this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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I've been looking to switch from gmail to a different email provider that's more private. I've been hearing about Tuta, are there any drawbacks to it? Are there better options?

For a while I was planning on making the switch to protonmail but that's off the table now due to the recent events surrounding them.

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[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I've been using it for a few months now. Works just fine, doesn't do anything fancy but it doesn't need to. Filter rule creation is pretty limited, and the desktop client doesn't play well with my VPN for some reason, but otherwise it works fine.

[–] feoh@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's not Tuta but I adore Fastmail.

No BS. No gimmicks. Just privacy aware, protocol conformant E-mail at a reasonable price.

[–] azalty@jlai.lu 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

5€/month for email? 😵

[–] feoh@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Services cost money to run. Either you pay for the product or you are the product.

Make your choice, name your poison. No skin off my nose in any case :)

[–] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 4 hours ago

I mean I self host for 4€/month and I could fit multiple emails in there

Email is pretty much just about storage at some point, and there are a lot more cost effective servers for this, than a simple VPS

[–] ycnz@lemmy.nz 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah. Email's actually quite unpleasant (not hard) to do well. Look sideways at anyone doing it free or super-cheap.

[–] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm selfhosting with mailcow and it's great

But I agree, setting it up from scratch is really annoying

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 12 points 2 days ago
[–] monsterpiece42@reddthat.com 7 points 2 days ago (5 children)

What did proton do wrong? Legit question, I'm out of the loop.

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[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I've used Tuta for more than 4 years. It's a solid choice if you accept a couple few things:

  • they're a small company, doing their best to survive.

  • you have to use their client apps. They take security very seriously and assume all of their users do as well.

  • prices might go up every few years but I am still paying my original rate, for my original features.

  • the search function does work but is very slow.

But otherwise, I'm very happy and expect to stay with them for the forseeable. Good luck in your search.

[–] eight_byte@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago

I am very happy with Proton.

[–] serendipity@aussie.zone 4 points 2 days ago

If you don’t want to run your own mail server then there will always be a trade off somewhere. That trade off could be high costs to pay a tech firm to run a private mail server for you, could be lack of features, could be privacy, could be a lot of things. Even with your own mail server there will be trade offs around security etc. depending upon your skillset.

Personally, I have a hybrid approach.

  • Business is on a mail server
  • Personal with sensitive data (health, bills, etc.) is on a mail server
  • Personal - subscriptions, newsletters, etc. is on Proton
  • Everything else is on Gmail

I also have other accounts (e.g. DDG, Apple Mail, for specific use cases, but I forward the content I receive there into Gmail.

I’ve had a look at Tuta and haven’t seen enough to convince me to move anything there. I’m not going to move my mail servers to a cloud provider, Gmail is there because the address is 20 years’ old and I can’t be bothered updating everywhere that it’s used, and Proton has been great for years, has grown well, and has a corporate mission that I agree with. DDG, Apple Mail etc. is what the internet sees of me - They generate unique email addresses and then I forward the content I want into Gmail, or sometimes Proton.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)

~~Tuta and~~ Posteo are both pretty excellent (posteo is cheaper, but has a few less options that might be a deal breaker if you need them, like custom domain support).

Disroot is a good free option, and they offer custom domains after a one time donation.

Mailbox is okay, though they are known to have a very odd 2fa, and will recycle your address if you ever stop paying, allowing others to claim it and potentially impersonate you.

Posteo is unique in that they'll never delete your account for inactivity, or even if you stop paying, where they'll let you access and read emails, but not let you send them until you pay again.

Edit: apparently Tuta is going downhill according to others here, which is unfortunate :(

[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 days ago

Posteo's lack of custom domain support can be augemented by using Addy.io or other similar email proxy/forward services.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago

thanks for mentioning disroot, that seems much more like what i was looking for than tuta which i was originally going to try out.

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[–] scheep@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I’ve tried tuta before. It seems pretty okay, but it doesn’t support IMAP meaning you have to use their app, and (at least for me) it was SLOW.

I personally use disroot, but there’s loads of other options, like mailfence seems like a decent alternative. Just pick one that supports IMAP

[–] MischievousGT@feddit.org 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm using Tuta and their app for a few years now. The app was slow indeed but it's good now, no problems so far. Lack of IMAP support is justified with security, they say. I personaly don't need IMAP as I'm completely satisfied with the app, which is available officially in f-droid btw.

[–] scheep@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

yk, fair enough. if you like it, that’s fine by me

[–] drkt_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

In comparison to Gmail? Yes, but that's a very low bar to clear. You need to be aware that Tuta are currently enshittifying. The product is getting worse and the price increases. It's slow, but it's happening. I switched to disroot.org after 2 years of Tuta because I got fed up with it.

It is in my Scrolls of Grudge, and I quote:

Ads in web UI for paying user.
Made it hard to cancel payment.
Newsletter is just upselling.
Can't unsub from newsletter.

[–] Sarcasmo220@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am a paid user of Tuta and I have never seen any ads. Where did you see them and what kind of ads?

[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

_drkt provided no proof of Tuta's enshittification. There are no paid ads for third party products in any Tuta UI. Don't panic yet. Read all the comments here, maybe.

[–] drkt_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

no paid ads for third party products

Haha you almost fucking got me, I actually wrote a whole thing about how those are ads but then I read your comment again and noticed that clever little write-off. Ads for their own products are still ads and I don't want to fucking see it. Get that shit off my eyeballs, I paid for this product.

The newsletter is an ad, it's not news. They're just advertising their products to you and you can't unsubscribe and you can't ignore it because they very deliberately have a special styling for the newsletters that makes it stand out from normal emails.

I don't know why you want to defend this company. I'm glad you're okay with the level of shitty behavior they engage in; it's definitely less than most email providers do- I'm just letting people know that Tuta aren't angels. They're a company, and they used to be better. Proton was exactly the same. It was a good service and then it became shitty.

I would love to log back in and show you the 3 separate buttons on my UI that did nothing except link to a "Please pay us for this feature" page because I was a legacy premium user because I didn't want all those new bullshit they made. I stress that it's not a case of them implementing a button in the UI for all users and because I'm a legacy user I get it too even if I can't use it- the buttons had special CSS to make them stand out. They were ads. Why couldn't Tuta just leave me alone? I could still be paying them to this day if they had just not gone down that path. I just want an email that is an email and nothing more and doesn't get in my way. Tuta had that, and then they took it away and asked for more money to put it back.

I think the misunderstanding here is that I was a legacy premium user. I was paying less to get only the email+calendar because that's what I signed up for, originally. When people sign up today, that's not an option. People who are new to Tuta (relatively) haven't seen this change happen and haven't witnessed how obviously desperate Tuta was to get people off the legacy premium plan.

Also my name is drkt_ but I'm sure you tried your best.

[–] Libb@jlai.lu 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Get that shit off my eyeballs, I paid for this product.

You should try Proton, then /s

Proton constantly tries to push you to upgrade to their next plaid plan too. So much so that this coupled with still zero fucking support for Proton Drive under Linux are the two reasons I have cancelled my paid Proton plan... and I had been paying for years.

edit: typos

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NOOOOOOO! Shit! Ah, for the love of cthulu ... damnit!

Sigh ... this just bummed me out. Thanks for the info.

[–] brownmustardminion@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 days ago (8 children)

I've used Tuta for years, paid account with multiple custom domains.

I prefer them for their principles, but their clients are extremely frustrating. Emails load very slowly and their email search is basically unusable.

I've resorted to downloading old emails and using other clients to import and search through them. I really wish they would improve their email search.

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[–] confuser@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

I started using fastmail, best thing I decided to do in awhile

[–] 18107@aussie.zone 6 points 2 days ago (5 children)

I've had a bug with the android app where sometimes notifications for emails just don't happen. I've received a new email notification, opened the app, and found that the notification was for an email received 5 hours ago, and I didn't get any notification for the email 3 days ago or the email 1 hour ago.

Despite this issue and several other minor issues, I still recommend Tuta. Mostly because I can't find anything better.

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[–] Termight@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No single organization should be trusted. "Emails paint an intimate narrative of ourselves — the people we talk to, the books we read, the politics we practice. This information is powerful. When we lose control over it, it can do great harm to ourselves and our loved ones." https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-should-all-care-about-encryption-really/

[–] Cgers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

What's the practical takeaway here? Just don't have an email basically

[–] Termight@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

What’s the practical takeaway here? Just don’t have an email basically

@Cgers@lemmy.dbzer0.com The takeaway here is not "don't use email at all." You can employ OpenPGP, and encrypt your emails. Also, host your own keys. Perhaps don’t allow a single corporation to have your private key and access to your encrypted messages simultaneously.

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Take control of your data. Host your own email or use a provider that cares about your privacy.

We talk about this so often in privacy communities because, although emails are particularly difficult to secure, they're so important. Swapping your email provider or hosting your own is so easy to say and so hard to do, but so worth doing. I would suggest taking some steps towards FLOSS/FOSS and other privacy-friendly options in other areas first to get used to the idea of change and some of the difficulties you'll handle in that realm

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I’m currently planning on switching to Tuta as well. They have been the most recommended replacement since the proton incident.

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Tuta's product is snake oil.

A cryptosystem is incoherent if its implementation is distributed by the same entity which it purports to secure against.

If you don't care about their (nonstandard, incompatible, and snake oil) end-to-end encryption feature and just want a freemium email provider which (purports to) protect your privacy in other ways, the fact that their flagship feature is snake oil should still be a red flag.

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[–] aleq@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I don't know if tuta and posteo have some special privacy features, but if you're just looking for a non-gmail provider I've been very happy with fastmail. It's an Australian provider with a good track record afaik.

Would also highly recommend getting your own domain if you can, so your address doesn't belong to whichever provider you choose.

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