I’ve been looking to switch from gmail to a different email provider that’s more private. I’ve been hearing about Tuta, are there any drawbacks to it? Are there better options?

For a while I was planning on making the switch to protonmail but that’s off the table now due to the recent events surrounding them.

  • brownmustardminion@lemmy.ml
    3·
    9 months ago

    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.

      • brownmustardminion@lemmy.ml
        1·
        9 months ago

        I should re-iterate I download the emails to use in an offline client. Their service doesn’t support third party clients to receive and send email.

        When I do taxes, I need to search thousands of emails for receipts and the tuta apps make this impossible. This is my workaround.

  • sbird@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    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

    • MischievousGT@feddit.org
      1·
      9 months ago

      I’m using Tuta and their app for a few years now. The app was slow indeed but it’s good now, no problems so far. Lack of IMAP support is justified with security, they say. I personaly don’t need IMAP as I’m completely satisfied with the app, which is available officially in f-droid btw.

  • perishthethought@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    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.

  • feoh@lemmy.ml
    1·
    9 months ago

    It’s not Tuta but I adore Fastmail.

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

      • feoh@lemmy.ml
        0·
        9 months ago

        Services cost money to run. Either you pay for the product or you are the product.

        Make your choice, name your poison. No skin off my nose in any case :)

        • azalty@jlai.lu
          0·
          9 months ago

          I mean I self host for 4€/month and I could fit multiple emails in there

          Email is pretty much just about storage at some point, and there are a lot more cost effective servers for this, than a simple VPS

          • feoh@lemmy.ml
            1·
            9 months ago

            Self hosting email is a non trivial effort. I’ve done it before and am in zero rush to do it again.

            And before you tell me “Oh hey I’ve had no problems at all with delivery getting blocked by GOOG or MSFT” good on you but that has NOT been a lot of people’s experience trying to self host their E-mail, including mine.

  • ThePooDragon@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 months ago

    I didn’t like that Tuta didn’t support IMAP which means I am locked in to using their client. I self host my own CalDAV and carddav servers for calendar and contacts and wanted a single client for mail/calendar/contacts. Without IMAP support I could not do that. I ended up going with fastmail and am okay with the privacy tradeoff of no end to end encryption.

  • drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    11·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • Sarcasmo220@lemmy.ml
      0·
      9 months ago

      I am a paid user of Tuta and I have never seen any ads. Where did you see them and what kind of ads?

      • perishthethought@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        _drkt provided no proof of Tuta’s enshittification. There are no paid ads for third party products in any Tuta UI. Don’t panic yet. Read all the comments here, maybe.

        • drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          9 months ago

          no paid ads for third party products

          Haha you almost fucking got me, I actually wrote a whole thing about how those are ads but then I read your comment again and noticed that clever little write-off. Ads for their own products are still ads and I don’t want to fucking see it. Get that shit off my eyeballs, I paid for this product.

          The newsletter is an ad, it’s not news. They’re just advertising their products to you and you can’t unsubscribe and you can’t ignore it because they very deliberately have a special styling for the newsletters that makes it stand out from normal emails.

          I don’t know why you want to defend this company. I’m glad you’re okay with the level of shitty behavior they engage in; it’s definitely less than most email providers do- I’m just letting people know that Tuta aren’t angels. They’re a company, and they used to be better. Proton was exactly the same. It was a good service and then it became shitty.

          I would love to log back in and show you the 3 separate buttons on my UI that did nothing except link to a “Please pay us for this feature” page because I was a legacy premium user because I didn’t want all those new bullshit they made. I stress that it’s not a case of them implementing a button in the UI for all users and because I’m a legacy user I get it too even if I can’t use it- the buttons had special CSS to make them stand out. They were ads. Why couldn’t Tuta just leave me alone? I could still be paying them to this day if they had just not gone down that path. I just want an email that is an email and nothing more and doesn’t get in my way. Tuta had that, and then they took it away and asked for more money to put it back.

          I think the misunderstanding here is that I was a legacy premium user. I was paying less to get only the email+calendar because that’s what I signed up for, originally. When people sign up today, that’s not an option. People who are new to Tuta (relatively) haven’t seen this change happen and haven’t witnessed how obviously desperate Tuta was to get people off the legacy premium plan.

          Also my name is drkt_ but I’m sure you tried your best.

          • Libb@jlai.luEnglish
            0·
            9 months ago

            Get that shit off my eyeballs, I paid for this product.

            You should try Proton, then /s

            Proton constantly tries to push you to upgrade to their next plaid plan too. So much so that this coupled with still zero fucking support for Proton Drive under Linux are the two reasons I have cancelled my paid Proton plan… and I had been paying for years.

            edit: typos

            • drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              Yeah, I know! Don’t say that too loud, though. Proton and Tuta are the precious baby boys who can do no wrong in most “privacy” communities.

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
    01·
    9 months ago

    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 :(

    • nixx@feddit.nl
      1·
      9 months ago

      Mailbox.org beta offers regular 2FA setup via authenticator. I’ve been using it for months and I’m yet to run into any issues.

      In general, I’ve been with MBO for almost a year and I’m happy with the service. You basically get a complete replacement for the google suite which you can use via your app(s) of choice.

      • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        From what I understand, Tuta may have a slight edge theoretically, but email itself is a pretty poor protocol when it comes to privacy.

        Tuta was forced by court order to implement a message logger for an individual, but AFAIK all of their previous messages were encrypted and could not be read by Tuta, and therefore the Government could only see new unencrypted messages coming in before they were encrypted.

        Disroot only recently implemented at-rest encryption, so that should be fairly solid now. Posteo also allows you to encrypt your inbox and calendar at rest.

        Even with that, consider all private email providers as mostly just to avoid surveillance capitalism (to prevent your data from being mined and sold), but with only marginal protection from state agents.

          • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
            0·
            9 months ago

            Ortis has claimed that some unnamed Five Eyes foreign agent introduced him to the honeypot operation and that he didn’t notify his superiors at the RCMP about it.

            How can you trust an unnamed intelligence officer though? For all we know, they might have an actual honeypot competing against Tuta and want to gain marketshare.

            After all, intelligence agencies are guaranteed to be the first one’s who discovered Ortis was selling secret information. Might as well give him fake information to spread around and make criminals doubt any previous information sold by him.

            • badwetter@kbin.melroy.org
              11·
              9 months ago

              @yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de

              Where there’s smoke, there often is fire. If you don’t trust the allegations, fine.

              @countrypunk@slrpnk.net @ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net

    • reksas@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      9 months ago

      thanks for mentioning disroot, that seems much more like what i was looking for than tuta which i was originally going to try out.

      • badwetter@kbin.melroy.org
        03·
        9 months ago

        @reksas@sopuli.xyz

        Disroot is good, I’ve used them b4.

        @countrypunk@slrpnk.net @ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net