I hope I’m not annoying you kind folks too much with my ongoing Tutamail woes, but, in the long slow process of divorcing myself from them (and returning to Thunderbird), I’m looking for an email host/provider that integrates well with TB, meaning that it can sync mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks between the Linux desktop and Android. I’ve looked at so many different services, and each one seems to be missing one or more pieces of the puzzle. I’ve tried and did not like, for one reason or another, ProtonMail, Posteo, and Kolab (I can’t necessarily remember the exact reason for not liking each). I’ve gone through alternativeto as well without much success; I am in the process of investigating Mailfence, which looks promising, but seems to lack a few things as well. I don’t think I have the time or the brainpower to host my own email server either.
Looking over what I’ve just written, it seems like I’ve managed to make this a fairly challenging question, but I thought I should at least mention what I’ve already tried. Probably being too picky for my own good, but now that we’re 10+ years out from The Snowden Affair, having a FOSS email service that does all these things seems like it should be kind of a no-brainer. Anyway, any and all suggestions are welcome, and apologies for the written filibuster.
P.S. The comments to this article would seem to suggest that a @thunderbird.com email is being considered, after K9 mail becomes TB Mail for Android, but who knows how far off that will be?
Ok, now pardon me while I go take another look at ProtonMail…
Would https://www.fastmail.com or https://mailbox.org/en/ tick your boxes ?
I switched to mailbox, and am happy to pay for the features I want.
Works fine with thunderbird.
It’s frustrating how bad email/calendar clients have gotten. Thunderbird works, but by god it’s UI is awful… And it’s what I use.
+1 for Mailbox.org! Works well with FairEmail (Android) and Evolution (Fedora). Evolution is a bit more polished than Thunderbird in my opinion.
And looks like the web interface gets a revamp this year: https://mailbox.org/en/post/we-are-celebrating-10-years-of-mailbox-org
Mailbox.org looks like a winner! Tell me though, does it make sense to start setting it up from the web (mailbox.org) or from Thunderbird?
If you mean the calendar and contacts it’s probably best to set them up from Thunderbird. But you can import stuff in the web settings too.
There are some specific settings in the mailbox.org account so you should probably go through them once, just in case.
Mailbox.orgers (wow, that looks weird, but anyway), what mobile calendar and tasks app(s) do you use with it (besides DAVx5 which I guess is just for syncing purposes)?
Calengoo. It’s a super versatile app with lots of customization options and can bypass the dumb Android sync and connect directly to CalDAV. It has versions for pretty much all operating systems, including Android, iOS, Linux, Windows and Mac. On Linux you can install it via Flatpak.
You do NOT need a Google Calendar account like it says on the website for some reason. It supports Google Calendar but it’s not required. (The website is really dumb, it redirects me to the iOS section and it gives no clue the app is actually available for all OS.)
If you get it for Android I strongly suggest to purchase a license code directly by paying directly with CC/PayPal and receiving one in the mail. The version from Google Play is tied to the app being present on Google Play, and last week was booted out of the store temporarily for some terms confusion with Google, which has caused it to fail for all the people who had bought it from Play.
Does Calengoo integrate with Thunderbird?
In what way? Calengoo can send email notification for events but I think it connects directly to SMTP for that, it doesn’t go through an email app.
I use posteo.de and sync between Thunderbird on Linux, Thunderbird on OS X, Apple Mail on Desktop and iOS without problems. Calendar and contacts, too. My partner syncs between iPhone and Thunderbird on Windows.The service is a German privacy aware mail service. It is 1€/Month.Edit: didn’t see that you ruled out Posteo already. I still think it’s a great mail service.
Mailbox.org is nice and has calendar which works with TB. They also have tons of aliases in the 3€/mo plan, temporary addresses, enforced TLS encryption domain etc.
Proton also uses proprietary apps and those apps are not without their share of problems.
Note that the web clients are all GPLv3: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients
It’s only the mobile apps of the auxillary services (drive, pass etc.) that are proprietary. And I don’t get why either because it wouldn’t hurt them one bit.
Their mobile apps aren’t proprietary either:
Oh, indeed! They’re under different orgs; that confused me.
Thanks.
p.s. To everyone out there. Remind me when the Proton mail app without Google push has landed in F-Droid.
I use mailfence. They offer imap, caldav, and carddav. It’ll check all those boxes, but I don’t think those are unique offerings among the privacy respecting email services.
I use Proton Mail’s Proton Calendar app for my calendar though. I was using caldav + davx5 but I had issues with reminder settings getting lost on recurring events.
Fastmail works really well with Thunderbird. Need to use an app called Davx5 on Android for calendar and contact sync.
I’d give up tasks. I’ve used only google tasks tbf, but task management deserves a separate app / service.
I’ve been using migadu and its been great so far
Doesn’t host calendar and contacts, only email.
I see it as a big plus.
So any web host that uses cPanel should be a good thing. IMAP for mail, Caldav for Calendars and Cardav for contacts. It’s what I use anyway and haven’t had any issues
Ok, duh, is cPanel the same as Roundcube?
cPanel is like DirectAdmin, Plesk, ISPConfig, an admin panel to configure services. Roundcube is just a webmail application.
Are you using https://www.davx5.com on your phone ?
No, cPanel is the interface you use to manage your hosting package. It’s the Admin part to add & remove domains, websites, email, etc. In cPanel you can set up your email for your personal domain(s). Roundcube is a web email client that can be used to access your email. Or you can use a client like Thunderbird on your device.
Pretty much any IMAP mail provider combined with Nextcloud for sync will work.
Keep in mind too that Proton Mail has a commercial offering that should work with thunderbird. I have no experience with it.
We use our ISPs mail with our Nextcloud instance but long run will probably move to domain mail with maybe Fastmail for the mail component. Not sure yet. I will be interested in what you find.
