@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    9 hours ago

    I’ve settled on switching to startmail. Its pretty cheap, based in the Netherlands, offers aliases, (which are important to me for keeping emails organized and privacy.) and allows emails to be pgp encrypted. The pgp encryption is honestly a better feature than proton’s encryption since you can communicate with people who don’t have a proton account and still keep emails secret from the provider. (cough cough)

    Also it offers IMAP support so I set it up with thunderbird, and I don’t have to bother with plugins or anything like with proton. I’m honestly more happy with startmail than I was with proton so far, although its only been a few days.

  • gera@feddit.nuEnglish
    0·
    9 hours ago

    I used int.pl as burner in the past. Idk about their reputation but their imap/smtp work fine. And yeah, ui is in Polish.

  • Lemmchen@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    12 hours ago

    Happy posteo.de customer here. Keep in mind you can not use your own domain and the payment process is a bit weird due to privacy reasons.

  • pjusk@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    Migrated to Fastmail about a year ago, away from Proton. Mostly to have an alternative that was easy to use for my partner too, but its honeslty the vest mail experience money can buy imo. Has a lot of nice features and the UI is excellent.

    Also the developers there really seem to care about what they do. Love reading their blogoosts about how they store the data, or how they’re also hwlping develop the new open standard JMAP.

    Fastmail is a failsafe option worth the penny.

    • TomBombadil@lemmy.zip
      0·
      11 hours ago

      But they are based in Australia correct? If I’m not mistaken, Australia has an incredibly bad anti privacy laws. I’d never rely on Australian digital services. No idea what the impact of having the EU users served by EU servers is though

  • BiscuityCat@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 day ago

    I have been using Runbox for several years and I’m happy with them. I choose them because they are one of the few email providers that allow you to create aliases/identities.

    They are not non-profit, but they say they take ethical (and other) responsibilities very seriously. They do use LLM, but again they say they use it only as a tool and it is used responsibly. They do take transparency seriously, so they have all this information written on their website.

  • doodeux@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    Any love for disroot.org?

    Now, they are experiencing a disk issue at the moment and one of the admins had a death in the family. But before that, I have been testing them thinking that I might start using them.

    • vas@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      1 day ago

      I’m using them already! Actually mentioned in the post body, too:

      So far I like disroot a lot. But they are principled about being unpaid, so if the financial ends don’t meet each other my emails will be in trouble. I’m donating to them, but I have my worries. I’m willing to pay a little if I know that my money will go for a quality service, for expansion of coverage (new users) and for open-source technologies.

      But I’m also wary of continuity in case of financial struggles, hence this post. Maybe I should just wait out the current struggle with the failing disk and hope they will continue to operate on donations as they successfully have been for years and years… In any case, I’d like to know the alternatives, too.

  • artifex@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    I’m considering thundermail, though it’s new and not perfect. Data is hosted in the EU, they don’t market your data, and it’s managed by the thunderbird subsidiary of the Mozilla group. Some basic things like E2E and at rest encryption are either half-baked or missing, but their project plan looks promising and they include calendar and contact sync as well.

  • psyq@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    Happy user of Infomaniak, they’ve been in this business since 4 years before the web existed, so I hope that translates to more staying power. And they’ve only grown every year since then, so far without selling out. The majority stake is owned by the non-profit Infomaniak Foundation.

    • pixelpunk@feddit.org
      0·
      1 day ago

      I second this. Moved our company email and cloud service to Infomaniak. One of my best decisions in a long while.

  • dieTasse@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    I will wait how the situation at Proton evolves I have recently prolonged so I am not in hurry. Right now nothing changes the fact that most of the services are still e2e and more secure than most alternatives, if that changes I have no problem switching. And I find encouraging that despite Yen being an ass there is actually good amount of employees that consider what they do in Proton their mission and they have passion for it and I hope Andy won’t squash that…