If you want a compatible, interoperable email service, then Mailbox. Tutanota is a propietary, centralised email system.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Privacy
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Tuta also doesn't easily support pgp and has no plans to integrate it. "we encrypy our stuff for you, trust us bro"
we encrypy our stuff for you, trust us bro
Their clients are open source. Might not be "standard" like PGP, but if you could read code, you could verify that it's encrypted before it gets sent.
Wouldn't that be only between Tutanota users anyway? Sure, you could use PGP manually, but it is more annoying, I prefer the seamlessness of doing so in my client. Not to mention not having an option if you, say, don't like the UI!
Wouldn’t that be only between Tutanota users anyway?
Just since nobody else answered your question: No. A Tuta user can send an encrytped message to anyone (including non-Tuta users). Those users then get an unecrypted message, saying "Click here to read your message", which takes them to the Tuta site, which lets them see the message. The non-Tuta user can then reply to the Tuta user as they like.
But you're right about the UI. Tuta users have to use the Tuta UIs (mobile, desktop, web).
I'm just teaching myself - maybe good practice.
I have concerns about mailbox being under jurisdiction of 14eyes.
This. You can't use your client, not on your phone nor on your PC. Therefore Tutanota was never a viable option
So any concern about mailbox.Org severs being in Berlin and Germany being apart of the 14eyes alliance?
Tutanota is also german, if I am not mistaken.
That's right feels a bit silly now
~~Mailbox.org offers 2GB of space for their free tier~~, and Tuta is 1GB.
But I would just look at the recommendations on privacyguides.org. They break down what each service does well and what things you should know, like how Mailbox uses PGP and Tuta uses some other (valid) encryption method.
Edit: Could have sworn Privacy Guides said Mailbox had a free tier.
Didn't know Mailbox had a free tier! Gotta check that out.
Edit: Mailbox still doesn't have a free tier. It's just a one month trial.
Damn, thought they did. Could have sworn Privacy Guides said it was free.
For what's worth, I'm going to give it a shot on the month trial. But I already see the middle tier for 3€ offers 10GB email only. I think I can fit my current old mail backup in about 4GB, but it would be slightly tight, I guess. I'm on an older Proton plan which charges about 3USD per month (by-yearly) and it gets me about 20GB. I think shared between cloud and email (I'm not actually interested in the cloud part, I have Seafile for that).
I don't know mailbox.org but tuta will try to upsell you, eventually. It's going down the same path as Proton is so maybe stay away from it if you want to get away from Proton.
With tuta, I was locked into using their apps which kind of sucked. I moved to mailbox.org with the intent of encrypting my inbox but never did in the end. I'm happy to have IMAP/SNMP back that's for sure.
Edit to add: been with mailbox.org 2 years and they've never tried to up sell me. Each Christmas I get a coupon or something to invite someone but I've never used it.
I just got on Tuta and don't want to do this every 3 years forever. Can you elaborate on Tuta upselling the customer? I just need reasonable encryption, basic mail service, and for my data not to be in the hands of psychopaths.
Every once in a while they'll send you an email with special CSS styling so you can't avoid seeing it and you can't unsubscribe from it. They call it a newsletter. It's advertising. It's less news and more begging you to buy more of their stuff. Very occasionally they'll bump new features onto a higher tier but still show that feature in your UI, with special CSS styling. God forbid if they try to upgrade your account but you deny because you're happy with the features you have now and the amount you pay; they push harder and harder the longer you're on a 'legacy' tier.
It happened to me. It'll happen to you.
special CSS styling so you can’t avoid seeing it
you can't set your client to plain-text only?
Tuta does not have a text-only mode for it's interface.
The GDPR ensures there's no mailing list you cannot unsubscribe from, if they won't let you it's not a good thing
Posteo rocks.
This is accurate
Its simple as hell, out of the way. Its a no fuss email that seems to have all the features you'd want. It just works. Carbon neutral and all the good stuff we all like to boot.
Posteo
Take a look into Posteo if having a custom domain is something you can live without.
Posteo
Wow...This one seems to be a very good one as well. How come it's not even mentioned in privacytools.io or privacyguides.org?
Not sure.
It's not as popular, but i use it with my own PGP keys & Thunderbird and it's great!
You also get SMTP with posteo, if that is important to you.
With that you mean it's standard access IMAP/SMTP from any client you want, as opposed to Proton/Tutanota and their custom apps right? Yeah, I prefer a standard protocol and my own app.
Yes. You can get it with proton too, but you need your own domain for that iirc.
Mailbox.org is great, their webmail setup is good and has contacts and calendar and all the things you would expect to have. With Cal/CardDAV and ActiveSync support too.
Tutanota for max security (no imap/pop3 support). Other services for using IMAP/POP3. But really, you shouldn't be using email anyway if your goal is max security and privacy, simplex.chat is better for that.
Sigh...right. But people DO need email. For banks. For taxes. For governments, healthcare, and lots of other crap.
So yeah, I'm skipping the whole "encrypted mailbox no-knowledge", since it's both cumbersome and useless unless anyone around you ALSO uses it (otherwise, those super private emails can be way more easily intercepted during transit than in your inbox anyway).
I just want some attempt at privacy from some EU nation while keeping some decent interoperability.
Librem
Hmmmmm I'd say Librem is US-based. Not to mention their whole mess with delivering pre-orders (and normal orders) of their Librem phone. Last time I checked they still didn't fulfill most of their orders right? ...Nah I think this shouldn't be where to trust my email.
they look interesting but I can't find out anything about where they have their servers located.
SimpleX becomes a pain when using multiple devices
It's not on your list but I've had a Mailfence email for the last couple of years and they've been solid.
You could also use YUNOhost to host your own on a VPS. I had no experience before setting mine up and it was fine. Unlimited email accounts and aliases out of the box, plus you can host other stuff besides, like a website, file server or even a fediverse instance.
I'd try avoiding email hosting. I've heard way too many times that it's too much pain when it fails, and when it fails basically emails are bounced. I can't afford to miss taxes emails or other important stuff.
I have had a very bad experience with Mailfence where emails from well-known domains do not arrive (no, not even in spam) and I never got any response from their support when I asked for their assistance to receive 2FA codes that I needed. Also, Indeed emails consistently show up in the spam folder, no matter how many times I mark them "not a spam". Sure, I may not be a paying customer but why offer a free tier if you cannot provide a reliable service? This has caused problems for me and if I had known beforehand I would have went somewhere else.