Email: who can read it, how easily you can leave, and who pays
Your email address is the key that resets most of your other accounts, and your inbox is often the longest record you keep of your own life. Three questions separate the providers: can the company read your mail, can you take it elsewhere with an ordinary mail app, and does the business run on ads or on your subscription.
The short answer. If you want a provider that cannot read your mail, Proton Mail and Tuta encrypt it so that only you hold the key, and both have a free plan with 1 GB. The price of that protection is portability: Tuta does not offer IMAP at all, and Proton's export runs through its own tool. If you want mail that works in any app and moves easily, paid providers such as Fastmail, Posteo and mailbox.org use the open standards, but they do not encrypt stored mail end to end unless you set that up yourself. Gmail is free, and Google and Microsoft both say they do not target ads from what you write in email. There is no single best choice, only the trade you would rather make.
What to compare
| Measure | The question to ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Who can read it | Does the provider hold the keys to your stored mail? | If it does, a breach, a court order or a policy change can reach your inbox |
| Standard access and export | Does it work over IMAP with any mail app, and can you download everything? | Leaving should not cost you your archive |
| Who pays | Ads, or your subscription? | The funding decides what the company is working to maximise |
| Everyday ease | Free tier, good apps, familiar workflow | You will only keep using what fits your day |
Weigh what you care about
Who can read it. Proton says its zero-access encryption means it never sees your inbox, on any plan. Tuta says it encrypts subject lines, attachments, your calendars and your whole address book end to end. Even Tuta cannot hide everything: it says sender and recipient addresses stay unencrypted, because other mail servers need them to deliver the message. Mailfence says its encryption happens in your browser and works with any OpenPGP service. Apple is plain that iCloud Mail does not use end-to-end encryption, because it has to work with the global email system. Fastmail's privacy policy describes encryption in transit, not end to end, and says it keeps IP logs for up to a year to watch for fraud. Posteo lets you switch on encrypted storage of your saved mail, and mailbox.org lets you encrypt messages with PGP or S/MIME; both are options you choose, not defaults.
Standard access and export. Here the ranking flips. Fastmail lists IMAP, POP, SMTP, CalDAV and CardDAV settings for using any mail, calendar or contacts app. Posteo supports IMAP, POP3, CalDAV and CardDAV, and mailbox.org offers webmail, IMAP and POP3 on every private plan. Tuta says it does not support IMAP because that would mean storing your mail unencrypted on your device; it offers its own open-source desktop apps instead. Proton offers an export tool that saves every email as an EML file, which Thunderbird or Outlook can import. Google Takeout exports Gmail with each message's labels kept in a special header, though it cannot export by date range. Exporting an Outlook.com mailbox means installing desktop Outlook and saving a .pst file, or an .olm file on older Outlook for Mac.
Who pays. Proton says it is funded by subscribers rather than your data. Posteo says users' fees are its only source of funds and it carries no advertising. Fastmail says it does not sell personal information and has never trained AI on customer data. Google says it does not show personalised ads based on your Gmail content, and in the same policy says automated systems analyse your content to tailor features such as search results and ads. Microsoft says it does not use what you write in email to target ads. Yahoo says it analyses emails from retailers and other organisations, not personal emails between individuals, to build advertising interest profiles, with opt-out controls.
Cost. Proton, Tuta and Mailfence have free plans; Mailfence's holds 500 MB of email. Every Google Account comes with up to 15 GB, shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos. Posteo costs 1 euro a month with 4 GB and no free plan, and asks for no name or address at signup. Mailbox.org's Light plan is 1 euro a month billed yearly with 2 GB, after a 30-day trial. Fastmail is 6 US dollars a month, or 5 billed yearly, with 60 GB and a 30-day trial but no free tier.
If you care most about...
There is no best provider for everyone. Pick the trade you can live with.
| If you care most about | Look at | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Nobody at the company reading your mail | Proton Mail, Tuta | They encrypt stored mail so only you hold the key |
| Using any mail app and moving freely | Fastmail, Posteo, mailbox.org | Standard protocols; stored mail is not end-to-end encrypted unless you add it |
| Very little personal data at signup | Posteo | No name or address needed |
| Familiar and free | Gmail | 15 GB free, and Google says Gmail content does not personalise ads |
| Encryption on a free plan | Proton Mail, Tuta, Mailfence | Free tiers with encryption built in |
Before you switch anything
Take a full export of your current mailbox now, so your archive is yours whatever you decide. If you stay with Yahoo, look for its opt-out controls for ad interest profiles. If you stay with Microsoft, its privacy statement points to a page where you can turn off personalised ads.
What we're not telling you
- Encrypted email protects what sits on the server. Anyone you write to on another provider keeps their own copy under their provider's rules.
- Paid plan prices change and some pages load them by script; where we could not read a price, we left it out.
- We do not score deliverability, spam filtering, or access for disabled users, and our scores read providers' own documents, checked in September 2026, rather than lab tests.
How we made this
We take no money from any email provider. Every fact above comes from a provider's own pages, linked below. Each provider's scores, with the source behind every cell, are in the email comparison. Alias services and separate mail apps do a different job and are not compared. If something has changed, tell us through Contribute and we will correct it.
Sources
- Proton Mail, checked 2026-09
- Proton Mail pricing, checked 2026-09
- Proton: export emails, checked 2026-09
- Tuta encryption, checked 2026-09
- Tuta pricing, checked 2026-09
- Tuta: desktop clients and IMAP, checked 2026-09
- Mailfence, checked 2026-09
- Fastmail privacy policy, checked 2026-09
- Fastmail pricing, checked 2026-09
- Fastmail server names and ports, checked 2026-09
- Posteo features, checked 2026-09
- mailbox.org prices, checked 2026-09
- Apple iCloud data security overview, checked 2026-09
- Google privacy policy, checked 2026-09
- Google: download your data, checked 2026-09
- Google One plans, checked 2026-09
- mailbox.org email, checked 2026-09
- Microsoft privacy statement, checked 2026-09
- Microsoft: export your Outlook.com mailbox, checked 2026-09
- Yahoo privacy policy, checked 2026-09