Rebel Tech AllianceEmail, Calendar & Contacts alternatives
Alternatives to: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo mail, Apple email etc
Big tech email providers, especially Gmail and Outlook (Hotmail), regularly scan your email contents and metadata. They do this for two reasons - two improve their data profile they keep on you, and to train their AI models. So what you need is an email provider that protects you from the email provider!
The best way to do this is choose services with 'zero-trust encryption', aka 'zero-knowledge encryption' or End-To-End Encryption (E2EE). This means your email provider cannot see your email or calendar data, only you can. And the best ones encrypt everything, even the email subject line.
A note about storing contacts
The easiest place to store your contacts is with your email provider, and then these are sync'd to your phone's contacts app. Both Proton and Tuta can store your contacts, but Proton does not allow you to sync them to your phone's app. Tuta, however, does. Because of this you either choose Tuta as your provider for everything, or if you've gone with Proton, you can have a free Tuta account just to store your contacts and be able to sync them to your phone.
The first two (email) services have full E2EE. Cal.com is a Calendly alternative, and Leemail is used in addition to your email provider to enable multiple masked email addresses.
| App name | Open Source | Structure; Business model | Features | Country of origin | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proton Mail | Yes | Private company owned by a non-profit; Free and paid plans | 10, 15 or 30 alias email addresses; Part of Proton ecosystem; Strips out tracking links too | Switzerland | Proton.me |
| Tuta Mail | Yes | Private company; Free and paid plans | 15 or 30 alias email addresses; Integrates with your phone's contacts app; Multiple calendars included (e.g. family) | Germany | Tuta.com |
| Cal.com | Yes | Private company; Free and paid plans | Alternative to Calendly (calendar booking service); No E2EE but can self-host | USA | Cal.com |
| LeeMail | No | Private company; Free and paid plans | Email mask service; Allows you to have many masked emails e.g. per service you sign up for; It manages which ones you've used where | UK | Leemail.me |
RTA's choice
We use Proton and Tuta for email. Other strong choices are Mailbox.org and Posteo. We've not listed them above as we have not yet been convinced that they use full E2EE, however they do have a strong privacy stance and are worth considering.
Changing to an encrypted email service is really easy. You still keep your Gmail or Outlook email (e.g. for identity), but stop using it for anything new. You gradually phase out the old email and use the new one.