Started to move off Google’s services to proton:
What Zoho plan are you using? I can’t quite tell what the difference between the free and lite tiers is except for IMAP/POP support.
I moved over to Proton earlier this year and have had a good experience so far, but I’m not married to it or anything.
i started with the mail basic (10 euro yearly for 10gb) but then because i switched from “secondary email that forwards to gmail” to “primary email that imports from gmail”, i had to move to the more expensive plan
Proton has been gradually closing down access to proprietary apps only. After they’re done you won’t be able to take your email anywhere else.
If you have your own domain you’ll be able to host it elsewhere but you would leave behind email, calendar, aliases etc. and restarting from scratch.
At that point “encrypted” starts smelling more like “hostage”. It’s generally a bad idea to be tied down to a specific email provider.
You could wake up tomorrow to find out Proton has been acquired and the new owners can charge anything yet want for continued service.
I mean, that’s going to be a risk you take with any hosted service. I currently self-host my contacts and calendar, but I have no interest in hosting my own email again.
I don’t self host my email either. I got my registrar, DNS and email separate from each other so if any of them goes bad I can switch with minimum fuss.
But that makes it all the more important to be able to download all your mail from your provider.
Proton currently has two proprietary things you can use to download, a “bridge” PC app that pretends to speak IMAP, and a download tool. The bridge will be discontinued after they launch their propeietary PC mail app so that leaves just the proprietary download tool, which only does .eml. format.
Okay, I’m following. So who would you recommend as an email provider?
That’s a very broad question that depends a lot on your usage. My needs may be different from yours.
I’m currently using Migadu because:
- Unlimited domains, mailboxes, accounts and aliases for a flat fee. I’m managing accounts for myself as well as family and extended family members and it comes out much cheaper this way than services that ask $5-10/account.
- Very nice management interface with all the bells and whistles but with reasonable defaults and easy to use.
- The company is based in Switzerland and the mail hosted in EU (France).
- Standard email service with everything you’d expect (the regular protocols, spam protection, webmail, full compatibility with clients etc.)