If you don’t want to run your own mail server then there will always be a trade off somewhere. That trade off could be high costs to pay a tech firm to run a private mail server for you, could be lack of features, could be privacy, could be a lot of things. Even with your own mail server there will be trade offs around security etc. depending upon your skillset.

Personally, I have a hybrid approach.

• Business is on a mail server
• Personal with sensitive data (health, bills, etc.) is on a mail server
• Personal - subscriptions, newsletters, etc. is on Proton
• Everything else is on Gmail

I also have other accounts (e.g. DDG, Apple Mail, for specific use cases, but I forward the content I receive there into Gmail.

I’ve had a look at Tuta and haven’t seen enough to convince me to move anything there. I’m not going to move my mail servers to a cloud provider, Gmail is there because the address is 20 years’ old and I can’t be bothered updating everywhere that it’s used, and Proton has been great for years, has grown well, and has a corporate mission that I agree with. DDG, Apple Mail etc. is what the internet sees of me - They generate unique email addresses and then I forward the content I want into Gmail, or sometimes Proton.

I am very happy with Proton.

What did proton do wrong? Legit question, I'm out of the loop.

It's not Tuta but I adore Fastmail.

No BS. No gimmicks. Just privacy aware, protocol conformant E-mail at a reasonable price.

Yes.

I’ve tried tuta before. It seems pretty okay, but it doesn’t support IMAP meaning you have to use their app, and (at least for me) it was SLOW.

I personally use disroot, but there’s loads of other options, like mailfence seems like a decent alternative. Just pick one that supports IMAP

No single organization should be trusted. "Emails paint an intimate narrative of ourselves — the people we talk to, the books we read, the politics we practice. This information is powerful. When we lose control over it, it can do great harm to ourselves and our loved ones." https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-should-all-care-about-encryption-really/

I started using fastmail, best thing I decided to do in awhile

Tuta's product is snake oil.

A cryptosystem is incoherent if its implementation is distributed by the same entity which it purports to secure against.

If you don't care about their (nonstandard, incompatible, and snake oil) end-to-end encryption feature and just want a freemium email provider which (purports to) protect your privacy in other ways, the fact that their flagship feature is snake oil should still be a red flag.

I've used Tuta for more than 4 years. It's a solid choice if you accept a couple few things:

• they're a small company, doing their best to survive.

• you have to use their client apps. They take security very seriously and assume all of their users do as well.

• prices might go up every few years but I am still paying my original rate, for my original features.

• the search function does work but is very slow.

But otherwise, I'm very happy and expect to stay with them for the forseeable. Good luck in your search.

~~Tuta and~~ Posteo are both pretty excellent (posteo is cheaper, but has a few less options that might be a deal breaker if you need them, like custom domain support).

Disroot is a good free option, and they offer custom domains after a one time donation.

Mailbox is okay, though they are known to have a very odd 2fa, and will recycle your address if you ever stop paying, allowing others to claim it and potentially impersonate you.

Posteo is unique in that they'll never delete your account for inactivity, or even if you stop paying, where they'll let you access and read emails, but not let you send them until you pay again.

Edit: apparently Tuta is going downhill according to others here, which is unfortunate :(

In comparison to Gmail? Yes, but that's a very low bar to clear. You need to be aware that Tuta are currently enshittifying. The product is getting worse and the price increases. It's slow, but it's happening. I switched to disroot.org after 2 years of Tuta because I got fed up with it.

It is in my Scrolls of Grudge, and I quote:

Ads in web UI for paying user.
Made it hard to cancel payment.
Newsletter is just upselling.
Can't unsub from newsletter.

I've used Tuta for years, paid account with multiple custom domains.

I prefer them for their principles, but their clients are extremely frustrating. Emails load very slowly and their email search is basically unusable.

I've resorted to downloading old emails and using other clients to import and search through them. I really wish they would improve their email search.

I've had a bug with the android app where sometimes notifications for emails just don't happen. I've received a new email notification, opened the app, and found that the notification was for an email received 5 hours ago, and I didn't get any notification for the email 3 days ago or the email 1 hour ago.

Despite this issue and several other minor issues, I still recommend Tuta. Mostly because I can't find anything better.

I’m currently planning on switching to Tuta as well. They have been the most recommended replacement since the proton incident.

I recommend mailbox.org instead.