Has anyone used Mailfence for email?
I think last time I checked they did disable my mailfence email due to inactivity. I will confirm this later.
Edit: Yeah, it was deleted.
I’m replying to my own post but I thought I would share a review that was very thorough and helpful. It compares Proton and Mailfence. I didn’t understand all the technical stuff but I understood enough.
Check out Migadu. Its by far the most affordable option out there I’ve found, at 19€ per year. Its also highly customizable but it does require a custom domain. Highly highly recommend!
Cool thanks, I’m going to switch my business email next year sometime after I use up my business cards so I will check it out. Someone posted a great link with overviews of the different European email providers that was helpful.
Posteo is only 12€ a year, so a bit cheaper. Doesn’t support custom domains though.
Wasn’t aware of their price, but yeah thats affordable! Never checked posteo put for that exact reason tho, custom domains is an absolute must for me.
I bought a lifetime sub some years ago, and has used it for a couple of my projects.
While I would usually just set up the domain in my Proton/Tuta (or even just Cloudflare forwards), it’s nice to have a place where I can allow my team members to login, for the slightly bigger projects.
Only downside is that the owner can seem to lose his cool sometimes.
Yes, we use it and are happy with the service. Not so much because of its security / encryption features, but because it’s a Belgian based, independent email provider and I applaud that. I just moved my family there from Gandi after they screwed their users with price hikes and false promises. For context, I am Belgian and have met the founder. They have a nice mission. I still self host my own email on my own mail server for 20+ years. But if I weren’t, I would probably use Mailfence.
I ended up going with Mailfence and set it up yesterday. It looks pretty simple and straightforward. Proton was another good option but I liked that Mailfence uses sustainable energy for its servers. I decided anything would be better than Microsoft or Google so it’s nice to see more options available.
Thank you for your reply.
What I also appreciate about Mailfence is that they stick to using standard protocols. Protonmail needs an intermediary layer to provide IMAP services for instance if I recall correctly. Perhaps they (Protonmail) do this to arguably offer better encryption services, but to me email is not very secure to begin with, no matter what you do. You’ll always have your messages pass through other people’s servers and systems and not all your recipients will be comfortable with PGP or s/MIME. I love email as an OG federated service though, despite what some may consider flaws in this modern age. It’s such a core and empowering technology of the internet!
No. First I’ve heard about it. It sounds pretty cool though! I really like the option to be able to send with a custom domain address. The “scary” bugs sound pretty concerning though. I’ll be keeping my ear to the tracks on this one.
I’ve always been a bit uneasy about encrypted email because I feel like it’s only as good as you handle it. As soon as it’s sent, the recipient can do whatever they want.
To be clear, I’m a total idiot when it comes to understanding how this works.
That’s encryption in a nutshell. A message is encrypted until it reaches its destination, and then by necessity is unencrypted in order to read it. Once your recipient has the unencrypted message, you don’t have any control over what happens to it.
Fundamentally, if you don’t trust the recipient (or their system provider), no amount of encryption will protect your message.
The biggest advantage of private email is that it stops the email provider itself from data mining some of your most sensitive info, as Gmail and other free emails most certainly do. Basically it’s protection from surveillance capitalism, but you rightfully can’t consider it a secure way to send messages or info to other, non-encrypted users.
