https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/

The wiki lays it out pretty well. Since you're interacting with normal people all your emails are both sent and received in the clear and can be read by your email provider and your counterparties email provider.

As far as Google alternatives go fast mail which isn't an encrypted email service is a reasonable alternative that lots of people enjoy.

The big difference between proton and Tutanota is what is encrypted at rest.

Proton does not encrypt subject lines to and from lines at rest. So that means they can always inspect who sent you mail and what the subject was. The benefit of this is indexing as fast and you can use their search quickly.

Tutanota does encrypt everything at rest. So nothing is readable including subject to and from lines. Except by your client with the correct key. You can search your email locally but you have to maintain a large cache of your email if you want to search all of it.

As far as encrypted email goes it's great, but only for encryption at rest, if it's caught in live transmission then the data's compromised. But it's definitely better than leaving the data open on some server. So the choice is yours

I see you've more or less chosen proton.

Came here to say that I have been using tutanota for years now and it works very well.

It does fit the use case of encrypted emails to people who don't use tutanota. How it works is they will receive an unencrypted email letting them know they have an encrypted email waiting for them, along with a secure link to an https encrypted, password protected web interface with inbox and outbox.

Just wanted to point this out for anyone else evaluating privacy focused email providers.

I prefer ProtonMail for a few reasons:

• I get more from my subscription, 500GB of drive, fast VPN, email, password manager, calendar, SimpleLogin
• I like the UI much more, its a lot more modern, the mobile apps are leagues better (they are actual native apps, not a web app wrapper)
• the services are arguably more feature rich
• the security that they will be around for longer than tutanota, proton has over 100M users, this leads me to think they will be more sustainable

It depends on what you need and what the other side has. It is true you can use PGP encryption with proton, yet not with tutanota. However, how many of your friends use PGP? You could also host yourself? This said, on both tutanota and proton you can set a password to encrypt to none tutanota/proton users. Both services are excellent, both lack imap or pop3. Yes proton can do this with a bridge on desktop, but has google services on android where only the app works. Tutanota does that without Google services.

The big question is, what are you looking for? Just a Gmail replacement or PGP capable email. If it's just for a Gmail replacement have also a look to skiff.com.

compared to gmail, both are more then viable options and it depends on personal preferences. Personally I chose Proton and I am very happy with it.

message people I know who use Gmail securely

don't know how that should work, but ok...

I use Tutanota instead of Proton Mail.