Question to you.

What is a good email solution for non-profits/community groups in the United States?

Base Requirements:
- Emails that use our domain name.
- Allows individual email accounts for users (roughly 20 to 50).
- Allows email aliases / groups to where emailing one email delivers to multiple users (eg [email protected] goes to three specific people or [email protected] goes to those working on the food rescue side, etc)

Ideal requirements:
- Cheap or free
- Privacy / security oriented
- Managed (I don't like the idea of hosting our own email server for example)

Those ideal requirements have some contradiction in it, of course.

So high level, I've looked into:
- Google
- Microsoft
- Proton Mail
- Tutanota
- Mailbox org
- Startmail

Here is the quick overview for those:

Google:
- https(slash)www.google(dot)com/nonprofits/offerings/workspace/#!#workspace-pricing
- Cost: Free
- Con: They actively scan and read all emails. So we become the product.
- Pro: They are used by many non-profits and are well liked from a usability standpoint

Microsoft:
- https(slash)www.microsoft(dot)com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/nonprofit-plans-and-pricing
- Cost: $5.50 per user
- Con: They actively scan and read all emails
- Pro: They have a more robust app offering.
(I don't think we need this level of IT for our group though)

Proton Mail for Non-Profits:
- https://proton.me/business/plans#plans
- Cost: 20% off Business Costs. If we just went with email, it'd be about $5.60 per user per month
- Pro: They are private and secure and can't read emails
- Con: Much less app support but we really just need email for this

Tutanota does not offer non-profit discounts within the US - So it's a similar offering as Proton Mail for about three dollars more per month.

Startmail is also similar in price point and features as Proton and Tutanota

Mailbox(dot)org may be ideal in this space as it's only $1 per user per month. I have to check and see if we can use a custom domain, etc.

Google is free... which matters. You are the product. Also folks know it - the UI is good. Making a cost benefit analysis here, I have to bring up the "we don't have anything to hide" sort of thing. As an individual, that doesn't fly - right. But as a community group / potential non-profit, we are already transparent. None of our communications contain sensitive information. And we have a lot of folks coming in and out as it is.

So, what would the threat scenario around an org using Google for email be?

Any other ideas?

#privacy #email #solarPunk

Been tackling things related to diet, eating, and weight, etc., now that I can breath a bit.

Cool thing I found...

I eat when I'm bored (a common thing). I like food. I eat food. I get a dopamine hit. Yay.

In order to address this specific area, I bought a lot of different chewing gums. Really diving into the various fruit flavored ones (I really dont like mint). I bought a lot of different flavors.

So when I'm bored. I chew a fun fruit flavored one, or two or three.

Seems to scratch that itch. I'm not perfect with it. But it has drastically reduced the amount of boredom eating I do. I know so many folks do this (chewing gum works for other things like smoking, as well right?).

So, nothing ground breaking. Just wanted to share that it's working for me.

I've taken care of stress eating (it's still a thing, but I've addressed it and it seems to be working for now). I have now addressed boredom eating. I still "autistic burnout" eat? But that's usually only once a week or every other week and three-fourths of a medium pizza does the trick - when the brain gets fried, it needs grease apparently... no idea...

Turns out I don't need to eat a lot when I just eat for sustenance.

My goal is to lose 1 pound a week and I've been pretty solid with that. But with the chewing gum hack removing boredom eating, I lost 2.5 pounds last week.... huh.... I should watch that, too. Seems to be too quick. We'll see if it becomes a trend.