Best email provider
Last updated: October 13, 2021
Here's our favorite email provider: Fastmail.
Why: Fastmail provides email without engaging in tracking or surveillance of your private communications. Remember - if you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product (or as Shoshana Zuboff puts it, your behavioral data is being harvested as the product).
Business model: Paid monthly subscriptions. Not surveillance.
Whatever you do, don't use Gmail for email.
• Web: fastmail.com
• iOS app: Fastmail
• Android app: Fastmail (though we suggest avoiding Android if possible)
Other options
• Hey, launched in 2020 by the founders of Basecamp. In February 2021, Hey launched Hey World, which allows users to email in blog posts.
• ProtonMail, an encryption-focused email provider based in Switzerland. Users particularly interested in encryption should try ProtonMail, while Fastmail is somewhat easier to use, and Hey.com has some unique email-filtering features.
-->Note: ProtonMail issued this statement on Sept 6, 2021 explaining why the company shared identifying details about one of their users. BoingBoing reported (Sept 7) that ProtonMail quietly modified their stated privacy promise.
• Tutanota, privacy-focused email provider based in Germany
• Unicycle, “the first inbox workflow tool made just for professors.” Filter email by classroom, send class announcements.
See also
• More email services are listed at switching.software, ethical.net, and Privacy Tools
• Still in development, the mnm project and its TMTP protocol offer a "far safer correspondence model" to fix the problems (like cybercrime) enabled by traditional email and SMTP. Try a demo, posted March 2021.
• Zak Doffman in Forbes (March 6, 2021): "You should delete the Gmail app from your phone today."
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