hello i’m looking to move away from gmail onto another platform, that is preferably a paid site so that they’re less likely to sell my data.
The one caveat is that with gmail, I’m using their SMTP service, which means I’m sending email with code from a gmail address I setup. I also can send emails as another email address from a custom domain this way as well. I’d like to continue to be able to do that on whatever other platform. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, basically option 2 here:
I don’t really care much about my emails being encrypted. Email isn’t very secure anyway, so that really isn’t super important as long as the SMTP thing exists
Proton Mail is known for its security and SMTP is exclusively a paid feature beneath their Mail Plus plan which comes with encrypted storage, a calendar & a VPN for $3.99/mo.
Overall, their quality of service is pretty good in my opinion, but some people disagree with the direction they’ve been going since launch.
Worth checking out if you’re looking for a move, at least.
SMTP is pretty much the standard email protocol. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any email that wouldn’t have it unless it’s some weird pseudo email. (email is also a lot more secure than a lot of communication services)
I made this post a while ago compiling different email services. Though my purpose was for using my own domain, many of the options there do not require having your own domain.
I’ve used Proton mail with its SMTP for a year or two now. I’ve had no issues with it. It’s pretty fussy if you also plan to use IMAP, however. And if all you need is SMTP it costs way more than other options. I was planning to not renew my subscription with them this year and move over to something cheaper.
Armaina, your thread is awesome! Thanks for putting in the research. I’ll just add that these two are both low-cost and offer smtp. I’ll probably switch to either Mailbox.org or Migadu (NB they don’t allow automated emails. Probably a good thing if you don’t send them, since it keeps them from sending spam.)
You could try https://atomicmail.io/
It uses SMTP, It can either send emails directly to recipients or utilize SMTP servers, including your own or third-party ones. It also allows for flexible SMTP settings like SMTP rotation and setting limits on the number of emails sent via each SMTP server.
I personally use it, since its also similar to my favorite Proton Mail.
Seconded. I was using Proton Mail like some others here have mentioned, but they had a controversy a while back… I can’t remember what it was and I will have to look it up. But after that I started to explore the alternatives that were ‘like’ Proton and didn’t really like the options. Apple came out with custom domain email hosting and bam - I can use my own domain with the iCloud backend.
Edit: I can’t honestly remember what the catalyst was for me leaving PM. But searching around I did find this. I believe this was around the time I started looking for alternatives so this might have been the reason. Either way, they do a lot of posturing and their actions sometimes do not align to their mission and stated values.
thanks for the recs yall. i actually ended up going with Startmail, partly because their servers are in the netherlands, and they don’t have a free tier. 2 things that make me trust that my data will stay with them and won’t go anywhere else.
Also I did end up using my custom domain since it took me like 2 weeks to update all my accounts across the internet from my old gmail to my new one. Now I’ll never have to do that again as long as I keep paying for my own domain