Best email provider
Last updated: June 16, 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.
• Tutanota, privacy-focused email provider based in Germany
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."
Best-of
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