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In this article we will talk about all of them alternatives to Gmail, free and possibly with applications Open source. For example, have you ever wondered why Gmail It's free? Why never Google should give you 15gb of free space and a free mailbox without getting anything in return?
Google through Gmail has access at your emails. By free access we mean that the emails are not zero-knowledge encrypted and consequently Google potentially can read not only i metadata of your email, such as who do you send an email to it's at what time, but it can also light the content of the email itself.
Privacy? Gmail alternatives respect this
We have already addressed the topic of privacy in other articles, such as alternatives to Google Search. If you use other Google services such as Maps or Chrome Google it will triangulate all this information and add it to everything that receive is that write by email.
Did you know that Google for example track all purchases made online?
A private email is possible with Gmail alternatives
That's why in this article we will analyze all the alternatives to Gmail! We recommend that you put your mind to it an important thing. Google bases the most of his earnings on advertising. It is, in fact, an advertising agency. All Google services I am free Why they analyze everything you do online and not only.
Some mail services, such as Proton And Tuta, they encrypt emails on their servers and have a high management cost. Furthermore, if the company does not earn through advertising profiling it must charge for the services and this is why most of the alternatives to Gmail that we propose you have to pay for.
When we talk about Zero-knowledge encryption it means that no one, not even those who manage the site, can read the contents of the email. Only and exclusively you with your password, as it should be and as it should be all the information that considered private information.
Alternatives to Gmail: Changing your email address is easy!
Don't let yourself be fooled by laziness or even by the fear of losing emails or "having to tell everyone". For example, it is important to do this for all purchases and of trips so as to no longer be analyzed and profiled. And this can be done in a very short time: before making a purchase, change the associated email address, it usually takes 2 minutes. We have also created an article on How to leave Gmail where we explain all the necessary steps.
Are you afraid of losing emails? Just forward them all to the new address: go on Gmail settings. Then in theForwarding and POP/IMAP label. Here you can forward all emails to your new address so you can make sure you don't miss a single one! Then slowly modify the various subscriptions (if you want, you are not even obliged to leave Gmail only for trivialities) and that's it.
For them private conversations instead, an even simpler operation will suffice: always in Gmail settings, in the'Generali label at the bottom you will find the “Automatic answerer“. Write a message informing the person writing to you that you have changed your email address and to change it in their address book as well. Et voilà, in a few minutes you have solved it!
Warning, some explanations needed
As was rightly pointed out to us above Twitter This article may cause confusion on some points and we think it is important to specify a couple of things. Unfortunately, in trying to summarize many concepts, some things may be explained hastily or poorly:
- only two of the services below offer encrypted emails with zero access from the providers and they are ProtonMail And Tutanota. All other providers potentially they can read and analyze your emails just as much as Gmail but, unlike Google, it is not their business to make money on your data. These providers generally offer paid email and/or earn through other services.
- when you send an email from Proton or Tuta this will only be safe on their servers. If you send an email to a Gmail address (or receive an email from a person who uses Gmail) inevitably this email can be analyzed. The point is another: do not allow your provider to analyze your purchases or consumption.
- if you need to have one private conversation emails are not created for this purpose. You can use the PGP encryption if your interlocutor uses it but it is generally recommended to move the conversation elsewhere such as Signal or similar alternatives.
Proton Mail
Open source
servers in owned data centers
Zero-knowledge encryption impossible for ProtonMail to read your emails
no IMAP, only possible on desktop with their bridge
search within messages only paid version otherwise search only in the subject
.onion address available
The first encrypted email service that we recommend is Proton Mail. Born in 2013 Swiss at CERN. Its servers are located in Switzerland, therefore they are outside the jurisdiction of the United States and the EU, and are managed by them precisely to avoid that someone else has to get their hands on them and therefore have to trust third parties. According to Swiss law if a foreign country wanted to put under surveillance there your email inbox must first pass through a Swiss court and is subject to international treaties. Proton Mail and so Safe, encrypted And free from any interference and from any tracking. A is currently offered free service basic with some limitations, a service Plus with 5GB of space for €4 per month and an alias for the domain is also included pm.me.
The best alternative to Gmail
About this: Gmail made you believe that you must keep all emails forever. But think about whether this really makes sense and take advantage of it to make a... a bit of healthy cleaning. In any case, it is possible import emails also from Gmail. Last very important thing, Proton Mail can also be reached via this Tor address!
ANDROID is available onapps on Play Store. Not up yet F-Droid but it is availableAPK on GitHub which you can update via Obtainium.
APPLE STORE it is also available onApp Store.
Proton Mail recently became part of Proton 1 and of the entire encrypted ecosystem together with Proton Drive, Proton VPN, Proton Calendar And Proton Pass.
AGAINST
There are no particular opinions against this email service. The code for their applications is available on GitHub. The calendar it recently came out of beta and everyone can try using it.
Tuta
green servers
server in Germany
End-to-end encryption impossible for Tutanota to read your emails
Open source
no IMAP
search within messages (although a little slow)
Another mail service encrypted, Safe and Open source And Tuta. The apps of Tutanota I am Open source but they don't use encryption PGP. However, it is a very valid alternative that can be had for free or for €3 per month. They have a very comfortable encrypted calendar and one should be available soon encrypted cloud drive. Tuta it's a German company.
They created their own CAPTCHA 2 even if you don't use it that of Google!
ANDROID is available on both Play Store what up F-Droid.
APPLE STORE it is also available onApp Store.
AGAINST
There are no particular cons for this mail service, try the free version and if you like it, use it!
Posteo
green servers
Open source
yes IMAP
Posteo is another interesting German mail service that uses only clean and sustainable energy thanks to Greenpeace Energy. The emails are encrypted and secure. Theirs account It starts at €1 per month and is one of the most convenient ever. It is not possible to use your own personal domain but it is mandatory to use one of their available domains 3.
ANDROID and APPLE STORE there is no email program for smartphones developed by Posteo, to be able to read emails you must use a any program and set up the server IMAP.
AGAINST
Not having their own proprietary email program is an advantage for some, unfortunately it is a disadvantage for others not everybody I am able to independently set up an IMAP server on an email client.
Mailbox
green servers
server in Germany
yes IMAP
Mailbox.org is a German company that offers a complete alternative suite to counter Google. Safe and totally free of advertising and tracers. Its servers are all in Germany and, last but not least, run on green energy at 100%. In short, the The conditions for a good email inbox are all there.
Mailbox has its own ecosystem that really competes seriously with Google. With Mailbox you will have an email inbox, calendars and address books can also be shared with users who do not have a Mailbox account. Plus there is a great and secure cloud service where you might want to put your photos, videos and documents.
They also also have a Office online service, so it's also a great one alternative to Google Docs. You can then open files docx or odt without any problem. Documents are also shareable with anyone from outside. It's not free (but you can try it for free for 30 days) at a reasonable cost. With €1 per month you have 2GB of email and 100MB of cloud. But you can easily calculate online your need.
Last, but not least, you can use a custom domain. You can read emails and their cloud with two different applications downloadable from the Play Store. OX Mail And OX Drive.
AGAINST
Unfortunately we seemed to understand that there is nothing Open source in their project.
Infomaniak
green servers
Swiss company and server in Switzerland
servers in owned data centers
yes IMAP
From Infomaniak we particularly trust it, it's not for nothing that we chose it as ours Hosting. It is a company that cares about both the planet and people and is particularly focused on privacy 4.
They deliver for free an email inbox with unlimited space if you purchase a domain with them. Also only €1.50 per month you can include five other mailboxes and a series of useful services such as calendar and address book that can replace the Google package. In our opinion, it is one of the best offers you can find for a personal domain. Their webmail It has recently been completely redone and is aesthetically very pleasant.
The official kMail application for reading mail has recently existed. AND Open source 5 and available, in beta, on Play Store, on F-Droid and also up iOS.
Furthermore, if you also associate their product kDrive (a alternative to Google Drive) it is also possible to have a truly complete ecosystem to use with your own domain.
A. has also recently become available free 20GB service with also another 3GB free to use for kDrive condominium @ik.me.
AGAINST
It is not a completely cheap product, especially if you want to combine it with the service kDrive even if in reality, according to our table, And the most convenient one when talking about €/GB price. Basically it is a professional email that is unlikely to disappoint you.
ServerMX
Italian company with 
servers in Europe
yes IMAP
Italian company with servers in Europe 6 which offers paid emails with free domains they own (example: servermx.it) or to use with a your domain. They also offer a calendar and contact service thanks to CardDAV and CalDAV protocols. An interesting thing is that you are not limited to having only one webmail but you can read your mail on it Roundcube, on Squirrel Mail, on SOGo 2 And SOGo 5, on AfterLogic and of course using the IMAP protocol therefore on whatever email program you want is on desktop what up smartphones.
The prices are not high and start from €1 per month and the problems on their servers seem limited: support.servermx.com.
AGAINST
They have a somewhat low limit for sending emails, this is certainly not a problem for normal and simple use but it could become tedious if used for example with Delta Chat.
StartMail
server in Holland
yes IMAP
The company is the same as StartPage, based in Holland, which we have already talked about in the article on alternatives to Google Search. It's a service e-mail which accepts Bitcoin as payment. There doesn't seem to be a totally free version but only one free trial the minimum price to pay is 59.95€ the year for 10GB of space. The emails are secure and the encryption is PGP.
AGAINST
There is not and is not scheduled a calendar and it is not possible to have a limited free version.
Disroot
Open source
server in Holland
yes IMAP
Last alternative to Gmail, is called Disroot and we have already talked about it on our about page ethical projects. They offer among other things a free email service until 1GB and send attachments up to 50MB 7. You can pay a little more per month for more space, up to a maximum of 54GB. Their servers are held by volunteers and the emails are not encrypted, however PGP can be used.
ANDROID And APPLE STORE there are no proprietary apps if you want to use it on mobile phones you will have to set your favorite email client.
AGAINST
It is not a solid company but a group of volunteers who keep the servers running. We wouldn't rely too much on it except for emails we care little about. However, it is an ethical and safe service.
More alternatives to Gmail
These alternatives, however, we know a little less about but are still generally recommended to those who want to find them an alternative to Gmail.
- Runboxes, has servers in Norway and his annual plans are very interesting indeed. They offer encrypted emails and its servers all run on hydroelectric power. They don't have their own application but you can read it on any app you want such as K-9 Mail or FairEmail;
- Mailfence, another very interesting European provider based in Belgium. Encrypted emails and compatible with keys OpenPgP. The price is not high and they also offer free space for 500MB of emails. They also don't offer their own application but you can use it K-9 Mail or FairEmail; It recently became a partner of Mozilla Thunderbird 8 and you can create an email address directly from the application;
- Eclipso, is a European provider based in Germany. Its webmail is really very simple and essential and the free plan is quite limited: it is not possible to use IMAP and it contains advertising. However, just €1 a month is enough to switch to a paid plan with some interesting features such as access to a personal drive with a 10GB CalDAV/WebDAV connection, the elimination of advertising and 10GB for your emails. You can choose different domains in addition to the default one which is eclipso.eu.
- Kolab Now, we have already known them for alternatives to Google Calendar. It is a very interesting provider with server in Switzerland. The cost is quite high and they only work with software Open source. As we said, they also offer other services such as calendar and contacts;
- Thexyz, a Canadian provider that offers encrypted emails. Very interesting and not too high priced. They also offer a lot of space, in fact in the Premium version you will have 25GB at your disposal;
- Soverin, if you want to buy a personal domain Soverin it may be right for you. They don't have their own email address but you can use your own domain and receive 25GB with the possibility of also using IMAP at €39 per year. Their servers are in Holland and their policy is decent;
- Migadu, another interesting option that does not offer its own email address but can only be used with its own domain. Created in Switzerland but with servers in France 9 It has a good policy and is only very good if you plan to use email little. In fact, it allows you to have almost infinite domains and addresses but you will only be able to send and receive a few emails a day. For example in Micro version you can only receive 200 emails and send 20;
- Swisscows, The Search engine Swisscows offers a free email inbox (expandable for a fee) with domain @swisscows.email. The email is not end-to-end encrypted as Tutanota or ProtonMail but it allows you to use your own PGP key easily. Webmail is a classic client Roundcube.
- Gandi.net, French provider for registering domains. Also in this case if you want a personal email address with your own domain use Gandi can be a smart choice. Free emails are no longer offered 10 but you can choose some for a fee (currently starting from €4.87 per month each).
- A new visual universe for Proton[↩]
- The Open source email service Tutanota fights for your right to privacy.[↩]
- Can I use Posteo with my own domains?[↩]
- Ecological paper[↩]
- kMail on GitHub[↩]
- Data Storage[↩]
- Disroot FAQ[↩]
- Mailfence Encrypted Email Suite in Thunderbird[↩]
- In Switzerland, but servers are not[↩]
- New Mailbox service and management of your current mailboxes[↩]
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