We all know the recommended section for email providers is lacking in options, all of them compromise on something.
Personally I find myself in a bit of a pickle. I value the ability to use a custom domain (this is a must) as well as IMAP support (encryption is optional).
For my use case would it be best to add a custom email to an alias service like SL or Addy and redirect it to any inbox (e.g posteo), OR just add the custom domain to a more dedicated email provider like proton and call it a day?
The alias + Posteo version seems cheaper and more flexible, but I’m not sure if it would work that well?
Firstly as I understand reverse alias is in beta (correct me if im wrong) but also can you even compose an email from an aliasing service, or are you only able to reply?
Is anyone out there who’s tried both methods and can talk a bit about their experience?
You create reverse-alias in SL (you feed it the recipient email), then send email to this reverse-alias instead of the recipient email. You can then do back-and-forth like normal.
One is not a substitute for the other. You will need either the Unlimited plan or Mail Plus + SL Premium to get full aliasing capabilities. Just Proton Plus is really limited.
I’ve considered Fastmail, but I find the pricing quite steep, and emails aren’t encrypted at rest, right? I should probably have mentioned that I value encryption at rest but not E2EE as much since… well, most of the world uses gmail anyway.
Regardless, if I were to use Fastmail, would one domain name suffice to fill my needs? Generally I want to be able to use a custom domain but I also want to alias so that I can control data leaks and where spam is coming from. I’m not sure if one domain name would be enough or if I’d need two (one to just be mailbox, and another to alias).
Yes, Fastmail then is totally usable here for your use case. I recently moved my father to Fastmail and he is loving it. He didn’t need encryption or anything and he also uses one of the custom domains for business purposes. At-least he is off Google so that’s still a step in the right direction.
Yes, I might not have explained myself correctly: I want a mailbox that is encrypted at rest (so I guess this mostly leaves us with Proton, Tuta and Mailbox.org) but I also want to use a custom domain and IMAP (so basically only Proton and Mailbox would work here).
However if instead of adding the domain to mailbox or proton, maybe i can just add it to an alias service and then pay way less for posteo and still get encryption at rest + imap? Seems like a better bang for my buck but I’m not sure what the limitations of this setup could be.
I also don’t know if it kinda defeats the purpose of the custom domain because the posteo mailbox would not be custom so I couldn’t “take it with me” as easily as I could if the custom domain was added to the mailbox instead? Dunno, I’m rambling because I’m genuinely lost. Hence why I’m asking for ideas/experiences.
I don’t suggest you complicate your set up more than it needs to be. Sure, you may get more “value” but I’ve always found such ways overly complicated and not sustainable.
But why is that acceptable? Do the three recommended providers also hold the keys? Fastmail’s privacy policy seems weaker than the other options but maybe I’m wrong.
Because they don’t provide the same product in the same way. That’s why. It’s email, just not private or secure enough as what Proton or Tuta provides. Same tool built and served differently - that’s Fastmail.
Well, PG recommends Mailbox. I personally prefer Posteo as you can encrypt your mailbox and calendar but is unlike Proton and Tuta. And you can still use IMAP and evrything as usual.
I am not an expert here but I would personally choose Posteo over Mailbox and Fastmail if the service provided mail interface/webapp is not what I will be using as they are far less inferior to Fastmail. To me, Fastmail’s interface rivals Proton’s if not beats it in a few specifics. So, UI/UX wise on the web and apps, Fastmail wins.
Proton derives your key from your password. It’s totally different product with different tradeoffs (you can read about it in the article I linked). Standard thing is what Gmail/Fastmail does. It’s also what most people want. What you seem yo want is zero-access encryption. If you want it, you should be looking at Proton/Tuta.
If Proton or Tuta level encryption is not needed, then Fastmail is private and secure enough for your everyday use cases where you can also easily use your custom domain.
As soon as you start prioritizing privacy and encryption and whatnot, more and more tradeoffs exist with which you’ll have to be okay with depending on how you want to use your email.
It can be a tough choice if you’re on the edge of all these options but I would focus on your use case than the feature set. That should dictate which option you go with. Go with what you need, not what you want.
If going with Fastmail, you may not need SL as Fastmail has built in aliasing service. So you save there.
I’ve heard people do something similar, but if you go this route you’ll likely face authentication issues and your emails will end up in spam folder with common providers people use
Okay, then another question that maybe can solve my dilemma: If i use Fastmail, can I also generate aliases directly from it? Because if I can then I can probably avoid using SL or addy altogether since Fastmail will already be doing the aliasing and the email providing all in one.