What service do you recommend to replace OpenMailBox

31 replies [Last post]
albertoefg
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Joined: 04/21/2016

The new changes to openmailbox are bad. Real bad. Are you going to use a new service? How are you going to replace it? What new service do you recommend?

Spinoza
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Joined: 07/07/2013

I can't access my openmailbox-account by using Thunderbird. You have to pay for that feature from now on. Anybody got a good free replacement ?

Gnu
Gnu
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Joined: 03/08/2012

autistici.org (italian)

riseup.net (gringo)

GNUbahn
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Joined: 02/18/2016

From reading around posteo.de seems like a good choice. I use their service and am happy so far. They cost you one euro a month and offer a high level of privacy. Two free aliases, more can be bought cheap. I don't remeber the included space but it's ok and more can be bought at a low cost.

They promise that

All Posteo servers exclusively use open source software, for security reasons. The hard drives are fully encrypted using LUKS – and all connections between our servers are encrypted

https://posteo.de/en/site/about_posteo

Furthermore, fsf say:

Recommended

Some of these services are gratis, but that's a separate issue. Recall that "free software" refers to freedom, not price.

https://posteo.de: Fully compliant with LibreJS's standards, but a bug in LibreJS causes the site to not work when the plugin is enabled. Does not work without JS.

https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-javascript-guidelines-picked-up-by-posteo-webmail

Tirifto
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Joined: 02/19/2015

I second Posteo; I'm very happy with it so far, and they also run on green energy. The included space is 2GB, by the way, but that only covers e-mail; they don't offer cloud storage like OpenMailBox did. (But they do have address books and calendars.)

IrishUSA
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Joined: 12/03/2016

Great but hosted in Germany rather than Switzerland. And not a big fan of the domain name either.

Vikings_thum
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Joined: 04/04/2017

You'd be better of in Germany though. There are 6 months of data retention in Switzerland, whereas in Germany there is no such thing at present. What makes things almost worse is that this came to live via plebiscite.

Germany isn't perfect either (no country is), but still among the best countries in the developed world if you care for your rights and your privacy.

IrishUSA
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Joined: 12/03/2016

I suspect that EU and NATO membership carries with it certain disclosure obligations. Merkel has defended the NSA, and Snowden had revealed extensive German cooperation. It subsequently came to light that Germany had also been monitoring its allies too.

Although I'm very pro-NATO, I'm probably hypocritical in preferring my own email hosting to be in a neutral country, but there it is.

However, I'm also aware that Germany has strict privacy laws in part because of the two totalitarian, mass-surveillance regimes it or part of it had to endure. And that leaked disclosures of US monitoring of the Chancellor's mobile phone created a furor in Germany, reinforcing its privacy culture and perhaps undermining its cooperation on surveillance.

Finally, you made some factual points I was unaware of; namely that the Swiss keep 6 months of data while Germans don't. Since I know only Switzerland has referenda and Germany does not, can you let me know which referendum / plebiscite it was, held in what year, that requires Switzerland keep data for 6 months?

chaosmonk

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I am a translator!

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Joined: 07/07/2017

Do any of these support custom domain names? ProtonMail does, but its site requires nonfree js and it doesn't work with email clients.

GNUbahn
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Joined: 02/18/2016

I don't think you can ue custom domain names at posteo.de

chaosmonk

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I am a translator!

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Joined: 07/07/2017

Does anyone know what issue the FSF has with Fastmail?

https://www.fsf.org/resources/webmail-systems

It's listed under "Not Recommended" with the comment

"Sign up, sign in, and webmail all work smoothly. This is a paid service with a 60-day free trial. - UPDATE: was notified that this is not the case."

It is unclear whether "this is not the case" refers to the first or second sentence, but I'm unaware of any problems with sign up, sign in, or webmail, and the fact the free trial is 30 days, not 60, seems irrelevant to whether or not the service is ethical.

Dave_Hunt

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Joined: 09/19/2011

Another happy user of Posteo here. Interested in other options, just in case...

Librelover
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Joined: 08/02/2017

https://eludemaillhqfkh5.onion.to (Clearnet)

https://eludemaillhqfkh5.onion (TOR)

Elude is a good service and works with thunderbird and is accessed through TOR. It's donation based and no JS.

tonlee
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Joined: 09/08/2014

For forum registrations I have a gmail. I have it because, I believe it is rather unlikely, gmail will close. I resent having it. Because I forgot the message system on this forum will use my gmail, I have come to send email to members of this forum from gmail. It was not well received. The matter about openmailbox shows me, that more likely uncertain things can happen about your email account if it is a smaller email provider.
I had a paid lavabit email account. I began using it for registrations. Then lavabit shut down.
I have a mailoo account. I had to apply several times before I got one. I pay them. Which I do not like, because paying must create a connection between my email and my payment.
I do not read french well. I think mailoo writes, they are not getting enough money. They have stopped registrations. They will run until, they have no money.
This is to me another example of free software users are not able to gather around a few services, pay them in order to get them continuing.

Maybe one of you know about the economics about providing emails.
What is better, to sell 10 100mb email accounts 1eu each or 1 1gb email account 10eu? 1 1gb email account, because people do not use 1gb storage anyway? And handling payments is expensive?
A couple of times, I have suggested to email providers to create lower priced micro 50 or 100mb email plans. They do not do it. I do not want to pay more than 7eu per year.

If protonmail requires non free software, protonmail is likely not relevant for people on this forum. Protonmail has said they will get imap.
I asked tutanota if they will get imap. Tutanota said, they have no plans. Technically they regard imap a big difficulty.

chaosmonk

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I am a translator!

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Joined: 07/07/2017

I emailed Protonmail a while back. I don't think they have any interest in making their webmail LibreJS compliant, but they are working on IMAP.

Anonymous (not verified)
Anonymous

Cock.li is okay. Plus, they have a sense of humor.

Tirifto
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Joined: 02/19/2015

I know some people who've moved to Teknik.

https://teknik.io/

I haven't tried it myself, but it appears to be all free software (mostly permissively licensed), and they offer a number of other services (e.g. blog, file upload, git repositories). All free of cost, apparently; looks good to me!

nomo
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Joined: 09/03/2014

Teknik require private software, more: Microsof private software.
https://git.teknik.io/danthebeastman/Teknik

Requirements

In order to run Teknik on your server, you'll need:

IIS 7+ with URL Rewrite module or Apache with mod_rewrite enabled (Requires conversion of web.config files)
ASP.NET MVC 5
.NET Framework 4.6.2
MS SQL Server
hMailServer (If running email as well)
Web Mail Client (If you would like to have webmail)
Gogs Service (If you want to have Git integration)

IrishUSA
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Joined: 12/03/2016

I'm still undecided on what email provider to move to. I guess there's nothing out there that hits all the targets:

1) 100% use of libre software and fully freedom compatible, librebooted hardware with no backdoors
2) 100% end-to-end content encryption that prevents the provider from decrypting content
3) a normal, mainstream sounding domain name (like email.com), not something weird that you have laboriously spell, explain, etc thousands of times for the rest of your life
4) hosted in a trustworthy, low-corruption, high-competence, free country outside of the US and EU (like Iceland, Switzerland, etc)
5) compatible with syncing programs like SyncThing
6) compatible with client software like Thunderbird and Evolution
7) fast and reliable, with high or unlimited storage, message size, and traffic allowances

Nice-to-haves:
8) encrypted metadata, not just content
9) IMAP not just POP3
10) able to host contacts and calendar, and intelligently share them with other trusted people

I'm not expecting gratis and am happy to pay, even above-average rates, to get this kind of trustworthy service.

happy_gnu
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Joined: 08/06/2017

I don't think yahoo, hotmail, outlook, or your regular corporative email sounds nothing but weird so I don't see a problem there.

Soon.to.be.Free
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Joined: 07/03/2016

>100% end-to-end content encryption that prevents the provider from decrypting content

I'm not sure what you mean by 'end-to-end', but the mail provider can't offer sender-to-receiver encryption. E-mail simply wasn't built with that in mind, and (unless all communicating parties use PGP in their mail clients) the best you can hope for is ProtonMail's encrypt-what-we-receive protocol.

IrishUSA
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Joined: 12/03/2016

Forgot to mention - reasonable expectation that it will survive and not go belly up in the near to mid term.

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

Service sustainability is a major sticking point. I don't want to use GMail, despite it being a convenient and reliable service from a naive user POV, for the same reason I don't want to use FarceBook or Skype (contributing to their network effect). But I also don't want to be constantly having to up sticks and move from one fringe service to another, with all the loss of data/ contacts, and other disruptions this involves.

I set up an OpenMailBox account to separate out my personal (friends and family) email from correspondence related to activist work (for which I use RiseUp). I'm not opposed to paying a fair price for a hosted service - being the customer may be the only viable alternative to being the product - but I think there are some things it is unethical to charge for, and the ability to export user data is one of them (eg POP3/ IMAP access to email). Even if OMB hadn't made this unethical pricing decision, the fact their user forum went offline for months with no communication from OMB about why, or about their plans to switch to new software and pricing model, and the way their new software broke many of the ways I was using their service, leave me far from convinced they are a reliable long term host. So, I'm now on the hunt for a replacement too. I thank those who have posted recommendations and reviews here, and will do the same for the services I'm aware of.

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

I have used RiseUp.net email for more than a decade. They are a fantastic service, aimed at supporting people doing activist work. They use only free software on principle, and because of their activist focus, they place a high priority on constantly improving security and avoiding handing over user data to any third party, governmental or commercial. They own their own bare metal servers, which are hosted in a colocation facility they help to run. They are funded by donations, and run a fund-raising drive once a year to cover their costs.

There are only two major downsides to using RiseUp for email. New accounts have to be manually approved by admins - it speeds things up if you can get endorsement from existing users - and you have to give some information about the kinds of activism you will use the account to support (this could include software freedom advocacy). The second issue, related to the first, is that they could not cope if everyone who wants a free code powered tried to sign up with them. The service depends on a team of trusted volunteers, and donations to cover their external costs, and there are hard limits to their ability to scale up their service to accommodate more users.

There is a desperate need for more organisations that can roll out the type of technical infrastructure that RiseUp have assembled, but aimed at people using email for normal personal or business use (supporting custom domains etc). I'd love to see groups like RiseUp putting out detailed documentation on exactly what software they use, and how they set it up (eg how many physical and virtual servers they use, and how the various services are divided amongst them), so their services can be replicated by other groups wanting to set up similar service, or to self host.

Time4Tea
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Joined: 07/16/2017

So, is OMB actually kaput, or is it just 'unreliable'? (not that that's much better ..)

Ronmamita
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Joined: 08/13/2017

This will be one more milestone decision choices I will make in my Trisquel adventure, I have no clue about mail serve standards and ask if a collaborative effort will be formed to create a side-by-side chart comparison of the available services that meet our standards?

I imagine no one or two will fit all of our individual preferences, thus wouldn't it be a wonderful inclusion to the forum's documentation or maybe I should call it a "wiki"?
Moments ago I looked up the wiki and jumped to the links to learn more {Install the Enigmail plugin for your email program or are they alread included?}.
Maybe, some of the members in the other groups (GNU, FSF, or other distros) can join the effort?

I would like to see how that kind of collaboration works.

ADFENO
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Joined: 12/31/2012

There is a page about email service providers at
, however, at least for
the case of OpenMailBox, we know it has changed.

I have contacted FSF, I suggested them to update information about
OpenMailBox.

name at domain writes:

> This will be one more milestone decision choices I will make in my
> Trisquel adventure, I have no clue about mail serve standards and ask
> if a collaborative effort will be formed to create a side-by-side
> chart comparison of the available services that meet our standards?
>
> I imagine no one or two will fit all of our individual preferences,
> thus wouldn't it be a wonderful inclusion to the forum's documentation
> or maybe I should call it a "wiki"?
> Maybe, some of the members in the other groups (GNU, FSF, or other
> distros) can join the effort?
>
> I would like to see how that kind of collaboration works.
>

--
- https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno
- Palestrante e consultor sobre /software/ livre (não confundir com
gratis).
- "WhatsApp"? Ele não é livre. Por favor, use o GNU Ring ou o Tox.
- Contato: https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno#vCard
- Arquivos comuns aceitos (apenas sem DRM): Corel Draw, Microsoft
Office, MP3, MP4, WMA, WMV.
- Arquivos comuns aceitos e enviados: CSV, GNU Dia, GNU Emacs Org, GNU
GIMP, Inkscape SVG, JPG, LibreOffice (padrão ODF), OGG, OPUS, PDF
(apenas sem DRM), PNG, TXT, WEBM.

NickThom
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Joined: 09/03/2017

Dear users, we received quite a lot of messages of users that were concerned regarding the IMAP support removal for free accounts.

The reason for this limitation is the cost of offering this protocol. In fact, due to the nature of the protocol, great loads are experienced from our side. Sadly managing all this load for free is hardly sustainable.

However, we may not have made this change as smooth as it should have been and clearly have not anticipated the concerns users are currently manifesting and we are sincerely sorry for that, we really didn't thought wrong and the intention absolutely wasn't forcing users into buying our pro plan.

For this reason, users that used the service before this change (04/08/2017) will be offered a pro account for a period of one month. Please note that if you already are connected to your account, you will have to logout and then login again.

You can configure IMAP on your account here.

If you have any more questions or concerns, you can reach us through our contact form.

Source: https://www.openmailbox.org/an-update-on-imap

I tested IMAP today and it works :)

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

I just found out about Disroot.org. They offer a range of services (email, file storage, status messages etc) based on free code server packages like Rainloop, NextCloud, and Diaspora. Just signed up for an account to try it out.

SuperTramp83

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Joined: 10/31/2014

Their searx instance is excellent too

Time4Tea
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Joined: 07/16/2017

I just signed up for a disroot account, because it looks really good and they seem to link in with Diaspora as well, which I want to try as an alternative to FB. However, their webmail doesn't seem to run in Icecat with LibreJS enabled, even though LJS isn't showing any scripts being blocked. Has anyone else had this issue?

(I had to disable LJS to sign up as well, otherwise their captcha thingy wouldn't load)

CitoplasmaX
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Joined: 11/24/2016

I recommend Disroot (https://disroot.org)