I've had a paid mail service before and then life happened and I couldn't afford it and lost my main email address. This is going back probably 20 years or more.

I'm not sure I want to pay for my email but then I'm not sure what the alternative might be.

I'm open to suggestions!

[–] darko@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

Proton, for example, offers a free tier. Your storage is limited, but at least it forces you to keep your inbox tidy. Looking back at my Gmail account, hard to believe I was happy with that mess for such a long time

[–] JealousJail@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I thought the same. That’s why I am on Proton which has a sufficient free tier (1GB). If I am not able to pay any of the higher tiers anymore, I can always fall back to the free one

[–] JealousJail@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

Also, this supports growth of the “small” email providers which will allow them to get traction in the B2B sector.

Once they have grown, they can afford running consumer tiers at a loss and compensating this with other revenue streams - similar to what big tech is currently doing

[–] Grimtuck@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Thanks, I'll check Proton out as I've seen it mentioned quite a lot. Just found out I'm going to be a dad at 47 so I've been a bit distracted!

[–] originaltnavn@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It depends a bit what couldn't afford means in your context, but I would recommend paying for your own (cheap) domain. That way you can move between email providers if for example Google suddenly bundles AI in its plan and becomes too expensive. The whole package would come to ca. 30€/year here in Norway.

[–] fusiono@feddit.uk 2 points 1 day ago

I'd like to do this in principle, but losing my entire email history would be terrible. Then I'd have to make local backups that I have to keep track of and ensure it's always up to date.