I’ve been using a combination of Google and Microsoft office products since forever, I’d love to switch, but I really don’t understand where the hell I’m supposed to go. I can’t really self-host (I only have a phone and laptop that I use as mobile devices) and I’d really like to not have to actively think about how my email works when I’m using it. I was sort of hoping Proton would be it, but they just keep sucking harder and harder, they don’t seem like a viable alternative anymore.
Does anyone here have some advice?
The only other secure location I have heard is Tuta Mail but I have seen reports that they also use AI with their source code but the difference between Tuta Mail and Proton is that Tuta Mail hasn’t pushed their devs so hard or called them losers for worrying about security issues. I think the biggest complaint right now about Proton is the fact that their CEO doesn’t respect his people and is chasing money instead of taking care of the non-profit and their securty minded customers. If you’re just looking for an email that just doesn’t scan your stuff with AI and things like that, Port87.com might suit your needs.
Go Home (selfhost) never Go Big.
Anyone that unironically uses the word “loser” to try to motivate a policy by mocking the opposite, is not mature or responsible enough to be in a position of power.
Also, mocking instead of giving technical reasons only happens when you are not right but want to win the argument anyway.
So yeah, he just outed himself as not fit for any manager position, worst of all a CEO.
People saying they will go back if he steps down, I think this kind of is a wake up call on the company using privacy not seriously but as a marketing gimmick.
I would stay away from them. Surprise surprise, another YouTube advertised product that is shit…
What even is the alternative, I don’t see any other privacy focused company that is directly trying to tackle the g suite with an email+storage+office combo.
Sure we have mailbox.org, cryptpad, and other specific privacy cloud providers, but none of them have them all in combination.
IDK, I configured my own email with a cheap VPS when google made me mad so I didn’t depend on anyone, but yeah that is not for everyone.
There’s an argument to not have an all-in-one provider though: it increases vendor lock-in. If a company turns into a direction you don’t like, you’d have to find a suitable alternative to replace all of your services, and that takes a lot of time and effort. If you spread it between multiple companies however, you’ll only need to switch a few, maybe even have less work if you use a domain (for example for custom aliases).
Plus, something about Proton I disliked is that their products are missing key features you just expect from your products. For example, every mail provider offers you the option to add todo-lists or even journals, because WebDAV just has it, however Proton still lacks that to my knowledge. Other password safe programs have a folder system to better organise your entries. Proton Pass does not. I’d rather use many companies that each does one thing well than one that does everything rather mediocre.
Please remember something very important everyone: The company may have changed its policy, but the company that made the policy hasn’t changed. The people that made the bad decisions are still in charge, and the priorities that made them make that decision are still the same. They haven’t changed.
This is relevant not just for Proton, but about every time company pretends to step back from a bad decision.
The way they interpret bad press is never, “my idea is bad.” Instead, they think, “my idea was misunderstood.”
So until the people change, they same kinda of policies will continue to be pushed until they stumble upon a way to present it that doesn’t generate loud resistance.
Absolutely, these people only care about the “image”, they’ll say anything without changing anything
I’ve been slow to transition away from Google products but I gotta say… to make an effort to ditch Google and then have THIS happen to you? I feel bad for those people. I really do… You do the right thing and get slapped in the face. Not fair.
I’m glad I listened to the People arround here, who said to not lay all of your eggs in a single basket. Thats the reason why I skipped proton and use VPN and Mail from different companies now.
Anyone trying to ditch Google for principled reasons, not just annoyance or fashion, skipped proton. Since their inception they stink of corporate BS. It was apparent from the beginning that the privacy push was just a coat of paint. They still belong to the oppressor class and will defend their own, despite of what the marketing says. Always look at actions, not pretty marketing and fancy manifestos.
Andy Yen is so desperate to become a tech bro oligarch like all of his role models. You lead a non-profit, dickhead, act like it.
“We’re not making money fast enough so let’s alienate our core userbase and create a toxic work environment! That will surely be a success!”
This 100% actually stopped me from moving my mail hosting to Proton. I’m looking at Tuta now and alternatives. And it’s not even the AI stuff so much as his insane toxic behaviour towards his people…the AI psychosis is almost secondary…
What are the options out there for email?
The only other free option that I know of is Tuta, and it doesn’t have VPN or cloud storage like Proton does. I’m holding my breath hoping the Tuta management team doesn’t turn out ot be assholes tooo…
Cloud storage is coming. I’m keeping an eye on Tuta to move across to
I use tuta for mail and private internet access for VPN. Since it is well priced with port forwarding included.
That I know of? Runbox, Tuta and a handful of others…but those two I like.
I’ve been using PurelyMail
Making money hasn’t been the goal for some time. Fascists have realized that the planet won’t be able to sustain more than ~1billion people, very soon. They are hogging resources, land, water, etc through datacenters and other means to become the judge of who lives and who dies. And they will decide based on “eugenical” (aka racist, ableist, other-ist) factors for the plebs, and of course every CEO and investor wants to be on the panel instead of being judged by the panel. That’s why the seemingly panicky decisions.
They are right about the planet.
It’s on us to get to 1billion through more peaceful, controlled, multi-generational ways for the common people, and starting by punishing fascist behavior with the necessary consequences.
He said it himself: it’s important to win on appearances before technical stuff, or something like that. He’s definitely going to push that again; or keep doing it even now, but in a more discreet manner.
If you’re looking to switch to a new provider, may I recommend my own service, Port87. We don’t use AI at all:
https://port87.com/2026/10/we-dont-use-ai/
It’s also a good idea to use a custom domain for your email, because there is always a risk that a provider you like today, you won’t like tomorrow. Custom domains make it much easier to switch to a new provider.
Thanks for the link. It looks interesting!
Is this the same Guy that has already said some Trump aligned stuff? I forget the specifics.
Protons CEO is a weapons grade assclown.
He seems like the waste byproduct of real tech bro oligarchs.
Well put
So, funny story that might be related. Engineers directed by their management to tokenmaxx often will just prompt very complex, difficult tasks to drive up their token usage.
Using the metric as the goal is a great way to give perverse incentives. SEE ALSO the US Stock Exchange.
Yeah, getting metrics on software development has always been a problem from the first time people were writing code in the employ of a business.
Businesses love metrics. Put them on spreadsheet makes some graphs, that’s what some people do as their job.
The problem is you can’t actually measure the productivity of someone that’s doing something that’s never been done before. Software development is always about doing things that haven’t been done before. If you want the same software, you just copy it, you don’t need a developer. You only need a developer to make the software do something it doesn’t currently do, which means having someone do something they’ve never done before.
You just can’t measure the productivity on that. But businesses want to have some numbers, so they chuck whatever numbers they have into a spreadsheet.
You might be interested in this (it was super timely for me 6 months ago) : https://leehanchung.github.io/blogs/2026/04/05/the-ai-great-leap-forward/
That science adage: To measure, is to change.
When a metric becomes a goal, it’s no longer a good metric.
Giving devs metrics and targets is just so dumb.
Their job is to learn the rules to manipulate systems to their benefit.
If you hand them some half-cooked system they’re going to work out how to (best case scenario) bend it out of their way.
Worst case scenario is that they bend it to their benefit, and find a way to do less work for the same “score”.
Everyone needs metrics and targets, otherwise it is just dicking around and nothing useful gets done.
The problem it that tech bros only half listened in social sciences class and choose the dumbest metrics and targets. Agile completely killed waterfall and specification development. In turn, using the equivalent of ignorance of the masses ticket systems on Jira. The worst of all worlds with commits, PRs and lines of code as metrics and a vacuous tick mark on user stories as goals. No wonder software development has been hell for decades.
Software developers need to stop designing in the code and go back to designing on paper against specifications and unit tests. Thinking has always been the main work of a software developer, not just writing code. As for the AI side of the problem, the purpose of code is not just to be written, but to be read and understood by humans. AI coding trashes the ontological purpose for the existence of code.
Middle managers like to set targets and goals because it counts towards their bonus, and it looks less like they’ve got their dick in their hand when the boss comes calling.
No one “needs” anything to do their job. A brief is helpful, a deadline is worth taking note of, but anything else is just interfering with people who are genuinely there to just do the job.
Most productive jobs i ever had? The ones where i was asked to do something and then allowed to do it.
As to the latter part of your message, it feels like you’re just trying to process something so i think I’ll just leave you to it. It’s a bit too non-specific to respond to though.
Middle managers like to set targets and goals because it counts towards their bonus, and it looks less like they’ve got their dick in their hand when the boss comes calling.
It’s the same problem all over. Capitalism. You have people who don’t do work keeping the benefits from the work.
Most people aren’t going to give themselves stupid or useless metrics. Software people aren’t going to impose “tokens used” or “lines of code” metrics on themselves. They know those are stupid.
People need a metric shitton of things to do their job well. When you’re told what to do, that’s a goal. If you’re told a deadline to fulfill, that’s a metric.
I understand that people have taken the words in an exclusively derogatory mode. But you need minimum those two things to do any job. Else you’re just a nepo dickhead who gets paid for parading around an office and you’re the piece of shit interfering with the people who actually do have jobs to do.
People need a metric shitton of things to do their job well
That’s hyperbole. There’s a lot of things that would help a great deal, but can he done without.
When you’re told what to do, that’s a goal
No, thats a brief. A goal is “the dashboard released on time”
If you’re told a deadline to fulfill, that’s a metric
That’s a goal. A metric is “1000 lines of code” or “300 sprint points”
But you need minimum those two things to do any job
Nope. That job where a team of 3 was running like 5 websites was self-run. The CEO came to us with questions and briefs and the rest of the team made requests, and we prioritised them and did them in the most efficient order possible.
paid for parading around an office and you’re the piece of shit interfering with the people who actually do have jobs to do.
Sounds like management to me. Nothing produced but complaints, meetings and powerpoints.
Good, so next time when your manager tells you that they will halve your pay; Rescind healthcare and force you to use your personal equipment for work. Then you can tell them “alright boss”. Because you can do without all those stuff you don’t need.
Also, a briefing is just a summary. I know because I do them all the time. Guess what is it a summary of? A summary of goals to achieve, for a mission, a project or a task someone else or myself have to achieve. God protects whoever you end up managing. You’re the definition of the clueless manager who doesn’t even have any idea of what basic words mean.
What on earth gave you the idea i was a manager?
I just double checked (while canceling this years subscription) and I’ve been paying for proton for 10 years. I put in my cancellation notes that Andy is the reason I’m canceling and I won’t reconsider until he’s replaced.
same here, just cancelled today with him and his leadership style as the reason
I was actually going to move off Zoho to them, and actually pay for my email
Outstanding timing
I swear that money nukes brain cells.
“Due to insufficient velocity,” Proton is not on track to achieve its annual recurring revenue target by the end of the year, one internal document obtained by 404 Media reads. Proton’s year-over-year growth is also “far away from what the market today considers to be good,” and, “By all metrics that matter, we’re an underperforming company.”
What a bunch of imbeciles. People that use Proton are in it because they value security and privacy. Any AI produced code that’s not vetted is inherently insecure, and a huge “fuck you” to privacy as a whole.
“We’re no tmaking enough money fast enough, let’s go the slop-route”. Fucking idiot, what do you think is going to happen the moment the security crowd and the privacy crowd hear about this?
I for one have been preparing to jump ship from my family plan subscription the moment it expires, precisely because of this bullshit Yen has been pushing in the last year or so, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
I do believe that Yen started proton from a good place, but as is natural for these fuckers, the sight of money completely replaces whatever working segments of their brains were working with shit.
I swear that money nukes brain cells.
You’re not wrong. When people get a sufficient amount of wealth or political power, they end up surrounded by sycophants who want a taste of their sweet lucre, or to have that power directed towards a specific agenda, or just to be adjacent to privilege.
Compare the environment that induces AI psychosis.
The effect happens at small scale too. An experiment involving Monopoly games in which one person (chosen at random) got bonus money and turns, the privileged player would get louder, eat more of the snacks and attribute their victory to their skill rather than their bonuses.
Can you link to source? Would love to read this.
Look up Paul Piff, who’s the social psychologist who set up the experiment. He did a TED talk on the experiment, Does Money Make You Mean?
I heard about it first on Gary’s Economics’ YouTube video on Elon Musk.
Thanks. Pretty insightful.
… and it is only in so far as the appropriation of even more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will.
What are the good alternatives for an all in one privacy service like Proton?
None.
You have to self host your own. Don’t trust anyone with your data. It’s hard to do, specially for email, but sadly it’s the only way.
Yeah, I’ve been test-driving stalwart with encryption and shit in a VPS, so far it’s been pretty solid. Using SMTP2Go as a backend for sending to avoid the risk of having my VPS IP blacklisted if something goes wrong.
The moment our subscription ends, if everything keeps going as good with stalwart, I’m jumping ship immediately.
It will be impossible to trust this company again until Yen and the rest of the C-suite resign.
I’m slowly trying to degoogle. Mail is a big concern for me. I have a google business account to handle a few domains. I used a small shared host before and it was crap. Every couple months they’d make some change and all my shit broke. I switched to Google because I knew it would be reliable and largely set and forget. It’s been that. I hate Google though. So if not proton, then who?
I think Tuta and mailbox.org are generally recommended, but I use Posteo which has been fine
Tuta is not everyones fave right now, look at my history for details…I havent followed up on everything yet but I thought the same as you.
https://lemmy.ml/post/53619601/28192074
This seems like a pretty good breakdown.
I’m testing out tuta and infomaniak. Since I don’t care all that much about encryption, infomaniak is looking good, in my opinion.
I don’t have any fancy use-cases but Posteo has been good for me too.
I can recommend mailbox.org
And you can get random junk emails that expire. Great for signing up to rando websites
I mean that should be a must have for private email services
Tuta uses walled garden closed source apps. Posteo does not support custom domains unless you do something like addy.io. Mailbox.org does encryption at rest but your client needs to support pgp to use it. They all have their drawbacks.
Personally I’ve started to move from proton to mailbox.org with addy.io for custom domains and aliases. Once it’s solid I’m moving addy.io to self hosted
Posteo does not support custom Domains, because it’s unsafe and inherently complicated to use with all the security settings of a modern email system turned on
+1 for posteo
Just looked into posteo. Great pricing (1 euro/month?) and they’ve got encryption. And organic vegetarian lunches!
The important part is to not put all of your eggs in one basket. This makes it so you can migrate off of one at a time rather than your entire life at once.
Ye, I’m finding that with Google. You don’t realize how tightly locked in you are until you try to leave.
A counterpoint though, is that putting 12 eggs into different baskets means having to manage 12 baskets. It’s a trade off
It is a trade off, but it’s well worth it, since most of it requires no actual maintenance (after you migrate of course) unless you have to leave for some reason.
I did a pretty deep dive for my company recently. We are very data-privacy centric. Here was my Lemmy post on it: https://lemmy.world/post/51963153
Some of the items there are mentioned here, but after the evaluation, my hunch was correct and we are likely switching to https://runbox.com/
Good service, pricing, privacy focused but not so much that you need to host your own proxy like with Proton, and runs sustainably.
Try Fastmail, you will be impressed
After using Tuta for a year and not really enjoying the experience I surveyed the landscape and picked Fastmail. I adore it.
It being in a five eyes country will certainly earn it some strikes against it among the privacy crowd, however.
Email is inherently unsafe. Privacy advocates know this. But we all still need it for managing accounts and such.
Any provider just reliably “doing email” and not actively harming its users in some way is going to look pretty good to most of us.
Email is something we simply cannot live without. They are primary sources of communication to reach you like account notifications, what accounts you’ve registered with it and vice versa.
It is unfortunate, but that is indeed the case.
Which is why I said:
But we all still need it for managing accounts and such.
Mailo.com. It’s ugly as 2005 websites but it just works. You get IMAP, family accounts. It’s just email. Old and reliable french company.
it may not be “beautiful” by what passes as “modern design” but i think it’s great, just the way it is. it’s the modern full page “responsive” scroll til you die shit designed for small screens that suck ass.
First time I’ve seen Mailo recommended, thanks for sharing. Does it support custom domains? And have you had any issues making accounts using a Mailo address?
No issues. I only use custom domains for years to be independent and they support it. Also they have nice ways for kids accounts with moderation of what’s getting into your kid inbox.
Except of shit web design that i don’t use, all works just fine. IMAP, caldav and so on. I’m super happy.
Cool, thanks for the follow-up. I think I’ll give them a go based on your experience, appreciate it! :)
I moved over to Tuta personally for email. And Tuta is EU-based if that matters to you. If you use other Proton features there are alternatives there as well.
For Proton Pass and Authenticator, there’s Bitwarden (and self-hosted Vaultwarden). Which supports password storage, 2FA codes, and Passkeys across basically all devices. Also supports SSH agent forwarding if you work with that a lot.
For Proton Drive, Koofr seems to be a good option for cloud storage, also EU-hosted. They also have an additional locally-encrypted Vault for files you want additional security on. Things like 2FA bypass codes you get when you set up your accounts but don’t want want hanging around in the open at all.
Here’s Lemmy’s reply from yesterday triggered by the same concern:
https://lemmy.world/post/53735981
Gmail was actually the easiest one to separate from, if you just count the transferring email addresses. It is a pain in the ass because so many services fight like hell to hold onto your google account you sometimes have to jump through hoops to remove it–a security risk in itself.
The big sticking point for me so far is photos… there are other options, but itś all integrated into my phone in weird ways I don’t want to bother with right now.
GMail is not that easy. Because, there are places and services that use e-mail clients that are easy to be sent to and received by GMail. I’ve experienced this with ProtonMail for a while, where there’ll be services and individuals that could not reach me through my Proton e-mail and I’ve had difficulty reaching out to them.
Depending what you need and want, I can highly recommend posteo.de and while they are not as polished and use standard DAV, it works absolutely flawless, they are relatively cheap, based in German and have certifications for all kinds of security.
If you want something like Google Workplace, get a Nextcloud. Still not as polished, but open and if you want to change the provider, you can just do so. I recommend a combination of Nextcloud and Posteo.
And if you need a custom domain with everything bundled together, I can recommend xaweho.de. though they are not cheap…
I’ve been pretty happy with Purelymail.
mailfence is pretty good so far. very basic but there are nice clients for IMAP these days
i can’t get mail from some places to mailfence. sending is fine. no errors with the connection. no bounces. senders have looked at their logs, they’re fine. mail is sent. it is received. mailfence just loses it somewhere before it makes it to my inbox and they won’t help with anything at all. so i gave up with them.
same. i started migrating to proton. and have my own domains. but use them through prot. now with this horsecrap i gotta get a third thing going… and migrate there. :/
I like Migadu. You must bring your own domain and you can add as many separate accounts as you want
iCloud does the trick and would work on google devices
if you’re already invested in apple devices, icloud for email is definitely worth the look. it’s often overlooked for that; hell, a lot of apple users don’t even realize it can do email.
I’ll continue to use ProtonMail myself. But, I can’t in good conscience feel in reason to support this company with my money and I’m especially concerned with relying on ProtonVPN so that will be getting uninstalled.
This is just not how you win people over and I’m tired of this day and age in tech where companies like this, pad their PR up with promises then do a 180 on their attitude towards everyone who uses their products that makes everyone second guess them. It’s bad enough we have things like Discord who has spent a couple years, making themselves look good and cozy for the public market that have alienated its userbase.
Bluesky showing their true colors and then we have this asshole CEO on Proton taking a dump whenever he pleases on the values of why we bothered using Proton in the first place.
iVPN is a good alternative. What concerns me is his disregard for proper security review of AI generated code, because that is one of the stupidest things a company focused on security and privacy can do. Even if one has no issue with his previous remarks about Trump, this new one is legitimately a security issue that affects the product itself.
You are right. He will try again one day in some shape or form. But it‘s still nice to see a backlash with cancellations can make a difference. Teaches us that we should keep trying to change things for the better or stop changes that make things worse for us.
Is that especially likely? he’s one of the founders afaik, I think they all are
So what does that mean going forward? Going forward, I’m still going to push,” he added.
So going forward, I mean to be going forward.
If there was any job LLM AI were best suited to replace, it’s these tech CEOs
Oh god yes, I can’t tell you how many times i’ve seen execs in general come in and confidently peddle their motivational crap and ethos only to be proven wrong 2 weeks later and having to backtrack and reframe their messaging with absolutely no consequences. But they only do that from peer pressure not because they actually believe they’re wrong, often exactly as the proton ceo did, saying they still want to push forward just in a different way. These people are unembarrassable and you can only get away from them if you quit or wait for them to quit and be fired, there’s no reforming.
For years I’ve been convinced that most CEOs can be replaced by a “magic 8 ball” or a dice and it will be all the same or better.
So yeah, doing it with a slightly less random thing could be fine.
