Thanks. Here’s a comparison, for anyone else who might be interested:

Feature matrix

Repos: AppVerifier · Verified Apps · AppVerifier BG. From each README as of June 2026; stars/releases change over time.

While I’m not willing to accept the legal risk associated with running one of these, I wish the best to those who do.

I’m also curious to examine the hosting practices employed by the mirrors that survive, as I think these are the hosts, DNS providers, and domain registrars that are actually pro-freedom, in practice.

Thank you for sharing, but is this the third version of AppVerifier? I’m having a little trouble following all of them and their differences.

Jumping on the bandwagon here.

Yes, I intend to use my own domain name when I switch.

For IMAP, it looks like there are bridges for both Proton and Tuta that I can run locally.

https://gizmodo.com/tuta-email-denies-connection-to-intelligence-services-1851022465

And again, I’m not saying that I believe this. I have no idea what to think. My original point was that it’s all very confusing to beginners.

Yes, I know and agree that the mail providers can read unencrypted email. I’d just rather use a provider that probably isn’t intentionally using it to build profiles about myself and others.

I intend to do that but basically wanted to have an off site copy, for both backup and deliverability purposes.

I don’t have much in the way of privacy expectations for email, but I figure that Proton or Tuta are probably still safer than Google.

I’m certainly not suggesting that email providers should resist lawful orders, but if Proton complies with 89% of requests while Tuta complies with 25%, it suggests a difference in methodology, no?

It could, of course, be the case that the Swiss are just much more skilled at sending lawful requests relative to the Germans, but that seems unlikely.

This thread basically illustrates the challenges for a beginner, such as myself.

I’ve been locked into the Google ecosystem for nearly two decades and am now trying to free myself.

I’d like to migrate to a hybrid solution that involves self-hosted NextCloud synchronized with a cloud provider that I can trust more than Google.

However:

Proton apparently makes false, or at least misleading, marketing claims and doesn’t fight a vast majority of its inbound government requests.

Tuta has been publicly accused by a member of the intelligence community of being a honeypot.

The rest of the email providers seem to implement even fewer protections, relative to these two.

So, what’s a guy to do?

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that either of these companies are bad or that I believe that they’re actually honeypots. I’m just trying to illustrate the challenges faced by newcomers (and probably all of us).

While I’d prefer to absolutely maximize privacy and security on all fronts, given that my first goal is de-googling, I will probably start with Proton and NextCloud and re-evaluate from there, but I’m open to suggestions.

Thank you all – I really appreciate this community.

Messaging and calls through standard phone apps would be even better – I just want to be able to do it over IP, kind of like T-Mobile DIGITS, without using their eSIM.

The holy grail, to me, would be to port my real number to Cape and then, instead of using their eSIM, use an anonymous data-only eSIM.

You could, in this scenario, swap eSIMs as much as you want but retain the phone number your friends and family have, without Cape.co having your IMSI or IMEI at all.

I know that JMP and VoIP.ms exist, but we’re all aware of the compromises. Being able to do this over IP, with a real carrier, especially if it supported the native phone apps, would be incredible.

I’m interested to try them, but as far as I can’t tell, they only offer last mile app-based SMS and voicemail on iOS.

This is an important feature, to me, as it would be a (potentially better) alternative to JMP.

It seems like the ideal setup would be to port my main number to Cape and then use an anonymous data-only eSIM, but that won’t make sense until they add SMS to their Android app.

I also heard that they are adding RCS support. That will be awesome, too.

How do the speeds on Cape compare to your previous carrier?

4th vote for IronFox, but with the caveat that I have Cromite installed as a backup, for the rare occasion in which a site doesn’t render properly in Fox.