Neomailbox is great but expensive 🥺
post
I've been linked this review of email service privacy previously. Obviously everyone has their own threat model and you may not agree with theirs but I think it's worth a read for services you may be interested in (or just the summary).
I've used Mailbox.org and don't care for their interface at all, but it also matters not one bit as I use Thunderbird exclusively to interact with my mailbox, as you plan to. I haven't had any problem with spam but I am very picky who I give that address to.
My personal opinion is that the provider should not matter - your address should be a privately registered domain and your emails should be end-to-end encrypted. Then your mail provider is little more than a forwarding server and the most crap one is not much worse than the best.
replies:
I'm not an expert but I remember reading good things about Posteo, StartMail, and Runbox. Check their pricing page for features.
Infomaniak is dead since they explicitly support spying on people.
replies:
posteo is what i am using. Upsides - reasonably cheap (12 euros per year), downsides - no custom domains
I'm gonna add in Mailfence. I've recently switched to them (was thinking of Mailbox but had the same problems with them) and I've been pretty happy. I also use custom domains and it's very easy to set it up. They also allow you to generate custom aliases with their domain (e.g. "throwaway3661@mailfence.com").
The only kinda downside in my mind is the fact that you need the 42€/year tier to have access to POP/IMAP/SMTP and custom domains, which is more than on some other providers.
Another one I was looking at that looked quite good as well was Runbox, but if I remember correctly they don't have calendar and contacts which was a deal breaker for me.
replies:
I'm building a nextlcloud server. Just got the document server itself working a couple hours ago. My email back end will apparently be Mail-in-a-Box, although I've not gotten that far yet. That's about as private and in control as you can get. Run your own mail server.
Thoughts? Hmm. Well this is somewhat tangential, but you mentioned your email forwarding needs. I've used this ImprovMX forwarding service for years. Free tier really is free. https://improvmx.com/
Disroot.org may have what you're looking for.
all 23 comments