Have you ever heard about Mailfence? How does it compare to Protonmail?
I actually haven’t heard of it before!
I just checked it out, and this actually looks very enticing indeed... I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about it until now. Turns out this is actually quite comparable to Protonmail.
Although it seems like a good counterpart to proton, I’ve noticed a few things while browsing through its website, which make me hesitant to recommend it over protonmail.
Pros to Mailfence:
They offer their own suite of software alongside emails, including a calendar and docs. Proton has calendar software in open beta for paid users right now, but they don’t even have docs. All this is for free users of mailfence. (This seems to be the main thing that sets it apart from Protonmail, as far as I can tell)
They very directly state in their privacy policy that they will not cooperate with the NSA or other surveillance agencies
15% of their profits from paid accounts are donated to the EFF and European Digital Rights Foundation
Provides a public transparency report / warrant canary, despite being based in a country where gag orders are not law (protonmail does this as well)
Seems to offer similar end-to-end encryption / PGP email as protonmail
Offers app-based 2FA, as does protonmail
Has no ads, does not share user information with 3rd parties unless legally obligated to do so, as does protonmail
...Basically, most of the things protonmail does, they also do, other than providing additional software that Proton doesn’t have. So if you need private and secure docs, maybe they’re worth checking out.
However, along with these pros, I noticed quite a number of cons to using them.
Their mobile apps (both android and ios) are available to paid accounts only. Protonmail allows free users to use their mobile apps
Their software is proprietary, meaning third parties cannot freely view and audit the software to independently verify their claims of privacy + security
If your (free) account is inactive for 12 months, your account will be suspended, and 4 months after suspension your account will be completely deleted. This is the sort of thing Yahoo does with old accounts, which is honestly really frustrating. Protonmail keeps your account and its contents indefinitely.
Small complaint, but you must provide an external email address just to sign up for the service. Protonmail might ask for an external email or SMS verification under certain circumstances, but most of the time you should just need to solve a captcha.
That isn’t to say this makes their service terrible or anything; quite the contrary, I think it seems like a really great alternative to protonmail. But, you should do your research before you consider this type of thing, if you’re really planning on switching to a new email provider.
For me, personally, I’d say Protonmail is really the way to go. It’s the easiest for people to jump into using, coming from the bigger and more mainstream email providers. Plus, the developers are wholly focused on digital rights and privacy + security.
Another alternative that I’ve personally tried out is Tutanota. They offer a lot of stuff that these two services provide as well, although I believe they’re a bit smaller of a company and don’t have quite as ambitious goals as these two.
Anyway, I hope this helped !
