Email providers advice?

[regshoe]

Why did we ever domesticate strawberries? I am eating wild strawberries from the garden—some consolation for the absolutely awful summer weather we're having at the moment—and they're so nice. Mmm.

Anyway—I have a question for you all! I currently use Gmail for my main fandom email account, but I'm considering changing to something else. I've been investigating possibilities, but I thought I'd ask if anyone here has any relevant knowledge/experience.

Things I want:

• Good about privacy and security, not selling users' data, etc. (hence the wanting to move away from Gmail).


• Ideally something with a funding system similar to Dreamwidth's, where you can have a basic free account or pay for more features; I don't want anything funded by ads, since the incentives involved there would seem to undermine the first point.


• Reasonably nice user-friendly interface, which is difficult to specify exactly—but things like making it easy to find all the important buttons, not having the 'new email' window block you from doing anything in the main window (my main RL email does this and it's very annoying), etc.


• A good inbox search function would be useful.

The main candidates I've identified so far are Protonmail and Tutanota—has anyone here used either of these, if so what are your thoughts on them, and/or do you have any other suggestions to make?

Comments

[friendofthejabberwock]

I use Proton for fandom and I really like it! The free account has worked fine for me so far. You can also use calendar, VPN, and cloud storage services using it, so that's nice. I haven't had issues with the UI or search.

[regshoe]

That sounds like a good prospect—thank you!

[tei]

I use Fastmail for all my email; it lets you set up aliases, so my fannish and walletname addresses can both go to the same place, and I can set up a quick "masked email" any time I have to sign up for a site that needs email verification but don't want to give my real email.

fwiw, every time I see a gmail inbox now, it looks insanely cluttered and I have no idea how someone could possible use it, haha.

Downside, apparently it is now only a paid service.

[regshoe]

Ooh, that sounds useful! Thanks for the rec.

[duskpeterson]

I've used Fastmail for a couple of decades now. One thing I like is that they have servers in more than one country, so if a disaster affecting servers occurs in the USA (as has happened once since I signed up), Fastmail has backups elsewhere.

[regshoe]

That's very neat! Thank you.

[luzula]

Yes! One wild strawberry has all the taste of a large domesticated strawberry, concentrated into one delicious tiny berry.

My fripost is great, but you can't sign up for it outside Sweden. It's basically a non-profit organization that you join, with a membership fee, where the sole purpose of the organization is to provide email and cloud storage for the members.

[regshoe]

That sounds like a good thing! Hmm, perhaps I'll have a look round and try to find out if there are any similar organisations in the UK, then.

[garonne]

I use Protonmail and I recommend it! I haven't used the search function much, but I think it meets your first three criteria.

The new email window doesn't block access to the main window. I find the UI to be pretty nice too. I hate interfaces where all the buttons are pictograms and you have to try and guess which pictogram has the functionality you're looking for (including dreamwidth, sadly!). But in protonmail, all the buttons have text on them, or have a text explanation which pops up when you hover on them.

[regshoe]

Thank you! This is useful, and I know what you mean about unlabelled buttons, sigh.