this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025

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Privacy

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What are your alternatives to proton? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Mail and calendar I'm still trying to figure out. VPN you don't need as long as you use HTTPS everywhere.

password manager

KeePassXC + KeePassDX

documents

Collabora Office + LibreOffice

What are the pros and cons relative to proton?

Pros: free, open source, and 100% offline with no intermediary company. Your file security is entirely in your own hands.

Cons: you must devise your own cross-device sync system. I use Syncthing + Syncthing-Fork.

What are the mobile apps like?

Collabora is currently just bad lol. It's best reserved for really simple edits, if not just for viewing, with all major changes made on a desktop/laptop computer. KeePassDX isn't terrible but it can't view all the fields that the KeePassXC desktop platform can, and getting it to take PIN instead of password for vault-unlocking is really convoluted (although you'd only have to do it once).

What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future?

They're all open-source so anyone dissatisfied with the direction that the maintainers go in can fork them at any time.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I can second most of the suggestions. I do not host an office suite (for now?) but I am syncing my keepass dbs over syncthing along with my notes and important documents. I think since 2016 or so. It works well.

Before I had a server I just synced them in a triangle between my phone, laptop and desktop. Most things had 3 copies this way. Any device could offload changes to another. Now I have a central node and the option to sync as before if the server is down. With Tailscale, I don't need to be on the same wifi now eiter.

The keepassDX limitations are not a big deal if all you need is basic autofill.

Mail providers are hard to chose. I am leaving proton for the lack of easy smtp and their locked in nature. Get your oen domain and you will be able to switch more easily in the future.

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 months ago (4 children)

disroot

Tuta will show you ads in your mailbox, don't fall for it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Tuta for mail & calendar, CryptPad for cloud docs and spreadsheets, Mullvad for VPN, plus a few other random things like Disroot which offers email and and some other services. There’s some overlap and duplication but I don’t want to keep all my shit in one place any more. The Tuta app is blocky but acceptable. Everything else I only view in browsers.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Tuta -- https://tuta.com/

Includes mail and calendar and contacts. No files, or password management. But worth a look, if you want an encrypted solution and you're OK with using their client apps. I do, and I am and it's great, IMO.

Their blogs say they're pro-privacy, and anti-BS, if you believe them: https://tuta.com/blog

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Honestly you could easily selfhost all of that except mail and maybe a VPN.

Baikal for calendar. Vaultwarden for passwords.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I can vouch for Vaultwarden and Baikal. Two great essential programs I use.

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