Enzomatic said:
So is the consensus on here that protonmail is the best alternative to switch to at this point? What're the benefits to using that option over others?
ProtonMail https://www.proton.me has what I think is the best done user interface of any that I have seen. I also like their cell phone app best, too. With a paid account, you can also get VPN services, storage, calendar, and other benefits.
The approximately $4 per month individual account is not bad at all. Free accounts are limited in storage -- an old friend of mine has a free account there the the storage limits means that he has to prune his mail fairly often. I try not to send him anything with large attachments.
They also have fully integrated encryption. If someone breaks into their servers and steals your e-mail files, they are going to really have to want to target your e-mail in order to break the encryption key to get the actual text.
A couple of years ago, ProtonMail came under one of the largest denial of service attacks ever seen. That did slow it down a bit, but you could still send and receive your e-mail in a timely manner.
For what it's worth, I have a Visionary account which they no longer offer. They now offer a Proton Family account with up to 3 terabytes of storage. Currently, they are offering a special Cyber Week discount of 33% off for a year's coverage. If you want a pay account, this week is the time to act (I don't know when it ends).
Vivaldi https://vivaldi.com/features/mail/ is another excellent choice. I don't know if they have a paid version, but the free version has includes 5 gigabytes of storage (for some reason, mine shows 10 gigabytes available). I have a Vivaldi account that I mainly use for sending the logs from my various servers. If you want a free e-mail that is very good, this is my number one recommendation. You can also access it with an e-mail client using POP3 or IMAP.
It can also handle encryption quite well. My server logs are encrypted since they could potentially include confidential information. If I remember correctly, I set up the encryption key on my workstation and uploaded it to Vivaldi. This lets me read the logs from the browser or from an e-mail client.
I'm not positive, but I think that Vivaldi is run out of Iceland. I've been using their browser for quite a while and it is easily my favorite.
If not for ProtonMail, this would easily be my top choice.
Another popular choice that is not too bad is
MailFence www.mailfence.com which is another of the encrypted e-mail services that is popular.
One nice thing that I understand that MailFence does (I just have a free account there that I use for testing) is that you can use it as an e-mail client for other e-mail services that offer POP3 or IMAP. I think it has a limit of something like 5 or 10 such other services that it can handle for one account. For example, you could conceivably use a single MailFence account to handle your e-mail for Gmail, Aggie Network, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Greatmail all at the same time from one location.
I just checked their site. The free account lets you have up to 500 megabytes of e-mail and up to 500 megabytes of storage, but you don't get the POP3 or IMAP access or access to handle other services. For $3.50 a month, you get up to 10 gigabytes of emails and 30 gigabytes of document storage.
I believe that
Greatmail used to have free accounts, but looking at their web site, I'm not clear those are still available.
By the way, I just looked at Vivaldi's page again and I see they can interface with other providers like what MailFence does. I'm definitely going to take a further look at this. So far, I'm striking out on it. They may be referring to some other feature of the Vivaldi browser.
