What are your alternatives to proton?
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
There are no viable package solutions, that’s the thing. If you want to make sure your service supplier shares your values, there’s nothing but self-hosting left.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
Tuta for mail & calendar, CryptPad for cloud docs and spreadsheets, Mullvad for VPN, plus a few other random things like Disroot which offers email and and some other services. There’s some overlap and duplication but I don’t want to keep all my shit in one place any more. The Tuta app is blocky but acceptable. Everything else I only view in browsers.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
disroot
Tuta will show you ads in your mailbox, don't fall for it.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
Mail and calendar I'm still trying to figure out. VPN you don't need as long as you use HTTPS everywhere.
password manager
documents
Collabora Office + LibreOffice
What are the pros and cons relative to proton?
Pros: free, open source, and 100% offline with no intermediary company. Your file security is entirely in your own hands.
Cons: you must devise your own cross-device sync system. I use Syncthing + Syncthing-Fork.
What are the mobile apps like?
Collabora is currently just bad lol. It's best reserved for really simple edits, if not just for viewing, with all major changes made on a desktop/laptop computer. KeePassDX isn't terrible but it can't view all the fields that the KeePassXC desktop platform can, and getting it to take PIN instead of password for vault-unlocking is really convoluted (although you'd only have to do it once).
What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future?
They're all open-source so anyone dissatisfied with the direction that the maintainers go in can fork them at any time.
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Mail and calendar I'm still trying to figure out. VPN you don't need as long as you use HTTPS everywhere.
password manager
documents
Collabora Office + LibreOffice
What are the pros and cons relative to proton?
Pros: free, open source, and 100% offline with no intermediary company. Your file security is entirely in your own hands.
Cons: you must devise your own cross-device sync system. I use Syncthing + Syncthing-Fork.
What are the mobile apps like?
Collabora is currently just bad lol. It's best reserved for really simple edits, if not just for viewing, with all major changes made on a desktop/laptop computer. KeePassDX isn't terrible but it can't view all the fields that the KeePassXC desktop platform can, and getting it to take PIN instead of password for vault-unlocking is really convoluted (although you'd only have to do it once).
What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future?
They're all open-source so anyone dissatisfied with the direction that the maintainers go in can fork them at any time.
I can second most of the suggestions. I do not host an office suite (for now?) but I am syncing my keepass dbs over syncthing along with my notes and important documents. I think since 2016 or so. It works well.
Before I had a server I just synced them in a triangle between my phone, laptop and desktop. Most things had 3 copies this way. Any device could offload changes to another.
Now I have a central node and the option to sync as before if the server is down. With Tailscale, I don't need to be on the same wifi now eiter.The keepassDX limitations are not a big deal if all you need is basic autofill.
Mail providers are hard to chose. I am leaving proton for the lack of easy smtp and their locked in nature. Get your oen domain and you will be able to switch more easily in the future.
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Honestly you could easily selfhost all of that except mail and maybe a VPN.
Baikal for calendar. Vaultwarden for passwords.
I can vouch for Vaultwarden and Baikal. Two great essential programs I use.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
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disroot
Tuta will show you ads in your mailbox, don't fall for it.
I've never seen an ad in my mailbox.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
What assurances do you have they won’t go full proton in the future?
Absolutely none. That applies to all services that exist now or in the future. The only way around that is self-hosting but that path has its own issues including a very steep learning curve if you want to be secure as well as private. Maybe this could be a longer term project to work towards?
For services:
- Mail - Mailbox.org seems the best option right now
- Calendar - don't know.
- Drive - either Cryptomator used with literally any service or a dedicated service like Filen
- VPN - Mullvad
- Password Manager - Bitwarden
- Documents - I just use LibreOffice offline or CryptPad occasionally if I'm collabing with someone.
In truth none of these are perfect. Privacy has got a lot harder recently as Proton and StartMail/StartPage have politically shit the bed and the UK seems determined to kill encryption which means I have to avoid really good services like IceDrive just because they're in the UK.
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disroot
Tuta will show you ads in your mailbox, don't fall for it.
I've had Tuta for years and can't recall ads.. what do you mean?
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
Tuta is a great german alternative with e-mail and calendar.
For Drive there is many options but I don't feel recommanding one now
For VPN there is Mullvad, IVPN and NymVPN(beta)
For Password Manager there is BitWarden or any popular KeePass clients but sync is mainly on you.
For Documents there is CryptPad -
I've never seen an ad in my mailbox.
they have to make money somehow.
I was a paying costumer.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
ENTE for photo storage:
https://ente.io/Crypt.ee is also an option.
Have a look at:
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/ -
To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
Custom domain + migadu.com
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I've had Tuta for years and can't recall ads.. what do you mean?
And I am a newer tuta user ( a year or so) and haven't seen an ad yet either.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
As others have said no all-in-one solution, but Privacy Guides has good recommendations for each use case
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What assurances do you have they won’t go full proton in the future?
Absolutely none. That applies to all services that exist now or in the future. The only way around that is self-hosting but that path has its own issues including a very steep learning curve if you want to be secure as well as private. Maybe this could be a longer term project to work towards?
For services:
- Mail - Mailbox.org seems the best option right now
- Calendar - don't know.
- Drive - either Cryptomator used with literally any service or a dedicated service like Filen
- VPN - Mullvad
- Password Manager - Bitwarden
- Documents - I just use LibreOffice offline or CryptPad occasionally if I'm collabing with someone.
In truth none of these are perfect. Privacy has got a lot harder recently as Proton and StartMail/StartPage have politically shit the bed and the UK seems determined to kill encryption which means I have to avoid really good services like IceDrive just because they're in the UK.
I can personally recommend fruux for calendars and contacts, but their free accounts are rather limited.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
Proton's probably the best mail.
Calendar: paper
Documents: cryptpad
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
Incoming mail: my own server and my own domain (Postfix). Sufficient to receive confirmation mails and notifications.
Outgoing mail: no good/reliable solution yet. I have to send personal e-mail very very rarely.
Calendar: Tasks.org app, used offline (not synced).
Drive: 1TB external HDDs. GPG encrypted backups of important stuff are uploaded regularly to one of the VPSes I have.
VPN: Tor
Password manager: KeepassXC (with backups at 3 places).
Documents: Stored on computer, important ones are backed up.
In general things I need on the go (e.g Calendar) is on my phone, the rest is at home at my computer. If I need to move data between devices I simply use USB drives. I don't need no cloud sync of anything.
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To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions
Crypt.ee looks like a solid option if you don't mind their UI/UX. It also gives me confidence in them when I read their FAQ and listen to the podcasts episodes the CEO has been intertwined in.
