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.
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.
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.
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.
Ah great, so a messenger run by a data hoarding giant that resists usage of anything but the proprietary non-free client.
Yeah? I didn’t say anything positive about it. I said that it’s likely to be the alternative to email in a lot of places.
Definitely not.
Many parts of the world use Whatsapp as their primary form of communication. It’s depressing.
I agree.
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 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?
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.
Ah, yeah. That’s why I’m wondering if I’m missing something… Like, cool. I know B sold my address… now what? I guess it’s a neat metric to know?
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.
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 Fastmail with my own domain. Not free, but worth it given how much I rely on my email/calendar. There’s a 30-day free trial before committing though, so you can kick the tires before deciding.
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
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.
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).
Tutanota or disroot.
PurelyMail is a great indie mail service. I love them.
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
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.
