TheOubliette, 9 days ago

It is very difficult to run an email provider and not get banned by the others. Google, Microsoft, and Apple control the US market, for example. If they decide your domain is spam, you suddenly can’t email anyone with a Gmail or Hotmail or Apple account. Avoiding getting banned means you have to regulate your own outgoing emails very carefully, rate-limit them just right, and yet also build up a reputation of trustworthiness by sending a lot of emails that don’t get marked as spam.

The only privacy-secure way to do your email would be DIY but this risks getting banned like… all the time.

Personally, I recommend having your own domain and setting up MX records to a reliable email provider that is not one of the big ones and ideally offers some kind of theoretical inbox protection (please note that they could always still read everything if they just copied all incoming messages to another database as well).

Email is itself not very secure. You can use GPG to make it better but most people won’t know how to receive your messages or send secure ones. For security, I recommend using a dedicated e2e chat service or in-person communication.

JameUwU, 9 days ago

I bought a .com domain for 10 years for about $100. Been self hosting email for 3 years and the only website thats given me issues is Chick fila. Thats what I get for using a VPN while ordering a homophobic sandwich ig.

Chais, 6 days ago (edited 5 days ago)

Yea, people mostly equate email to an electronic letter, but it’s more like an electronic postcard. Anyone handling it can simply read it.
So you’ll want encryption, too. So either you get everyone to use PGP/GPG or get them to use a privacy-by-default provider.
Good luck with the first option and I’m not sure how interoperable the various providers are, so in the worst case you’d have to rally everyone to the same provider.

Stitch0815, 10 days ago

I use Proton but tbh I don’t really know if there is a more privacy focused one.

rraggl, 10 days ago

@Charger8232 Lists from #Alternativeto (which this is based on) are usually not very reliable and show information that just isn't correct on a service or often includes services that are not real Alternatives to what you were looking for in the first place. The only thing that helps against that is doing your own research.

To pick out one example (I don't have time to them all): they list #Posteo as being proprietary which just isn't correct. That company is as #opensource as they come.

carloshr, 11 days ago

@Charger8232 @g0nz4 I guess in that case "proprietary" refers to the owners of the platform itself but not to the code of software. But then, they should make the distinction between proprietary/communitary and open source/proprietary code. Even between free/paid services. So, IMO that list from alternativeto is confusing.

lemmyreader, 11 days ago

• Skiff = Notion now, I doubt that it will be open source, but happy to see source code.
• Lavabit open source ? Where’s the code ?
• Roundcube is webmail software, not a webmail provider.
• Mailpile is email software for desktops, not a webmail provider.

gaufff, 11 days ago

@Charger8232 Yes.