this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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Cool. I switched to Tuta because it fits my use case better (2 domains, one for my personal email and one for everything else). I don't need any of the bells and whistles Proton has, and I also don't want to pay extra to get more domains. The Tuta app kinda sucks, but it gets the job done. I'm hoping my wife and kids will be interested in private email, but they don't seem to care, and I don't think they'd like the tradeoffs.
Now, if Proton revises their tiers, I might be interested. Give me something like the Tuta tiers, and I'll probably switch to it. I prefer the UX of Proton, but $10/month is a bit steep for me, especially since I'm not going to use the other stuff they're bundling in (I use Bitwarden for PW manager, have my own NAS, and I prefer Mullvad over Proton for VPN).
That said, it's super cool that they're going non-profit. When that's done, I'll give it another look.
Problem with Tuta for me is its too closed off.
Proton at least offers an IMAP bridge, Tuta utterly refuses to let you use your email outside their apps, which makes it more of a messaging app. And the fact there's no way to export everything easily or even forward messages rubs me the wrong way. I tried them and have been using them for about 2 years but I'd definitely love to get away from it.
I'm tired of these walled gardens. I don't give a damn how secure it is, if I can't leave it with my shit, then no thanks.
Yeah, it's annoying, but I honestly don't use any email clients anyway. So whether I use the Tuta or Proton app/website is essentially the same for me.
But you can export your email (select all then click "Download"), but unfortunately forwarding isn't a thing. That does put a bit of a wrinkle into my longer-term use of it, so if Proton can become price-competitive for my use-case (and no, I'm not paying $10/month for email), I'll probably switch. But since I can export them in some way, it's not a deal breaker.
Are you me? Lol I feel the same about tuta, yet I such with them. I am waiting for my wife to care for her privacy and switch to a family bundle with tuta.
Got my own NAS and a Bit warden server for PW. I changed Mullvad over AirVPN once they stopped supporting port forwarding, though.
Yup, confirmed, I am you.
The Tuta app kinda sucks, especially for searching, but I do that rarely enough that it's fine. It did annoy me a bit when I was traveling in Canada and needed to find my confirmation code for something (had to connect to their wifi, wait for emails to download, search, etc), but it got the job done. I love that I can just add another person to my plan for another €3 or whatever. I'm going to try to get my kids interested even if my wife isn't, and it's nice that I can just add a little at a time. With Proton, that would jump up to $15 for two users, $24 for my family (three kids). That's a lot more than Tuta, which is just €3/user/month, so my entire family would be €15/month ($17/month), and I don't need to get everyone on all at once (i would probably only add one or two at first).
So Tuta meets my basic needs, is priced very competitively, and the client is FOSS. I'm actually excited about some upcoming updates (looks like having the subject in the notification just landed, but hasn't hit F-Droid yet), and I love how their roadmap is very open.
That said, I do miss the UX of Proton. I just don't think that's worth more for fewer features I actually use. Hopefully that changes.
You say you use Bitwarden. Is that self hosted by any chance? If so, how do you handle the potential for an outage or server failure, where you’d presumably need some of the passwords to fix the problem in the first place.
Mine isn't currently, but I'm working on it. The main complexity is that my wife and I share some passwords, and I want to make sure I do it properly so that transition is as smooth as possible. Vaultwarden is what you'd use to self-host.
But as others have said, I'm really not worried about it. Passwords are cached locally and only touch the server when syncing to the server. I want to self-host to protect against breaches, not because I'm worried about connectivity loss.
You can always backup your passwords (there's an export feature) if you're worried about it. I haven't done it, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to have a KeePass backup or something that you update manually every so often.
The local cache solves this problem mainly. Mine also replicates to one of my other servers occasionally.
How do you set up local caching? For non-phones?
Edit: TIL there are windows, Mac, and Linux apps for it. Sheesh.
Yep, the browser extensions also have an encrypted cache, although it is less consistent imo. I've had times where my server was down and the extension just completely logged out then couldn't authenticate so I couldn't access the cache.
There is a setting now (in all types of client I think) to log out when you close down the browser. Your comment makes me realize that I probably want to NOT set that on at least one machine. I set that on the machines that are out and about.
Also TIL about the browser extensions!
I also self host vault warden, it's pretty straight forward. Like the other person said, it caches locally.
Thanks!
The Bitwarden client has all the data cached, so the server can be down and you still get access to the passwords (same for internet connection).
Thanks for the reply! That makes sense. I’m still weary of the client somehow losing the cache while the server is down (two holes in the Swiss cheese lining up) but that is overly paranoid I know that
You should definitely be! I take backups every 6h for my self hosted vaultwarden (easier to manage and to backup, but not official, YMMV). You can also restore each backup automatically and have a "second service" you can run elsewhere (a standby basically), which will also ensure the backup works fine.
I have been running bit/vaultwarden now for I think 6 years, for my whole family and I have never needed to do anything, despite having had a few hiccups with the server.
Don't take my word for it, but the clients (browser plugin, desktop app, mobile app) are designed to keep data locally I think. So the term cache might be misleading here because it suggests some temporary storage used just to save web requests, with a relatively quick expiration. In this case I think the plugin etc. can work potentially indefinitely without server - something to double-check, but I believe it's the design.
Yes, I figured the word “cache” was used loosely in this case. But you know, the server is down and/or irrecoverable for a while, and then one’s phone gets swiped. Not inconceivable. So I think I’ll follow some of the advice here about a backup service or password stash
They also have mail-only tier at 4.99.
Yup, but only one custom domain. I really want at least two domains, one with tons of aliases for various accounts, and the other for personal communications. I could use a proton.me address for it, but then it becomes a huge pain to switch to another service should I need to.
Does that include the IMAP bridge and multiple addresses?
I don't know, you'll have to check yourself. Multiple addresses yes, though, 10 of them.
Touch grass.
I'm sorry I took this username before you got it. Clearly you deserve it more with posts like that.
Wtf
what's with the hostility?
Looks like some are fortune telling and seeing enshitification.
Not all companies go to shit. Valve is an example
Did you respond to the wrong message?
Your response makes it sound like you're responding some kind of rage-rant. But from my reading, the post you responded to basically just lists a few things they like and dislike - clearly given as personal opinions. So your response reads as unprovoked hostility.
?
I think Proton is a cool project, I'm just a little disappointed at their pricing tiers. It's probably fine for a lot of people, and hopefully becoming a non-profit encourages them to improve the value at each tier.
I actually used to pay for Proton when I was consulting. I think it's a fantastic service, but now that it's not really a business expense, I find it's a little to expensive. So I have my business domain, my personal email domain, and a "junk email" domain all at Tuta, and I like that setup. But it's not worth $10/month for me, it's worth about $3-4/month, so I use Tuta. Privacy is really important to me, but price is also important, and Tuta checks both boxes.
I know I'm an outlier, just giving my 2c that Proton is a good service, and I hope they adjust their pricing with their new non-profit model.
FWIW Proton does offer a mail only plan that's $5/month, 4 if you go for yearly
Right, but it only supports 1 custom domain. With Tuta, I get 3 for €3.60, €3 if I pay yearly. I could probably make it work, but why pay more for something that I'd have to make concessions for? If they supported more email addresses, I might just use their proton.me domain or whatever (I like separate email addresses for different services, so I can quarantine a breach; so I'll do
<name>-<type of service>@<domain>), and only having 10 is a little limiting.I know I have specific and kind of weird requirements, but Tuta is currently doing a better job of providing what I want at a price I'm happy with.
Your requirements are totally fair tbh.
That said, I think you can use aliases for the use-case you have, you don't need full addresses. Proton supports "+ aliases" as well, so
name+service@domainworks, and most importantly they support catch-all addresses if you have your own domain. I now use actual aliases (the ones from simplelogin), which I generate on the fly, but if you can usewhatever@domainand it will be redirected to your configured address. You don't even need to create this beforehand, so many times I was around and had to give an email address for some reason and I just made up an address on the fly. As long as you use your domain, the catch-all will get the email.So the 10 addresses only include actual addresses, the ones you can write from. You can have as many as you want to receive emails (which is generally the use case for signing up to services, right?). Just a FYI in case tuta supports the same and you are making more effort than needed!
Yeah, I already do something like
<name>-<category>@<domain>, and I'll probably end up changing<category>to include a+for each account of that type. For example, all banking apps go to<name>-banking, which maakes it really easy to move emails automatically into folders. If I get an email from a bank without that-bankingpart, it's spam. I do this with various categories (bills, shopping, etc). I have something close to 10 email addresses right now, and I'll probably add more in the future.But basically, I have three domains:
me@family-domain- I only give this out to family and friendsme@work-domain- printed on business cards and any services related to my side businessSo far it's working pretty well. To get that same setup w/ Proton, I'd need to pay $10/month, whereas it's just $3-4 w/ Tuta. I'd be okay with combining the personal and everything else, but I really want to keep my work stuff on the same account (low volume, but high priority).
Interesting! That's very close to this blog post I read long time ago (unfortunately medium.com link)! Are you actually sending emails from those addresses? Like if you need to drop an email to your bank, do you use the banking one or your personal (or something else)?
Fwiw, I do something similar. I use a mix of domain aliases without address (e.g. [email protected]) and actual aliases. Since I have proton family (and the same when I used ultimate) I have unlimited hide-my-email aliases, so I have it integrated with my password manager, and I generate a random password and email for everything I sign up now. These though are receive-only addresses. In fact, with this technique I probably use 3-4 addresses in total, but I have probably 30 domain addresses that go to the catch-all one.
Spam on these addresses are basically non-existing and you can still create folders based on recipient without having a full address (e.g. [email protected], [email protected]). You can make folder categorization based on recipient regex and this way you also have the "stop bothering me" option: if some email gets into the wrong hands, you can create a spam rule for that dedicated address. However, my approach is that all of these are used just to receive emails, to send I have just a handful of actual addresses or -if really needed- I can create on-the-fly an address from a catch-all one, send the email and then disable it again (so it doesn't count towards the limit, but I still get inbound email to the catch-all).
Nice setup anyway!
No. I've never emailed my bank, and I don't think that's a thing anyway. If I need to contact my bank, I'll either use their secure messaging on their webpage, or call in.
I'd love to have a random email for everything, and I'm kind of moving that way, but I really like having everything get sorted, and doing it based on the receiving address is really nice. I suppose I could do
<prefix>-<category>+<uniq id>@<domain>, but I've been lazy so far.But yeah, it's working so far. If Tuta pisses me off at some point, I'll probably switch everything from my "junk" domain to a handful of Proton email addresses with suffixes. But so far, it's working well enough.
Sure! FYI, simplelogin can create aliases with prefix! I usually get service-{random 5 chars}@simplelogin.com, so you can still sort by folder using prefixes.
Gotcha, that's totally fair. Thanks for elaborating!