“Private” and “email” should really not appear in the same sentence. The email protocol was not designed with privacy in mind, so any company offering you a “private” email service is simply pandering to the privacy-conscious crowd. Yes, some may promise to store your messages with “zero access encryption” and end-to-end encrypt messages between users of the same service but unless you’re only messaging those users (not gonna happen) copies of all your messages will be hanging around on much less secure/private servers.
Tutanota, Protonmail and Lavabit are currently the most known services promising private email (I have personally opted for Protonmail because it’s free and does not require invites) but you’re making a mistake if you want to use email for any sort of private or confidential communication. Use mail to create an account on with a service designed with privacy in mind, sure, but don’t try and twist email into something that it isn’t - you will regret it.
My general philosophy with email is to use a service which would go out of business if it was found out that they’ve been giving 3rd parties access to your messages and even then don’t store anything sensitive on mail. The ones mentioned above will do fine for that.
I’m a proton unlimited subscriber. Can’t recommend these guys enough. Customer support is always excellent, very capable guys no matter if you’re on Android or Arch Linux, these guys know their shit. They have a black Friday sale every year but for protonvpn, protonmail, simplelogin premium, 500gb storage. Everything e2ee, I mean, what can I say but they’re an amazing company.
Disroot.
Like tutanota and proton?
Tutanota deletes accounts for inactivity. You’d think using their official app wouldn’t cause account closure, but from own experience I can attest they don’t want free users ever. Your account will be blocked and you will have to create another one to pay them for the old adress. Fuck Tutanota
I can second this. I found their account closure process very aggressive, to the point where I would have to remind myself to sign in to keep my account open. Also the fact that tutanota only send emails between tutanota accounts, of its external, you have to share a key with each user, possibly for each different email.
End result is that my threat model is WAY below this, and their use model becomes a pain for me to use.
Their product seems stellar, branding is clean, and I’ve heard their service is great. If I was a journalist in Russia, reporting on government injustice, it would be my second choice… After proton.
Long Live proton!
Beware, one might be voted down for warning others.
