For context, I’m in the States.
I already have a Tuta mail account so I figure for mail/calendar/soon-drive I’ll stick to them but what about other services?
Ideally I can try with a free tier before committing. iOS and Android and Linux are the platforms used in my household.
Still looking for:
- password manager
- vpn
- authenticator
- less important: docs/sheets
I was all in on proton services because it was easy for my family to switch from google and still have all these services in one place but now I’m more open to spreading these services out to more than one provider in case any of them shit the bed so to speak.
Thanks!
edit:
- probably staying with proton’s authenticator
- I’m sure most here won’t agree but my entire household uses firefox on desktop/mobile and my wife and I just decided to use firefox’s built in pw manager + sync for pw management. Please understand that convenience is top of mind for us tbh, out lives are too busy to be overly concerned with what to choose here.
- waiting for tuta drive to start using that but backed up out drives to a couple external drives and will just use that until tuta drive is released.
- vpn is still tbd
cloud backed up 2fa codes lol, you guys are always funny
I’m happy with Proton for the sole reason they aren’t Google. I don’t trust them completely, but I trust them more than I trust Google, and that’s all that matters. This doesn’t answer your question, but I thought I’d throw my opinion out there.
My opinion is taht, not I should have to leave Proton. Andy has to leave Proton. Or rather. Proton has to leave Andy.
this was my take after the last drama with the CEO but this was enough for me to not want to give them money anymore.
I may continue to use one of their free services like the authenticator though since I don’t love my other options and I just don’t want to give them money. I’m not even a huge privacy person, just, like you, wanted to leave google behind.
Honestly if there’s one service you should be able to self host effortlessly it’s email. Email is basically your identity on the internet, but it’s so, so hard. Yes yes you can spin up an SMTP server pretty simply, but good luck getting anything past your ISP and into literally anyone else’s inbox.
yeah, its pretty crazy how involved it is (at least seemingly to me) to host your own email.
Then you get the folks coming out of the woodwork going “herp derp it’s really simple, you just have to buy a domain, then set up all these records, then you line up all eleven chaos crystals on the altar of despair and chant the forbidden words, then you…”
I think saying “It’s really simple” is actually terrible from a pedagogical point of view. It just makes the learner go “Well I guess I’m dumb because I don’t get such a simple concept.” I get people saying this are trying to be reassuring, but it should be remembered that pretty much anything is simple if you do it a million times. I’m sure brain surgery is simple for a brain surgeon, but I’m not a brain surgeon. I think it’s better to say "This is a long process with a lot of moving parts, but let’s take a breath and tackle it one step at a time and we’ll get through it. Sorry not ranting at OP, I just see this attitude all the time in IT and it bugs me.
I career changed into IT years after college, so I was already an adult when I entered my first trembling keystrokes into a blank terminal window. I vividly remember how intimidating it all felt.
I spent 2 weeks configuring my self host server, and in retrospect it was all pretty simple… but actually doing it right the first time is not simple lol. It’s a knowledge check like playing King’s Quest or other Sierra games. If you already know what to do yeah it’s simple… but good freaking luck getting it right on the first try with only vague directions
For me I really only use Proton for its mail. I am considering thunderbird pro / thundermail, they are more expensive than my proton mail plus subscription, but I feel like it also contributes to the development of the thuderbird client
I self host Vaultwarden and use it also for 2FA codes (with a local copy in ageis authenticator) I have a nextcloud that does calendar and has inbuilt office in a pinch, and file sync
-
Password manager - Bitwarden (for now). They might enshittify soon because of their new CEO, but for now the technology is good.
-
VPN - IVPN. I was a previous Mullvad user. They were great, but you’re probably already aware of their own controversy. Not free obviously, and you probably know a free VPN is a bad idea.
-
Authenticator - Ente is free and with cloud backups.
What are the pros of IVPN over Mullvad, other than the controversy?
In my experience and use-cases, they are pretty much the same. IVPN has a bit of an edge with bypassing geo restrictions with streaming services. It seems their IPs are less known than Mullvad.
I have used IVPN for the better part of a decade now, and for me it’s just that they do the job. Seems like a lame reason I know, but I pay the fee, it does its thing: rinse repeat. I’ve had no issues, no world shaking controversy, nothing. For me that’s one of the best things about it.
From a privacy standpoint, no logs, plenty of servers all around, etc. Someone else probably has a better breakdown of the pros and cons, but honestly my main thing is just not thinking or hearing about it.
-
I’m super curious about this as well. Can I ask how you find Tuta? They don’t have any integration with mail clients or don’t support IMAP, right? I’ve found the Thunderbird integration for Protonmail really helpful, and I use ProtonVPN all day every day
I have heard good things about AirVPN, but I haven’t tried it. I use Bitwarden as a password manager and it’s convenient and reliable (even possible to self-host if you want, eventually). Bitwarden also supports authenticator TOTP for paid tier (maybe free with self-host?).
I don’t know about Tuta, but if you’re looking for an alternative then Mailbox is awesome. It also takes care of calendar, contacts, drive, basic online office webapps, I think they have a basic video conferencing thing too.
I think Mullvad comes up repeatedly as one of the best VPNs, but you need to look up otherwise since VPNs sell out and enshitify all the time.
Yeah, so my needs are super minimal tbh so Tuta does plenty for me.
No integration with mail clients or IMAP support but they have a linux desktop flatpak or appimage that integrates well for me and an iOS app that also works well for me. I’ve been using the experimental flatpak on mint cinnamon and it’s been working well so far. No major issues.
I was also using proton vpn a lot but not anymore! I never used mail clients so that isn’t a thing I need to worry about luckily, and neither does anyone in my family.
I’ll check out airvpn, so thanks for the rec. I wish bitwarden had free auth but I’m open to just using it as my pw manager.
I use keepassXC/keepass2android paired with a yubikey as 2FA for a password manager. One Yubikey lives in my PC, the other is on my keychain. I then synchronize databases between PC and Android. There is some friction for use, but I’m personally okay with that.
I use Mullvad for VPN (I know the fascist issues amd haven’t gotten around to switching yet).
I switched to vaultwarden this morning. Took a few hours to get nginx to cooperate, but its been smooth sailing so far! I even got ssh-keys working, which I wasn’t able to to do with proton.
As for email… I plan to expeeiment with bulwark once I’m done work, since its the only email server in the truenas app repo. If that doesn’t work, then I guess I’ll keep looking.
(Edit) Turns out that without both a public IP and port 25 there’s no way to selfhost email. Sure, I could rent a VPS but like hell am I doing that. The whole point of self hosting is to minimize subscriptions.
There’s many points to self hosting - reducing subscriptions is just one of them
Personally I pay donations to every service I use, so it’s basically an optional subscription but with infinitely more data sovereignty, control, privacy, and customisation
I don’t have a VPS, I just used an old desktop I had lying around from years ago
Vaultwarden (self hosted)
Surfshark
Aegis
I use Aegis for my authenticator and BitWarden for my password manager, but the latter is on the list the get replaced.
Same for aegis and bitwarden. I have pearpass to replace bitwarden, but it doesn’t have a Firefox extension and now the website says it’s currently paused from active development, so it’s kind of on hold for me
Tuta for me.
