I’m actually a current Mullvad VPN customer, I know of their browser but I haven’t tried it. They’re very privacy friendly, no email required for sign up, and you can even mail them cash to pay. While I like what stand for and think they’re awesome, recently they decided to stop offering port forwarding for their VPN, so I need to find an alternative. My main use case for VPNs is torrenting, so port forwarding helps with that a lot. Proton VPN offers port forwarding which was why I was considering just using them for both email and VPN.

Their browser sounds interesting though, from what I’ve heard it’s basically Tor browser but without the Tor network. The fingerprinting protection sounds awesome, I think one issue with my current browser setup is that I’m probably very unique and easy to fingerprint. So will look into that.

Cool, thank you. Yeah I need to buy a domain for email at some point

unless I’m mistaken they can’t hand over your actual emails, since they are encrypted at rest by your password, right?

That is true I believe, they can use the address to identify you but if the email content is encrypted they can’t get the contents. The subject line though is not encrypted.

Same though, I’m not necessarily trying to avoid the police or government but mainly advertising/AI bullshit/ less reliance on google. Do you use proton’s other services, like the cloud storage and VPN?

I tried it a few years ago and it was fine until some asshole impersonated my domain and a major spamlist decided to hate my guts.

Ah, that sucks. Have been wanting to try hosting my own email at some point but this has got me scared. Will have to do my research beforehand for sure

Cool, have been wanting to setup an email server with docker, but mainly for fun/learning and not really to use as a serious email provider. I’ve heard in most cases it’s more trouble than it’s worth and most of the time your emails won’t even be received by the major providers.

I’d be interested to know which controversies you’re referring to though?

Mainly the reports @malloc was referring and other things about them misrepresenting how anonymous their email service actually is. Not that I need a totally anonymous email service or need to hide from the government, it just has given me second thoughts about going for them.

Are you satisfied with ProtonMail, do you use their other stuff like cloud storage and the VPN? Do you think it’s worth the extra cost? The VPN has also drawn me to them because I need a VPN that supports port forwarding. Thanks.

So all that to say, not that I have an answer for you, but I have a recommendation, to buy your own domain, and give yourself the flexibility to switch around different providers.

Yeah, I’ve been looking into buying a domain for that exact reason, flexibility if I do switch providers so I don’t have to change my email on a bunch of accounts or give people out a new email address.

Self-hosting interests me too but have heard it’s very hard to get right so people actually receive your emails. I haven’t looked super deep into it though, it’s just been on my todo list to try.

Thank you!

I’ve been really into self-hosting this year and self-hosting an email server has definitely been on my todo list, but mainly for fun/learning rather than serious usage as my primary email. Mainly because I’ve heard is difficult and time consuming to configure properly so you don’t end up on spamlists of the major providers. What’s your experience been like, was it difficult to configure, any trouble with people not receiving your emails?