Finally have some free time to start moving away from a Gmail email address. Can anybody recommend a fully hosted email service provider?

I can pay.

Something like Fastmail, with the ability for aliases, and a clean, HTML, designed interface that isn't trying to be an app in a browser? But the ability to view messages as plain text.

Proton Mail is a no go because their LLMs poke all through your messages. I want something without AI bullshit.

I'd use Fastmail but they don't work with my VOIP mobile numbers and constantly engage in union busting so want something else.

#Email #AskFedi #privacy

@WeirdWriter proton mail. Free or paid. Secure, fully encrypted.

@WeirdWriter I for one would appreciate your accessibility take on any of these #optout alternatives to #Gmail that I list in the #Cybercleanse

https://www.optoutproject.net/secure-email/

Day Four: Secure Your Email - The Opt Out Project

Which Email Should I Use ...For What? I often get the question, 'What do you use for email?' I never…

@cyberlyra @WeirdWriter I would evaluate Infomaniak too (no interest to declare, just a happy punter). Seems to tick most of your boxes, and I know infosec folks who like it.
Infomaniak breaks rank and comes out in support of controversial Swiss encryption law

The law could have a significant impact on VPNs

Tom's Guide
@nikclayton @cyberlyra @WeirdWriter yep, I’ve seen that article. They are saying as a Swiss-based company that they intend to comply with Swiss law. Doesn’t seem too controversial to me. Proton (who already has form in this area) and others protesting is just performative. They have to comply with the law too. Infomaniak are just being more transparent with their customers. Any US- or UK-based company is already doing this (making data available in response to a warrant).

@tastapod @cyberlyra @WeirdWriter

1. It's not the law yet.

2. Infomaniak's statement (linked to in the article) says "We oppose this revision in its current form." without describing any actions they've taken to, y'know, actually oppose the proposal. Contrast that with public statements from Proton and others.

3. Proton makes data available in response to warrants, but also contests those warrants (https://proton.me/legal/transparency).

Transparency report | Proton

Proton's transparency report with aggregate statistics of legal orders from the Swiss authorities, covering Proton Mail, Proton Drive, and Proton Calendar.

Proton

@nikclayton @cyberlyra @WeirdWriter You appear to be conflating privacy and anonymity. Infomaniak is saying that if you use their services they will need to know who you are, if that becomes law. Seems legit to me.

I’m a happy paying customer in any case, and I intend to stay that way.

In the context of the OP moving away from Google—Google!—I don’t think the bar is that high in any case.

Out of that list, ICloud, and Fastmail, are the most accessible on that list. All the others have to many inaccessible elements for me to recommend to casual blind users. @cyberlyra
@WeirdWriter @cyberlyra there's zoho.eu i used their enterprise version long ago and usability was ok. you can use their free version with custom domain too.
@WeirdWriter That's what I was concerned about. Thanks!
@WeirdWriter You plan to manage everyhing on your own domain, am I right?
@socheat At some point, yes
@WeirdWriter then you checkout at https://mxroute.blackfriday.
They had great pricing. But custom domain only.
@WeirdWriter I don't know how this provider's webmail is in terms of accessibility, but https://migadu.com/ came highly recommended in this review by @jgoerzen (who is sighted): https://changelog.complete.org/archives/9952-review-of-secure-privacy-respecting-email-services
Migadu Email

@matt @WeirdWriter @jgoerzen FYI I started a Migadu trial to investigate accessibility. Admin pages are pretty good, webmail is very bad. Scant keyboard navigation, tons of missing labels, rolls and states are a guessing game, annoying emoji all over the place. Pages load surprisingly slowly as well compared to the rest of their site. Bummer.
@matt @WeirdWriter @jgoerzen Have got a trial with Runbox now as well. Much the same situation, admin stuff good, webmail is a hot hour in hell with screen readers. That's my two frontrunners inspected and rejected. Bummer!
@Scott @matt @WeirdWriter At this point I'm actually thinking about running my own mail server on a VPS again because I'm not happy with any of the webmail providers out there. I currently run Office365 which I'm used to, but its getting more expensive and want to ditch it in protest of the new Outlook.
@andrew @matt @WeirdWriter Would that help to access mail in-browser because you could choose which webmail to use? If so, do you already know of a goodly accessible open source option? Might be able to talk one of these ethical mail companies into deploying it.
@Scott @matt @WeirdWriter Yep that was my thinking but I was going to have to try a few options myself. At least going this way I can use the stock version of the client without any updates from the provider itself. I'm a long way there and don't really want to deal with mail again but its something I had on the list.
@matt @WeirdWriter @jgoerzen In case anyone is following along, I'm checking out a trial of Mailbox now. Their webmail is miles ahead of the two I tried earlier in the thread. Plenty of structural markup to navigate, good labelling, not quite as clean of a UI as I was hoping for but I'm gonna keep poking at it to see what I can turn off/clean up.
@matt @WeirdWriter @jgoerzen Open Talk comes along with this Mailbox trial. Looks decent. Its UI came up in German at first despite all other pages I've explored so far being in English. That was a small adventure. Language is the topmost option after you click Settings (or "Einstellungen" as they'd say in the office). :P
@Scott @WeirdWriter Let's remove John from the thread at this point.

@WeirdWriter

dare I ask about posteo?

@albinanigans Thank you I will check that out!
@matt @WeirdWriter Look at these two suggestions: cotse.net and posteo.de
@WeirdWriter I have my personal domain hosted at DreamHost and email hosting comes with it. I've been happy with that. OTOH I don't know how its webmail access works since I'm full-IMAP for clients. (It's probably fine? I just dunno)
@wordshaper @WeirdWriter The Dreamhost Webmail interface is OK for emergencies but slow to load my huge mailboxes.

@wordshaper

I also use DreamHost, and their webmail is just a regular Roundcube instance.

@WeirdWriter

@WeirdWriter https://tuta.com/ might be worth a look
Tuta: Turn ON privacy for free with secure emails, calendars & contacts | Tuta

Tuta guarantees your data stays private for free & without ads. Quantum-resistant encryption makes Tuta the best secure technology solution to protect your privacy.

Tuta

@WeirdWriter

I use posteo.net and I am very happy with their service so far.

@WeirdWriter Whichever provider you go with, I *strongly* recommend getting a domain name (ideally one you'd be okay with using professionally) and setting that up for your email address going forward. Most providers support this and offer guides for setting it up. A basic domain name will set you back about €10-€20 per year and you will never have to change your email address again; if whichever provider you choose now goes sour later, you can simply point the domain at a different one.

#email

@mkj How do aliases work with custom domains?
@WeirdWriter Depends on the email provider you choose, but I would *expect* no significant difference between using your own domain name and using someone else's domain name.
@WeirdWriter
Works fine. I never got it working with Migadu (but it might be me) but got it working painlessly with Tuta (the UI is awkward though, you have to deal with regex which could be a deal breaker for some people).
@mkj
@magnetic_tape @WeirdWriter @mkj I went down this path half a year ago and am very happy with it. Got my own domain and an email account with mailbox.org. They got good support documents for setting up one’s domain that explain what steps are needed or recommended (e.g. to not get your emails rejected by gmail). I can set something like 50 email aliases for my own domain and it supports using + in email addresses, increasing the set of aliases to basically unlimited. So I set up my alias account@mydomain.com and when I create an account with some company, I use account+companyname@mydomain.com so I can filter incoming mail reliably (and have a better chance at telling where spam originated, if the spammers don’t bother stripping the plus component). Some websites don’t allow plusses in email addresses, but that’s the exception to the rule these days.
@MarcSchulder
Thanks for your feedback. Personaly I want to stop using the "plus" aliases because many spammers (and even legit sites) know this trick and remove it.
@WeirdWriter @mkj
@mkj @WeirdWriter I have this, but I do wonder about whether my kids/spouse will have the technical chops to manage it when I kick the bucket. It's a slightly problematic digital legacy.

@WeirdWriter

1. Proton Mail's LLM feature are disable by default. You must go to settings to enable it.

2. If you use it as a writing aid, you can choose to run it on your device or on dedicated servers.

Using it in a proofreading is really good feature and more secure than Grammarly or others.

#ProtonMail #privacy

@tinkel @WeirdWriter Good morning Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, ProtonMail?

@oceane @WeirdWriter

ProtonMail, Tuta, Posteo, .. there are many saviors.

@tinkel @WeirdWriter Ah yes, my bad, I’d read the post earlier and forgot about the LLM part.

You’re saying the LLM is disabled by default but that it’s used for a few reasons, that aren’t connected to Robert’s needs but to the typical LLM use case.

Sorry, I didn’t get that. But ProtonMail has many elements similar to these of a cult, connected in a similar way as within a cult, so I wouldn’t recommend that anyway.

If Robert absolutely wants to move away from Google regardless of ProtonMail’s history of predation of neuroatypical social media addiction survivors – basically claiming that they’re better predators than Google – then of course, if the ProtonMail UI was accessible enough I’d be no one to tell him not to do the switch.

But if we’re discussing ethics then ProtonMail is no better than Google. I’m not aware of the accessibility of other open source webmails, and honestly that’s a shame, we all should try to use our software with an open source screen reader once in a while. The Phanpy UI is kinda cute but navigating it with tab is a nightmare, and you’ll get stuck in loops at some point.

I don’t know to which extent Emacs and Notmuch are accessible OOTB, but that’s what I’m trying to configure ATM. Thanks to both of you for prompting me into considering the visual accessibility of the Unix/MIT libre software for which I’m going to write localized cheatsheets on my blog. I’m sorry I haven’t thought about it earlier.

@WeirdWriter I’m using mailbox.org it’s very good
@WeirdWriter https://www.strato.com/ I like them because the prices are good EU servers and the prices stay good unlike some other brands that start cheap and get more expensive by the day.
STRATO

@WeirdWriter I also use posteo.de and am completely satisfied. That said, if you're planning on using your own domain, you'll probably want something that supports bringing your own domain.

Digging around a bit, it looks like @doncow might be a decent option for which @netcup_global@netcup.cafe is one of the recommended #VPS providers with at least some English support.

Or if you're feeling especially adventurous you might consider trying @yunohost, though being honest, I have no idea how well it scales.

@WeirdWriter @timbray

i'm switching from proton to my own domain using migadu.com. it was super easy to get started, and i was able to import all my old messages from three different email addresses

@WeirdWriter the domain provider doteasy.com does this fairly well with the only problem being the webmail which uses Roundcube. Roundcube, generally stinks with screen readers, if I may say so. Having said that, life is a good deal less painful with a client, no matter what provider you're using (Thunderbird, Outlook (older versions only, MS has gone a bit off the deep end recently), Betterbird, etc). All the mail on the web I've worked with range from very bad to absolutely unusable. I admire your fortitude in using the Gmail web interface.
Ah thank you! Yeah, I'll be using a client for actually reading and replying to emails, but things like managing filters and contacts and stuff I'll probably do via the website. @techsinger
@WeirdWriter I understand. I'm sorry to say roundcube is really bad for managing those sorts of things. I hope you find something that's workable, I may say I've tried tons of services but the webmail provision has been either bad or very bad with both Jaws and NVDA.

@WeirdWriter Have been at https://nubo.coop/en for a couple of years and I’m happy with it 😊 (before that, many years at Gandi which I cannot recommend anymore)

The default webmail is Roundcube, like at many other providers, but it works with any IMAP client anyway.

Other options I considered: https://migadu.com or https://tuta.com/secure-email or https://mailo.com or https://alwaysdata.com/en/ and those: https://mastodon.social/@nclm/110554836734133607

You can also look at those options: https://www.chatons.org/en/search/by-service?service_type_target_id=112

Nubo

a cooperative for mail and cloud, ethical and local, all working together

Nubo
@WeirdWriter
I've been trying to switch to Tuta, but infinite aliases can only be made if you have your own domain. Not sure if it meets your needs.
@WeirdWriter I cannot speak highly enough of mailbox.org. German servers, GPG enabled, good support and fair pricing.
@WeirdWriter i am not sure if your information on proton is correct. i use it and there is no ai crawling through my (encrypted) messages.
@WeirdWriter
Don't forget to check whether they have a bridge to standard protocols (emails and calandar). Having to deal with a proprietary email client that sucks is not fun at all and is leaving a walled garden (albeit one of the worst if it's google) to another one.