Hi there, I’ve been using Gmail since it was available via invitation in beta status. I’m not specifically concerned about the privacy violations, as important as that is. But I am concerned enough about Google’s increasing evil to consider moving away from it, because they have the power to cut off access to my email and by extension all of my subscriptions and online services if they arbitrarily decide that I’m in violation of some policy clause. The move would be a massive hassle, and I wonder about the short-term and long-term downsides with alternative email services, and if migration would end up putting my email sustainability in greater jeopardy than with Gmail. So I’m not sure if I should stay with the devil that I know, since I’m more concerned about sustainability and permanence than anything else.
Most free email services whether they are private or not don’t offer IMAP access, which is another requirement. Most recommended email services are paid, but I hesitate to use them due to the unlikely but still possible chance that the perfect storm of digital disaster hits me: Credit card gets stolen or compromised and/or bank account temporarily inaccessible due to geo-IP restrictions, and no way to renew the payment for my email service. That’s why I would strongly prefer a service that offers a free tier with IMAP access.
So after a lot of searching I’m considering moving my main email to Murena cloud. But I’d just like to confirm if Murena and /e/ are in this for the long haul? Is reliability/uptime reasonably good? I know there are other more established alternative email services offered by ethical companies, but none of them offer both IMAP and a free tier with a reasonable amount of storage. Also, could I create a few more additional Murena.io accounts to segregate my emails in the same way I’ve been doing with a couple of additional Gmail accounts I have? Thanks in advance for your advice and opinions.
I would like to congratulate you on your thoughts. This is an important step in the right direction. Now you should be consistent and actually take the next step.
You are probably imagining the changeover to be more difficult than it actually is. Why don’t you start by using your new Murena account? For the most important and most frequent contacts. Everything old can stay with the old mail provider for the time being.
It is important not to forget that you are valuable. All the actions you perform online leave traces. These are valuable for advertising companies like Google. You pay for your personal usage behavior to be analyzed and sold on. The services there are therefore not really “free”, you pay with your highly personal privacy: From where and when do you have contact with whom? Use Murena, your contacts will also see the @murena extension on your emails and, if they investigate, will realize that you value privacy protection. It also puts you in a better light with everything you do. Get a Murena-Account now. This is an invitation link.
Not true for gmx.com: they offer free accounts with IMAP access. They also have a useful ‘Mail collector’ functionality which can pick up emails from other accounts, including GMail (and optionally to delet them from the other account). I use it to pick up mail from my mail account.
I would recommend the gmx.com service. I use it, as I used to use GMail, to provide an address which I can use when accessing services to which I don’t want to hand over my ‘real’ email addresses (of which I have two: my own domain name, and my e.email / murena.io address. And they are definitely in for the long haul: my nephew has a had gmx.com email address since he was at university. He’s now well into his thirties
To be clear, I would recommend you get a murena.io address as well. Use that as your primary address, and use the GMX address as a 'disposable` address, and to pick up mail from your Gmail account. Having (at least) two functioning email addresses can be useful if ever one of them has an outage for whatever reason
