Proton Tuta and the Rest - Picking a Private Email Provider

At some point a lot of people decide they're done letting an ad company read their inbox. Good instinct. Then they search "private email" and land in a pile of providers that all promise privacy in slightly different ways, and it's hard to tell what actually matters.

So let's walk through the big names and, more importantly, what they can and can't do for you.

First, a reality check about email

Email was never built to be private. Every message has a sender, a recipient and a timestamp, and the servers involved need that information to deliver it. No provider can fully hide who you talk to and when.

The other catch: end-to-end encryption mostly works when both people are on the same service, or both are using compatible encryption. If you send a message from a private provider to someone's regular inbox, it lands on that other provider's servers readable by them. Your side is private. Their side is whatever their provider does.

None of that makes switching pointless. It just means the real win is that your stored mail isn't being scanned, profiled or handed over in readable form. That's a big deal. It's just not magic.

Proton Mail

Proton is the one most people have heard of. It's based in Switzerland and run under a non-profit foundation.

Mail between Proton users is end-to-end encrypted automatically, and your stored mail is encrypted so Proton can't read the contents. It's built on OpenPGP, which means it plays reasonably well with other PGP users and you can export your keys. You can also send password-protected messages to people outside Proton, where they open the message on a Proton web page using a password you share some other way.

What it doesn't encrypt end to end: subject lines. Worth knowing, because people tend to put a lot in a subject.

The bigger selling point is the ecosystem. Proton also does a VPN, cloud storage, a password manager and a calendar, and they own SimpleLogin, an email alias service. If you want one privacy company for a lot of things, that's attractive. If you'd rather not put all your eggs in one basket, it's a reason to pause.

Want to use Apple Mail or Thunderbird? Proton's Bridge app makes that possible by running locally and translating, but it's part of the paid plans.

Tuta

Tuta (it used to be called Tutanota) is based in Germany and takes a different route. Instead of PGP, it uses its own encryption design, and it encrypts more than Proton does: subject lines, your contacts and your calendar are all encrypted too. Tuta has also already moved to post-quantum encryption, which is aimed at protecting today's messages from computers that don't exist yet. Forward-thinking, and a real point in its favor.

The tradeoff is compatibility. Because it's not PGP, you can't easily exchange encrypted mail with PGP users, and there's no IMAP. You use Tuta's own apps and web client, full stop. Their apps are open source, which is nice, but if you're attached to a particular mail app, Tuta probably isn't for you.

For people outside Tuta, you can send an encrypted message protected by a password you've agreed on in advance, similar to Proton's approach.

Mailbox.org and Posteo

These two are both German and feel more like traditional email done carefully than like encryption-first startups.

Mailbox.org is a full suite: mail, calendar, contacts, file storage and an online office suite. It works with normal mail apps over IMAP, supports PGP right in the webmail, and has an option to encrypt incoming mail with your own PGP key so it's stored encrypted. It's paid only, and you can even pay anonymously by mailing in cash, which tells you something about who they're building for.

Posteo is the minimalist. No ads, no tracking, no data collection at signup, simple pricing, and it works with any mail app. It supports PGP too. It's not trying to be an ecosystem. It's just honest email.

The honest caveat for both: PGP here is something you set up and manage. It's more flexible, but it doesn't happen automatically the way it does between two Proton or two Tuta users.

So which one?

Here's how I'd think about it.

• You want it to just work, and maybe a VPN and password manager too: Proton.
• You want the most encrypted by default and don't care which mail app you use: Tuta.
• You want a private, no-nonsense provider that works with any mail app: Mailbox.org or Posteo.

Whichever you pick, a couple of things make a bigger difference than the provider itself.

Use your own domain if you can. If you ever want to switch providers again, you just point your domain somewhere new and nobody has to update your address. Proton, Tuta, Mailbox.org and Posteo setups differ on custom domains, so check before you commit.

Use aliases for sign-ups. A different address for every site means a breach or a spam list can't tie your accounts together, and you can kill an alias the moment it starts getting junk.

And give it a real trial. Forward your old account to the new one for a month, update your important logins as they come up, and don't delete the old account until the trickle of mail there stops. Switching email is less about the setup and more about patience.