For those of you who are looking to move away from platforms like Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook, or perhaps
if you’re like me and you just want an additional account for more sensitive communications,
the good news is that there are plenty of great secure email options out there.
There are so many, in fact, that I can’t include all of them in a video like this. As
I’ve told you before, I only create videos about software and services that I’ve personally used,
so I’ve spent the last couple months testing out four private email services that I think stand
out among the crowd and I’m going to show you how they look and act differently. I’m sure there are
other good services out there, and your welcome to share your favorite in the comments below.
Welcome to All Things Secured, my name is Josh and before I show you each of these secure email
options, let me first explain my current setup. I still use Gmail for both personal and work
email right now, and my reasoning is likely the same as many people - my Gmail addresses
and my email archive are simply too valuable for me to give up entirely. At least not yet.
So what I do instead is supplement my primary accounts with my secure
email account. There are a couple ways to do that which I’ll explain at the end of this video
and one setup you definitely shouldn’t use, so watch all the way through to learn what those are.
So as we compare each of these secure email options, we’re going to look at a number of
different features individually and then at the end sum up the best use case for each service.
Let’s start with email encryption. The most obvious reason you would be using a secure
email service is because you want an even greater level of privacy and security than
popular email platforms provide. And to that end, each of these four email
providers offer what you need, otherwise they wouldn’t be part of this list, right?
What is it that they offer exactly? Mostly,
it’s something referred to as zero-knowledge encryption, which means that all of the data in
your account is locked up in such a way that even the service provider can’t unlock it.
But wait, don’t Gmail and Yahoo encrypt our emails? Yes, kind of. And this is confusing,
I know, but there is an important difference. Every email provider encrypts your email as it
flies across the internet and as it sits on their servers. But they still hold the key.
It’s basically the difference between owning and renting your home. When you rent your home,
you have your own keys that lock and unlock your doors. Nobody else can get in...except
your landlord. Your landlord also has these keys and can enter if needed. That’s the way
that regular encryption works - your email is locked up and you have your own keys,
but so do Google, Yahoo or Outlook.
Using secure email options is like owning your own home. You have the keys and you can change
the encryption keys whenever you want. In this case, services like ProtonMail, Mailfence,
StartMail and Tutanota are simply managing your property and do not have keys to go in whenever
they want. They have “zero knowledge” and it is truly end-to-end encrypted, whether you use what
they call asymmetrical email encryption, which means that both the email sender and receiver
are using the same email provider, or symmetrical email encryption, which usually involves password
protecting email contents for those who aren’t using a secure email provider like you will be.
That’s overly simplified, I admit,
and there’s some debate about how some of these services implement their encryption,
but that’s basically what you’re getting when you move to a truly encrypted email service.
All of these services make encryption very easy for those of you who don’t
consider themselves tech-savvy, as in you don’t really have to do anything but
start using the service and you’ll have better encryption than you currently
have with your email provider. But they each also offer their own kind of PGP encryption
for those that want extra security and don’t mind getting their hands dirty a little bit.
In addition to email encryption, I think it’s important to rate secure email providers by
how they allow users to secure their account. I’m referring, of course, to 2-factor authentication.
Honestly, it was surprising to me to find that not every secure email provider uses
strong forms of 2FA, and I would bet that what I’m about to share with you will be out of date
within the next 6 months as the move toward 2FA acceptance is moving fast.
As I record this, Tutanota is the only provider that accepts 2FA keys,
which is widely considered to be the strongest form of 2FA. Not only that, but they allow you
to connect multiple keys, which means you can do what I do and setup a primary key,
a backup key and then make sure that my wife’s key also authenticates my account.
ProtonMail, Mailfence and StartMail use the authenticator app, which is
better than nothing, to be sure, but when it comes to something like secure email,
I don’t know why you wouldn’t offer 2FA key integration.
So from a 2FA security standpoint, Tutanota stands out here, but from a more privacy standpoint,
the tables flip. You see, Tutanota is the only provider on this list
that doesn’t accept a more anonymous crypto payment method.
ProtonMail accepts Bitcoin and Mailfence accepts both Bitcoin and Litecoin,
both from the checkout page. Startmail says they accept Bitcoin, but you have
to email them to get instructions to pay, which is a bit clunky.
Also, from a privacy standpoint,
all of these services maintain their email servers in privacy-friendly countries. Hear me clearly,
there is no “perfect” location, but since all data on these servers is encrypted such
that it can’t be unlocked by anybody other than you, it technically shouldn’t matter too much.
Before we jump into comparing how you actually use each of these email services,
I’ll also add that on this list, only ProtonMail and Tutanota have made their code open source.
StartMail is a mix of open and closed source code and Mailfence says that they plan to be soon.
Open source basically means that the code is open for any person,
whether that’s a security researcher or just one of us, to look into and make
sure there isn’t a flaw or they aren’t hiding some kind of malicious tracker.
Ok, at this point I want to transition to looking at the aspects of these secure email providers
that make up the user experience. That’s what you and I see when we use the service.
For example, which companies offer mobile apps to check your email on the go?
If you check your mail on your mobile device often, this might be important to you,
and if that’s the case, both ProtonMail and Tutanota have dedicated mobile apps.
You can still check your mail on the go with Startmail and Mailfence, but you’ll be logging
in via your internet browser, which isn’t a bad thing per se, but it has its limitations.
With each company, you are allowed to create aliases, which is another way
of building privacy by not giving out your primary address to anybody who asks for it.
As you can see here, this is a paid feature and in most cases is limited to only 5-10 aliases
based on your account level. The only exception is StartMail, which gives you unlimited aliases.
This could be useful if you’re the kind of person who wants to create random aliases
for every website where you create an account, or to give out email addresses
that expire after a week of use. Basically, you’re getting burner email addresses to use.
Alright, next let’s dive into the experience with the email inbox.
For example, StartMail is has a very modern-looking inbox that is
immediately familiar to anybody who has been using Gmail or Outlook for the past
few years. It’s clean, it’s simple and it’s intuitive to use. I really enjoy it.
ProtonMail also does a good job with their inbox,
which incorporats nested replies and the ability to organize your mail into different folders.
Mailfence and Tutanota aren’t bad, but in my opinion the design feels slightly more dated.
The text is small and the icons just feel like we’re still stuck in the 90s.
Strangely, with Tutanota you don’t have any kind of conversation view where
the same email thread is kept together. Everything is its own email, which is weird.
Also, one of the features that most people take for granted with popular email services like
Gmail and Outlook is a seamless integration with a calendar or a cloud storage service.
In the past, using secure email has always meant not having direct
access to your calendar or cloud drive, but thankfully that is changing.
Both ProtonMail and Mailfence have great calendar and encrypted cloud drive features,
which is a huge benefit when using them in my opinion. Tutanota offers a calendar but
no drive feature and Startmail as of yet has no calendar or cloud drive.
Now in some ways I can see why you might want to keep your secure email separated from your
cloud storage, so that’s really up to you as to whether or not that’s an important feature,
but it’s helpful to know what’s available when getting started.
In the end, when you add up all these various features together,
here are my recommendations. If you’re an individual who just wants a quick
and easy way to do more secure email, StartMail is easy to start using. They
offer unlimited aliases but you’ll have to keep using your own calendar and cloud drive.
For those more tech-savvy individuals or small businesses, I recommend ProtonMail, which is the
one in this list that I’ve been using the longest. The calendar feature works great and they make it
easiest to migrate your existing email client so that you don’t lose your archive of emails. Here’s
what I mean: they have an Easy Switch feature, where you can do a one-time migration of your
archive and all the folders you use to organize your current inbox into your ProtoMail account.
Mailfence is right up there with ProtonMail in terms of features and benefits. But if you’re
the kind of person who wants to keep your current Gmail account for daily emails and use a secure
email address only for sensitive communications, Mailfence has this great feature that allows
you to get a simple notification via email or SMS text every time a new email arrives in your inbox.
It won’t tell you who it’s from or what the contents of the email are, it simply alerts you to
check your inbox. I really like this because if your secure email address isn’t your primary
email address, then you’re likely not checking it every day, and this is the perfect solution.
Finally, if security is your top priority, I have to say that
Tutanota is hands-down your best option. They’re the only ones who currently accept 2FA keys,
their encryption is the easiest to understand and they’re the only ones I know of who are working to
develop what they call “post quantum encryption”, basically encryption that can stand up against
any kind of advancement in quantum computing. They’re a good company with an affordable service.
Oh, and once you purchase a subscription to one of these email services, there are
two things I need you to promise that you won’t do. First, please do not set it up to where you
have all your secure email just being forwarded directly to your current Gmail or Outlook address.
And don’t set it up to where you use a third party mail client like Apple Mail,
Outlook or Thunderbird to check and send your mail.
The reason that you’re getting secure email is for security and privacy, and when you forward
your mail or don’t access it directly from the source, you are compromising that security.
Thank you for watching all the way through this video! If you enjoyed it,
please consider using the affiliate links in the description below this video.
That helps to financially support what I do. Then,
watch this video next about how to secure the files you keep in cloud storage. Take care.