I've not seen anyone else talking about mailbox.org. I've been using them for a while after moving away from Fastmail and I'm loving it. Cheap and they're recommeded by https://www.privacytools.io/.
I've been with them for over a year now as well and not a single issue. The interface is a bit cumbersome in some ways, it's a customized OpenXchange, so some mailbox.org-specific settings are done outside of the rest of the more general OpenXchange settings.
What you get with mailbox.org that you don't get with ProtonMail:
* IMAP and SMTP
* Support for hardware 2FA dongles like Yubikey
* Ability to use your own GPG keys
* Very capable mail filter config tool
* Calendaring and contacts (with nice URLs so it's easy to use on Android via DAVdroid instead of Google's stuff)
* File storage
* Web-based spreadsheet, word processor and presentation tool
Their jurisdiction is Germany so you get whatever is left of EU privacy laws plus the Germany-specific ones.
A number of European countries have laws that make denial of the holocaust (or sometimes more generally all known acts of genocide) and usage of Nazi symbols (swastika, etc.) illegal, with exceptions for things like art and research. Many also prohibit incitement to ethnic or racial hatred.
Their service may be good enough but they are hardly investing enough into their product at the moment. mailbox.org is also not a core product of theirs. Just read through the forums (mostly in German); there are basic features/aspects missing you'd expect with a paid service nowadays like automated DKIM next to bug fixes needed around the web interface, which also can't compare to Fastmail's or Google's mail UI in terms of efficiency and usefulness – it's clunky: consequences of being fully dependent on foreign upstreams, I guess. Plus there's plenty of downtime. And that's for prices similar to Fastmail and GSuite when looking at similarly featured tiers (GSuite Basic – Fastmail professional – mailbox.org Mail XXL plan).
I actually ran mailbox and fastmail side by side before settling on mailbox. I think the UI is next to flawless. AFAIK they don't work on the UI themselves, they use https://www.open-xchange.com/
Well that's fair enough, I basically never use the web interface so I probably haven't ran into those issues. For me it's about where they're located and their customer service more than their interface.
I don't think Fastmail is very clear on their privacy policy (see also my other answer below).
Here is an extract from Fastmail TOS:
Fastmail can disclose your info/data if it thinks it's in the interest of the company: "The Service Provider will not monitor, edit, or disclose any personal information about you [...] unless required or allowed by law, or where the Service Provider has a good faith belief that such action is necessary to: [...] (2) protect and defend the rights or property of the Service Provider; [...] (4) act to protect the interests of its members or others [...]
Possible reasons (I'm also with Fastmail and it makes me uncomfortable):
- Fastmail can immediately cancel your account for any reason: "The Service Provider may terminate your access to any part or all of the Service and any related service(s) at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately, for any reason whatsoever, with or without providing any refund of any payments."
- Fastmail can disclose your info/data if it thinks it's in the interest of the company: "The Service Provider will not monitor, edit, or disclose any personal information about you [...] unless required or allowed by law, or where the Service Provider has a good faith belief that such action is necessary to: [...] (2) protect and defend the rights or property of the Service Provider; [...] (4) act to protect the interests of its members or others [...]
By comparison, mailbox.org TOS are much better.
Also mailbox.org offers GPG encryption, which Fastmail doesn't (AFAIK).
What you get with mailbox.org that you don't get with ProtonMail:
Their jurisdiction is Germany so you get whatever is left of EU privacy laws plus the Germany-specific ones.