Protonmail alternatives?

[back2themoon]

Reliable Email providers? (2025 update)

[Octopuss]

I have been using Posteo for its IMAP capacity since 2020 and have been satisfied: €1 a month is well worth the price. Because you are interested in additional addresses, I should note that Posteo offers two email aliases for free, with the choice to add more for ten cents a month each. It also allows choosing country-specific extensions: @posteo.de, @posteo.co.uk, @posteo.jp…

Can the aliases be configured in such way as if I had standalone email accounts though? Like with some elaborate folders and filters, so whatever I send from that alias goes to its own sent mail folder and such?

[Mæstro]

Can [Posteo] aliases be configured in such way as if I had standalone email accounts though? Like with some elaborate folders and filters, so whatever I send from that alias goes to its own sent mail folder and such?

Yes, this is possible within Posteo’s webmail filters or through an email client like Claws Mail.

[Octopuss]

I am using Epyrus and will probably switch to IMAP with a new mail provider. Will I be able to do this too?

[Mæstro]

I am using Epyrus and will probably switch to IMAP with a new mail provider. Will I be able to do this too?

Yes, I had switched from Interlink to Claws Mail while keeping my Posteo account, without difficulty.

[Octopuss]

I've exchanged several mails with Posteo support, and it seems like I will be able to more or less (with some filters - not sure yet, I never even saw IMAP in my life) use the service in the same way as I do Sneakemail right now - specific aliases for registering for various websites that can be used as standalone inboxes. I don't normally send anything from those, but on a rare occasion I have to, for example when trying to contact support, and obviously I can't do that from a completely different email because they wouldn't trust me it's me.

[Octopuss]

I have just realized I am a complete idiot. I am paying $48 a year for Sneakemail, which is likely so well known these days significant amount of websites flat out rejects all of their domains, while Posteo account with two aliases cost €12 a year about one more euro for an additional alias, which you can create and delete as you wish, so with a bit more limitation in terms of the number I can have "comparably useful" amount of addresses to use for much less money, plus they would work 100%.

[frostknight]

I have just realized I am a complete idiot. I am paying $48 a year for Sneakemail, which is likely so well known these days significant amount of websites flat out rejects all of their domains, while Posteo account with two aliases cost €12 a year about one more euro for an additional alias, which you can create and delete as you wish, so with a bit more limitation in terms of the number I can have "comparably useful" amount of addresses to use for much less money, plus they would work 100%.

Either posteo.de or disroot.org, both are good.

[Garland]

Posteo has a unique spam strategy using greylisting:
https://posteo.de/en/help/an-email-did- ... e-what-now
https://posteo.de/en/help/how-does-the- ... ilter-work

I have been using it for 2 years as my secondary email provider. I use a POP3 client (to avoid poking a hole in my in-bound firewall) with no spam folder. So far, no spam false positives or false negatives.

What is the experience of other forum members with Posteo spam false positives or false negatives?

[Moonchild]

unique spam strategy using greylisting

Certainly not unique. My MTA (mdaemon) has had it forever as an option. Big downside is that it introduces delays that could really cause issues if you need something fast, like a verification code through e-mail.

[back2themoon]

Posteo has a unique spam strategy using greylisting:
https://posteo.de/en/help/how-does-the- ... ilter-work

In the link above, they say:

"If the filter classifies an email as spam, it will not arrive... ... With this approach, we prevent emails from getting lost."

How is an email that never arrives "not lost"? What am I missing here?

[Mæstro]

How is an email that never arrives "not lost"? What am I missing here?

The answer is in the ellipsis:

If the filter classifies an email as spam, it will not arrive, and the sender will be immediately notified that it was not delivered.
Our spam filter is very effective and only incorrectly classifies an email as spam on extremely rare occasions. If this does occur, the sender is immediately notified (by their server) that our server did not accept the email. The sender can attempt to remedy the reasons for classification as spam or, alternatively, contact the recipient via a different method.
With this approach, we prevent emails from getting lost.

The alternative here, which Posteo prevents, is that the intended recipient never sees the flagged message and that the sender is left to believe it delivered successfully.

[back2themoon]

Yes, I read that but still don't get it. The email remains unreceived i.e. lost. It's entirely up to the sender whether they'll bother re-sending it. Let alone "remedy the reasons... or contact the recipient via a different method."

[Mæstro]

I think Posteo are using lost to mean unaccounted, not how you are using it. To illustrate Posteo’s usage by analogy, a physical letter in the post which has been marked ‘not delivered: return to sender’ and shows up in the sender’s letter box is not lost, although it has not been delivered. The sender knows he must somehow change things and try again.

[back2themoon]

The sender's email will not get "lost" for the sender. It's in their Sent folder and... reminiscence. It's logical to assume that when Posteo says: "we prevent emails from getting lost." they are referring mainly, if not exclusively to the recipient.

Yet this strategy makes it quite easy for the recipient to never receive the email. I'd classify that as lost.

Even if their spam filter is as good as they claim, the risk is there.

Sanity is only restored later: "You can also activate our Posteo spam folder... all spam will then be delivered to this folder". But this comes after the "we prevent emails from getting lost" claim and certainly looks like "you can have your antiquated, traditional ways, too".

They are trying something innovative/"modern", I get it. It still sounds BS to me.

[Mæstro]

What is the experience of other forum members with Posteo spam false positives or false negatives?

No false positives that I know of. For me, spam comes mostly from institutions with which I am associated, mostly my present and past universities, sending mass letters (eg fundraisers) of no interest to me, but which I cannot blacklist entirely because enough legitimate traffic uses the same channels. Posteo’s filtering ability lets me shut out the nonsense, which would presumably embrace any false negatives from my perspective, and Bogofilter in my IMAP client (Claws Mail) is reliable enough to treat anything for which I have not yet bothered to create a relevant filter without headaches.

[Octopuss]

I keep getting a ton of spam where the text is actually an image. Is there even any technical solution to recognize this?

[Moonchild]

Well if that is what Posteo calls "greylisting" then they are conflating the term. That's not greylisting; it's simply refusing mail based on internal spam score.

What greylisting really is, is temporarily refusing e-mail delivery from unknown hosts, and sending a dedicated temporary failure message/response code to the sending MTA, which will cause it to "back off" and then retry after a designated period in the sending MTA (usually 10-15 minutes). If delivery is attempted a second time for the same mail by the same host after a certain delay, then it will be accepted. Spam bot scripts pretty much never retry delivery, only real mail servers do. So by introducing this forced delivery delay, it can mitigate spam mail from simple bots quite effectively.
All of this happens without interaction with the actual sender, though. This is an automated mechanism existing in mail transport to be resilient to temporary outages/connectivity issues.

[Mæstro]

What greylisting really is, is temporarily refusing e-mail delivery from unknown hosts, and sending a dedicated temporary failure message/response code to the sending MTA, which will cause it to "back off" and then retry after a designated period in the sending MTA (usually 10-15 minutes).

This explains at last why so many websites back in the day would instruct the user, after creating an account, to wait up to fifteen minutes if the activation email never arrived. I was never forced to wait, for the email would either be accepted at once or I would become distracted long enough for it to deliver, so I never understood why that advice existed.

[Octopuss]

Hmmm.
Does anyone familiar with Posteo know whether or how can I use Epyrus with the Posteo aliases so I can send mail from those addresses? I cannot figure it out.