cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/25445621
How did the transition go? Do you like the new service(s) so far?
I started testing out alternatives immediately after discovering his post. I understand they’re saying this was a mistake and was meant to have been posted from his official account and not the company account, but that is still a bit off putting to me. As others have mentioned, this also made me aware of how many eggs I have in this basket, and after trying out alternatives for a few days I made the full switch away from ProtonMail, Calendar and VPN to Tuta + Mullvad.
Unfortunately, my Unlimited plan renewed in November and customer service has stated they will not refund me for the remaining time, as 30 days has passed. Oh well, I can at least cancel my auto-renewal :)
I left and glad I did. It was a needed wake-up call. All-in-one is inherently risky. I’d rather support smaller, more focused products. If one doesn’t fit my needs down the line, it’s way easier to switch.
- Email: Tuta (meh, loading issues)
- Calendar: Tuta (don’t like, can’t handle recurring events)
- VPN: Mullvad (like)
- Drive: Tresorit (like)
- Passwords: already using Bitwarden (love)
My struggle is finding an alternative to nonesense email alias system proton provides. Tuta and everyone else seems ridiculously limited with aliases. Like, I’ll use my own custom domain idgaf, just gimme infinite aliases…
Based on my understanding, Tuta is better for aliases compared to Proton. Their alias limit doesn’t apply to custom domains, only the domains they own (tuta.com, tutamail.com, tuta.io, tutanota.com, tutanota.de, keemail.me)
If you have proton pass you can generate random or semi random aliases. I don’t believe there’s a limit to this. Good to know on the tuta side though.
Oh I see. That makes sense. I think Bitwarden can be hooked up to alias providers but I’ve never tried that myself
I hadn’t thought of that, might have to look into that. That would be great for new accounts. I basically only used proton pass to create aliases and stored it all in bitwarden anyway.
Same stack as me except KeePass for PW manager. I’ve actually been enjoying Tuta though. What issues are you having with recurring?
External calendars I’ve imported have a bunch of events on the wrong days. I reported the issue and here’s what they told me:
It seems like some events in your .ics file use advanced repetition rules which are not supported in the Tuta calendar yet. We are currently working on this to improve compatibility and hope to release them soon so the calendar should be imported correctly.
I know it’s a small development team, but it’s a little frustrating. A calendar service supporting only a subset of the ICS standard is silly in my opinion
Ah shoot. I guess that makes sense that it might not match 1:1 if it’s using some advanced recurrence rules. When I exported from Proton and imported to Tuta, I did it as a CSV and needed to modify the columns a bit to get it to import, but my recurring appointments seemed to have come over fine. They are fairly simple though.
I pulled the trigger and decided to leave. Not only because of the recent actions from Proton, but when I started looking for alternatives I quickly realized how deeply integrated I was into their eco system and how difficult it was to make the switch. That’s personally not something I like. I guess this goes back to the saying, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’.
I’m now a happy customer of:
- Mullvad for VPN
- Bitwarden as password manager
- Fastmail for email
- Ente for photos
- Yet to decide on cloud storage for files.
I know fastmail isn’t the perfect privacy option but works very well for me. They own all their own hardware and use encryption at rest. They help develop open standards such as Jmap to replace imap. . This, to me says a lot about the people behind the company and is something I appreciate.
For those looking for a more private email solution then Tuta is a great option too!
Best of luck out there folks 👍
Unless you’re somehow looking for tonnes of storage, I don’t think you need cloud services. I’ve set up just my 3 devices (phone laptop PC) to sync with each other using Syncthing. And that’s plenty of space for just personal stuff (including photos). And it’s so cheap (only the cost of the devices you’re already using, and no subscriptions). It’s something I wish most people did because of how prevalent Drive has become, even though it doesn’t seem like it’s necessary for a lot of use cases. You’re situation might be different though, just a suggestion.
I don’t think you need cloud services
I have 1TB of Tresorit in case my house burns down.
What does that cost you a month/year?
Makes sense if that’s something you’re worried about. I just meant that it seems to me like people immediately jump to cloud storage without even considering use cases and options. I wish I’d known about this setup that I’m using now a long time ago so I thought it’d be good to put the option out there.
Well Sync is not a backup, but I get what you mean. On top of that I do have my own Nas 😅 so using that with at least another separate offline ssd should be good enough.
No. I’m tired of making my life inconvenient the moment someone says something stupid.
I bought a year of unlimited in November but I have canceled and will be migrating when my year is up
What’s the deal with Lavabit these days? Are they good? I don’t keep up with things that well. Am old man.
I highly-valued the cohesion and simplicity of having a suite of tools provided by a single vendor and all on a single bill, despite how often this turns into a vendor-lock-in strategy
Proton was part of my attempt to de-Google, precisely because it offered email (with custom CNAMEs), calendar, and storage, and because they open-sourced their clients and tools
Despite the UX and feature set being quite bare, I was okay with justifying this with the added privacy (which was a nice-to-have but not a deal-breaker for me)
It seems like all the alternatives are either less open-source, have even fewer features, are even less cohesive (indeed, I’d have to select entirely separate solutions and give up all integrations) or seem to have even fewer resources for development and project sustainability
I haven’t left, but now it’s something that’s on the cards, which wasn’t the case beforehand.
I only recently linked my domain to my ProtonMail account, so if I do switch it should be relatively painless given I’ll transfer the domain too, and the original PM address has become more of a lost cause anyway due to spam.
I was hard considering it but if I do it then it would cost me way more.
Tuta ($3)+Simplelogin ($4)+Mullvad ($5) = $12
A proton unlimited plan costs $10. Also, when I was on a vpn plus plan, they upgraded me to unlimited so I’m only paying like $6.50 or something.
I used simplelogin before they got bought by proton and with it now being included in my subscription, it’s even cheaper. I could move to addy.io but that would mean I would have to go through all my accounts and change it to the new addy.io addresses. Huge PitA. I could use my own domain but I don’t wanna blacklist my own domain or for it to be so new that it’s blocked from signing up accounts.
That’s how they get ya
Plus mulvad doesn’t do port forwarding. Or it didn’t last time I used it.
No. Because changing email providers is a royal pain in the ass. Changed from Google to Ctemplar and from that to proton a year later after ctemplar went down.
I am not going to use smaller email providers because of that experience, and proton still seems to be the best of both worlds.
I absolutely hate that i am supporting a CEO like that with my money but I’m not in the mood to migrate anytime soon. Took me more than a whole weekend last time.It’s worth noting Proton’s email export tool (marketed as backup & restore) is pretty decent. This Python script can sort them by folders & labels too
That’s good to know. My main gripe is that changing the email address for every service is so tiring. I’ve got >200 accounts in my password manager I’d need to change the mail address in, and from previous experience i know that the complicity of this can range from “just go to the settings” over “message the moderators” to “you just can’t”.
It’s shocking how complicated it can be.
No, I’ve not switched. While I disagree with his comments, that does not make me switch.
I am fine with using services provided by companies whose employees or leaders I don’t 100% agree with all the time.
I’d moved from Bitwarden to Proton Pass only 6 months ago, so moving back wasn’t too much of a difficult choice (both services have great import/export and Bitwarden even offers self-hosting)
I’d just go Keepass. Password managers don’t need cloud to work. And Bitwarden could go rogue too.
I’ve got Keepass for password manager and Mullvad for VPN, and both have worked out really well for me so far. What I haven’t been able to find is a good alternative to Proton Drive. For aliases I use Firefox Relay.
Tresorit is a bit pricey but very privacy focused and based in Switzerland.
A sociopath libertarian idiot.
The L part is the kind of person I want in charge of my encrypted data. Telling the government to fuck off because he legitimately can’t comprehend how government is a good thing.
i have free proton accounts as am not loggin in to close them because lazy. but i havent really used it anymore…maybe for trashmail stuff. mullvad is cooler and 1$ rootboxes anywhere also. disroot,riseup and so many other mailproviders are cool too. i dont get why proton is so relevant to some. did you guys buy a lifetime package or why?
There are a few alternatives in mind for me. Mailbox, posteo, disroot. Disroot is the only one among these with a free email. But posteo and mailbox do have cheap tiers. Posteo doesn’t have support for custom domains last I checked.
That’s just email. I’ve already not been using proton for almost everything else. KeepassXC for passwords, Addy.io for aliases, Syncthing and offline storage across my 3 devices instead of any Drive. VPN I rarely use so free proton is enough for that. Mullvad exists on the off chance I need it for a while (it’s a constant price per month how many ever months you choose, and you can just “top up” with some amount and it will last you the appropriate number of days).
Mailbox and Posteo doesn’t have their app in F-Droid 🤔
I know Tuta has, and just looked up Disroot, they also have…
You can use Thunderbird with Mailbox and I think Posteo too? Does disroot even have an app? Even their official pages directed me to other clients like Thunderbird
