[peatmoss]

I recently moved my stuff to / paid a year of Fastmail. I gather Protonmail puts security features a bit more front-and-center.

How about the UX? Can anyone comment on how they like the over all experience of Protonmail as compared to Fastmail? I realize I could sign up a Protonmail account and compare, but I’m not sure I’d get a good picture of the service through casual use.

I like Fastmail quite a lot so far, but I’m open to reevaluating in a year’s time.

[blairbeckwith]

Lack of POP/IMAP is a big, major con. You're forced to use their web or native interfaces. They don't make this super obvious outside of an FAQ on their site. I signed up and then found out. I wonder how much churn that causes them.

[rmorey]

You actually can use IMAP/SMTP with ProtonMail using their new bridge application (only on Windows and macOS right now, Linux "coming soon")

https://protonmail.com/bridge

[peatmoss]

Oh my, yes, that’s a huge downside / nonstarter for me. Thank you.

[zyrthofar]

I was about to switch in a couple of weeks, until I read your comment.

How would encrypted emails work in a client like Thunderbird? Would it normally be handled correctly if POP/IMAP was available?

[peatmoss]

This is the grand problem with email. At least two standards exist: PGP & SMIME

But... those aren’t particularly friendly and thus aren’t widely used. The main usability issue is a fundamental one, namely that management of crypto keys is hard.

Hearing that Protonmail requires their own client suggests to me that they’ve given up on the standards due to usability issues, and have instead adopted a managed key model like Apple’s iMessage.

iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, but Apple manages keys on your behalf. It’s not a bad compromise between privacy and usability depending on your threat model.

But, at this point I’m deeply suspicious of anything that isn’t standards based or that locks me into a particular vendor’s software. I’m therefore skeptical that we’ll satisfactorily solve email privacy for a majority of people in my lifetime.

EDIT: Thunderbird would work with Fastmail for encryption using PGP or SMIME (at least I think Thunderbird supports SMIME). Protonmail wouldn’t work, I’d guess.

[Boulth]

> Thunderbird would work with Fastmail for encryption using PGP or SMIME (at least I think Thunderbird supports SMIME).

Thunderbird supports SMIME natively, just like most of email clients. But of course there are some usability issues, like you need to enable encryption each time per email, or require it for all emails, there is no middle ground like "encrypt if I have keys, do not encrypt otherwise".

[bproven]

The other issue is inability to search your mail's message bodies in the web/mobile app. This is due to the encryption...

[Braxton_Hicks]

Do you have a link to where you read that?

[woolvalley]

I like fastmail, you actually get enough space & email aliases for a reasonable price. In todays age of $5/month 1TB of storage, charging an extra 21 euro a month for 15GB more storage and more no cost email aliases is a bit silly.

I also like the [anything]@alias.domainname.com feature. Lets you separate out user accounts into unique email addresses, and you skip the username+[unique]@gmail.com filter that a lot of places have now.

And the fact you can host a simple static website on your domain is useful.