posteo is what i am using. Upsides - reasonably cheap (12 euros per year), downsides - no custom domains
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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I'm not an expert but I remember reading good things about Posteo, StartMail, and Runbox. Check their pricing page for features.
Infomaniak is dead since they explicitly support spying on people.
Unfortunately Posteo doesn't support custom domains, StartMail is a bit too expensive but Runbox seems interesting...
Mailbox.org is also a good option AFAIK.
Hmm I mentioned them in my post as I've been apprehensive about them, maybe it's unfounded though..
I've been with them for years and they've been awesome. Customer support was good when I was having trouble setting up my custom domain. Their web interface dose look a bit retro, but I never use that anyway (email in Thunderbird and online drive accessed with WebDAV, calendar and contact access in phone apps).
MailBox has been great as a single solution to get rid of all Google services from my phone (including contact/calendar sync). Highly recommended.
I decided on Mailbox.org!
Cool. It's a good service.
Yeah kinda just leaning towards them in the end now after much back and forth. I also get 6 months free.
Source on Infomaniak?
I'm gonna add in Mailfence. I've recently switched to them (was thinking of Mailbox but had the same problems with them) and I've been pretty happy. I also use custom domains and it's very easy to set it up. They also allow you to generate custom aliases with their domain (e.g. "throwaway3661@mailfence.com").
The only kinda downside in my mind is the fact that you need the 42€/year tier to have access to POP/IMAP/SMTP and custom domains, which is more than on some other providers.
Another one I was looking at that looked quite good as well was Runbox, but if I remember correctly they don't have calendar and contacts which was a deal breaker for me.
Mailfence looks super interesting, but yeah, a bit more expensive. I'll definitely look into it.
+1 mailfence
Runbox had contacts and calendar when I used them a couple of years ago, so I would assume it still has them.
Disroot.org may have what you're looking for.
I've been linked this review of email service privacy previously. Obviously everyone has their own threat model and you may not agree with theirs but I think it's worth a read for services you may be interested in (or just the summary).
I've used Mailbox.org and don't care for their interface at all, but it also matters not one bit as I use Thunderbird exclusively to interact with my mailbox, as you plan to. I haven't had any problem with spam but I am very picky who I give that address to.
My personal opinion is that the provider should not matter - your address should be a privately registered domain and your emails should be end-to-end encrypted. Then your mail provider is little more than a forwarding server and the most crap one is not much worse than the best.
Regarding having your own custom domain for all emails. I have one with my name which I use for professional communication but I'd like the rest, like mails from Lemmy, to go to an address which can't be identified with me. Is it better trusting a domain name registrar and WHOIS to not give out info than e.g. Mailbox.org? Like yeah, sure, I could register another custom domain but this is what I'm worried about.
If you find an answer to that please let me know
I would recommend looking into an aliasing service such as Addy or SimpleLogin to use a different address for every service, which then gets forwarded to your main email address. This way when you get spam emails, you know who sold your data or had a breach, and you only need to create a new alias and change your email at one place instead of everywhere.
Interesting! Thanks for this
I decided on Mailbox.org!