Is it good? Are there any better alternatives?
I just migrated away from Tuta after trying the service for a year. I like it well enough, but it presented too many frustrations to be a service to pay for.
- While they have labels (yay!) their inbox rules cannot apply labels so you are stuck manually tagging everything (boo!) - and the UI for manually tagging could use improvement.
- Mobile (Android) notifications stop working frequently.
- While they integrate their contacts in to the Android contact list, they refuse to integrate their calendar with the Android system calendar - meaning I cannot pull a consolidated list of calendar events in to my launcher, and am stuck using their calendar application (which could use a lot of improvement).
- If you set a calendar event reminder, and then change the time of the event, the reminder will go off at the original event time (or 15/30 minutes before, whatever you set it to).
- Long refreshes when loading the inbox. Navigating back to the application often has the server disconnected, then you have to wait a spell for it to reconnect so you can carry on.
After searching around and checking purelymail, infomaniak, mailbox.org, mxroute, migadu, zoho, etc. I landed on fastmail (with my own domain) predominantly because of their implementation of labels (super slick). Their mobile app and desktop applications are also very slick. Contacts/calendar sync in to the Android System is done through DavX, but I also have it syncing to my Nextcloud instance. It’s a more expensive solution than the others, but labels (tags/categories) are such an important part of my workflow that there aren’t a lot of options unless I wanted to go back to M365/Google Workspace.
If I was to give up labels, I’d probably go with infomaniak or mailbox.org. Both of their offerings were slick and the price was right.
Doesn’t allow third party email clients.
I can recommend Posteo.
I’ve been on Posteo for years now, they’ve been rock solid. As for Tuta.io, the issue specifically is no IMAP support, which is what third party email clients need to function.
I thought I’d also mention Protonmail, which might look good, but is in a similar boat. They technically do provide IMAP support, but not in a way that matters. If you wanted to connect Protonmail to Thunderbird or, if you’re an insane person, Microsoft Outlook, you’d need another app running on your PC along with your email app called Proton Bridge, which just sounds like a hassle. No mobile version either.
I’d say stick with Posteo. Alternatively, if you want to use your own domain name, I’ve heard good things about mailbox.org.
I deleted my Protonmail after learning about their metadata filtering practices. The more you learn about Proton the sketchier they seem.
