[dantondwa]

They’re just closing it, wow.

Someone had recommended me Skiff, but I stayed away from it and opted for Proton, given that they have been around for a while and Skiff smelled like VC money too much. I guess it was the right choice.

At this point, a criteria I try to follow when I have to choose whether or not to rely on a tool is: is it funded by VC? If so, steer clear.

[Tarball10]

That's a similar line of thought I followed when migrating away from Gmail last year.

I was considering Skiff or Fastmail. Skiff was just over a year old with over $10 million in VC funding. Fastmail is 20+ years old and is funded by their own subscription fees.

I was concerned Skiff would be looking for a buyer eventually and things would change for the worse. Definitely didn't expect a full shutdown though.

[esdf]

Yea that sure was fast. It's probably not sustainable/profitable to provide email for free

[godzillabrennus]

Privacy centric email can’t be sustainable or profitable for free. If it’s free then your data is the product.

[Departed7405]

Proton has had a freemium model since 2016 and take no VC money. The key seem to be a free plan that is cheap to operate and has some features limitation to push subscriptions. Free plan has at most 1GB of drive including mails. And has Limited number of calendars, alliasses and mail tags.

Proton paid plan is around 10$ a month so it isn't cheap. But cheap isn't sustainable.

Source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acWkkLaEsrU (Proton CEO interview)

[Brajeshwar]

May I suggest something to think over, what about -- “Can I walk out of this, and migrate elsewhere and how complex/hard will be that migration?” instead of the blanket VC-Funded or not. My thoughts.

[Gentil]

Not OP. But why should I? It's a hassle to do migration. So if there is a non-vc funded choice, why would I bother with all the trouble?

[hobs]

Because in a couple of years regardless if you are locked in its going to end, change, or otherwise break.

[johnkizer]

That's fair, although IMO it's additionally fair to be skeptical of making a long-term commitment to products/services that aren't funded in ways that permit long-term product planning and reasonably-paced development based on that plan.

[ehnto]

I guess we all make our own risk calculations, but if it is truly long term, 5+ years then a SaaS is a risk regardless of funding.

Especially for my personal life where long term really means long term, self-hosted is the only safe option.

As an employee it's a toss up on whether your employer or your SaaS dependency changes course first. So a shorter term engagement is basically guaranteed and it doesn't matter that much.

[j16sdiz]

So 5+ years is now considered long term?

I still remember when Optical CD claiming 30+ years lifetime -- they failed, but they tried

life insurance policy exists too

[dantondwa]

You’re right. I should discriminate between the seriousness of the tool. A non-essential service can be easily replaced when eventually they enshittify it. Email is an essential one, and reliability is the most important factor.