I have mused lately that it is time to move away from my G-Suite account(s). I have several of them, most are the old, no longer offered “basic” accounts (for a period of time, Google offered 8Gig accounts with 2 users, and totally free. These are no longer offered, but I had three grandfathered), and the real account that houses my personal email (my wife and I are the two users).
Google keeps adding features (big deal, I just use their email, and their google drive file stream app) that aren’t too useful for us, and they keep jacking the price up. It is not exorbitant, but it isn’t cheap.
Couple that with that niggling doubt that Google really is reading my emails to better target me for advertisements. Sure, they claim they don’t scan my data. But my trust in them is about nil.
I have looked at some big iron options. Office365 is a strong player, and the irony, I have far more confidence that Microsoft isn’t going to read my data. Scary huh? Another option is the Amazon AWS “workmail” option, an API clone of an Exchange server. Sort of a low frills email and calendaring system, that works with Exchange compatible clients.
I just can’t get around moving to a microsoft, bloated office offer.
A colleague recommended Proton Mail. It is a robust email offer, built securely, with all data and transmissions encrypted with my keys. No way for them to see my email or data. Kinda cool, but it was limited to 5Gig storage. That is OK for me, but I will let you in on a secret, my wife is an email hoarder. Really really bad. Her imap account on our main system is almost 17 gigabytes. Yikes.
Still, Proton Mail has some strengths that make it compelling. As a trial, I have bought a lowest tier paid account, and moved two of my domains to it. Easy peasy to get up and running.
The default access is via the web, and its webmail interface is clean, clear, and intuitive.
This weekend I will follow the how-to to migrate the email archive from the to G-Suite accounts to the Proton mail system. Once I am comfortable with it, I will get on the boss to clear out her archive, and then begin the process to move the email to Proton Mail. There is an option to increase the storage, and while it isn’t going to be a lot cheaper than G-Suite, there is some comfort in moving to a system that is secure, encrypted, and the servers being outside the US is a positive.
The saga continues…
