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Kolab Now?
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➔ Kolab Now website
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29 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
May I suggest https://kolabnow.com as well?
Also in Switzerland, even better webmail and access on your phone and for $40 a year I think its a pretty good deal. They do not require your phone number, address or anything like that.
They actually take Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash payments (as well as paypal etc) and I've been using them for some years with excellent service.
Last I checked, protonmail did not take Bitcoin Cash, so for those that want to be anonymous or use their actual BCH, the kolab is the way to go.
If you are looking for alternative email providers, consider Tutanota or KolabNow's email-only package. The latter is ran by people from Free Software Foundation Europe based in Switzerland, and the former uses end-to-end encryption that takes place on your computer (YMMV on whether it's better or worse than using GnuPG on other email providers).
After failing to migrate to either Replicant or Cyanogenmod, I bide my time while uninstalling all system apps (Google and Samsung) on Android I can get away with. I'm so annoyed that changing Android distros is not as easy as changing GNU/Linux distros; if Android is free software, I shouldn't encounter such vendor-locking situations.
https://kolabnow.com is a good, privacy respecting e-mail provider.
From this fsf page: >https://kolabnow.com (formerly mykolab.com): Swiss based paid service focused on ensuring your privacy. Highly resistant to PRISM and similar programs. Runs on free software. Currently becoming LibreJS compliant.
On protonmail: Their mobile app and their IMAP/SMTP bridge software is proprietary. So if you want to conveniently want to read your e-mail on your devices, you will have to run proprietary software. Until they free their software I would not recommend them.
It was funny when I saw my phone blinking about having an email. It said 2214 emails in my inbox. That was unusual..
So I wrote some filters and shortly most of the mail went to the junk folder. Count stands at 16500 mails.
I have to hand it to https://kolabnow.com for handling it like it was nothing and naturally the fact that they take Bitcoin payments.
It didn't disrupt my work at all, and it makes me laugh. And it makes me sad that this is what Bitcoin came to. Although I can't say I'm surprised.
Let me know if you get anything out of that criminal investigation!
They do have indicators in the e-mails to show if an e-mail is encrypted or not.
With that said, there is nothing stopping you from using GPG to encrypt a message as a file and sending that through ProtonMail as an attachment for the other person to open up.
If you are looking for an e-mail service that you can use with an E-Mail client, I would recommend KolabNow as I have been using it for years. It works great with any e-mail client and direct GPG/PGP integration with that client.
I would also be really interested in such a solution, but I haven't seen/checked any.
One solution to research is https://kolabnow.com/. They provide email and a "collaboration suite" at a price. Not sure about what is included in the collaboration suite or if you can buy it separately. I know there is also an open source version which they maintain, but that would force you to set up servers and you've said you don't want that.
Kolabnow is great, includes calendar, contacts, notes, file sync plus lots more. It does cost money however, so if you're looking for free then look elsewhere. I've been using Kolabnow since they were in beta, great service.
I have looked up Tutanota and Proton Mail quite thoroughly (and I use Tutanota), but I don't know Kolab as well. It had a look into it in the past, and you reminded me of it, so I just glanced again at their website.
However, security is not even a section in their top menu, and I could not find any mention of encryption. So to me, it's just a non-Google, non-free email provider, which does not scan your mails for ads, nor (presumably) sells your data. It's on the level of Fast Mail or Runbox. So, the tier definitely below Proton Mail and Tutanota.
I'm willing to stand corrected on this, but I really did not find anything on their site apart from...
>Kolab Now will never put you under surveillance to sell your data or profile and there will be no advertisements.
And...
>All data is stored exclusively in Switzerland and protected by a unique combination of terms of services, law, operational principles and technology.
Here is the security page :
https://kolabnow.com/feature/security
All it says, apart from, in effect, "we have good security", is that you have to apply PGP yourself if you want encryption.
If it was only for email I would host it myself, but I don't want to manage virus/SPAM filtering, it's too much trouble. So I settled for a Kolab Now subscription and it works pretty well: https://kolabnow.com/
Not really. I'm still researching my options. I have already switched to start page for searches. For email, I'm really interested in switching to this: https://kolabnow.com . Are they good? Have you heard of them before?
I have this as part of a KolabNow subscription. Collabora Office is a lot more powerful than Google Docs - it has many of the style features that LO has, for example, including (last I checked): character styles; and most / all of the paragraph style features. Google Docs does not have character styles and only has a small subset of paragraph style features. GDocs still only has 1 type of non-heading style, (that is, they only have 1 regular text style) which is very annoying.
With KolabNow, sharing is not easy at all, because security is a major selling point of KolabNow. Not sure if there is a general Collabora Office subscription, or if you have to run it on your own server. Either way, sharing might be a bigger headache than with Google. If you don't care about sharing, it obviously won't be much of an issue.
BTW: KolabNow is at https://kolabnow.com . I have no connection to them aside from being a customer for many years.
I think the real reason that most sites get lower grades is because ddg seems to use tos:dr when determining the ranking and for some reason it doesn't seem to get almost any results from tos:dr and therfore can't give a higher rating than 'B+', https://kolabnow.com/ is a site with 'A' rating as an example.
Another Swiss-based alternative might be kolabnow.com who have a long track record of providing a solid reliable confidential service, mainly to business users. But they also do a simple service that is about 3-4 dollars per month for individual users. An advantage of this type of service (perhaps Swissmail also) is that they use standard IMAP so will work with normal email clients.
Protonmail is very interesting also. But is more specialised towards privacy but this is mainly when multiple users are communicating via their own Protonmail accounts.
What is interesting about all these services is their geographic location outside of the x-eyes countries and with the strict privacy laws.
I highly recommend Kolab Now. l I have been using them for years and I am very satisfied with them.
- Runs the fully free Kolab suite which they also help develop.
- Located in Switzerland. (Not part of either five, nine or fourteen eyes.)
- Fully compatible with imap protocol so you can connect with any email-client you want such as thunderbird or K9 mail. I prefer this a lot to being forced to use the providers own app, like you are with protonmail.
- Unlimited number of aliases.
No, it's Kolab Now. (Like Snowden,I used to use Lavabit, which shut down rather than hand over his information to the authrities. The owner of Groklaw published this letter about Lavabit in which he suggested using "a service like Kolab." They have been fine; it costs around 100 Swiss Francs a year.
I recommend Kolab Now. l I have been using them for years and am very satisfied with them. They fulfill all six of your requirements.
- Runs the fully free Kolab suite which they also help develop.
- Located in Switzerland. (Not part of either five, nine or fourteen eyes.)
- Fully compatible with imap protocol so you can connect with clients such as thunderbird or enigmail, among others.
- Supports custom domain.
- Unlimited number of aliases.
- Supports 2FA.
I've personally been using Kolab Now for almost 2 years now, and I couldn't recommend it enough.
They should have most of the points, but I actually don't know what the "5 eyes" are. The web mail they use client is free software (should be Roundcube if I'm not mistaken). Their servers are located in Switzerland. Thet support standard OTP 2FA. Unlike Protonmail or Tutanota, they fully adopts open standards and protocols, so I think it should work fine with Thunderbird + Enigmail. Also, plans are very flexible and customizable.
I'm not sure I would consider notes worthy of using from the cloud -- I use a hipster PDA, an old notion that's a DIY pocket notebook. (I don't carry a phone for security reasons, although even a prepaid dumb phone would have a notepad.) Any important notes from my hPDA get added to the notes files on my Switzerland-based email server, which I can get to from a web browser or a WebDAV client.
Personally, I did want to throw in a plug for Kolab Now. I haven't used them myself (in fact, I haven't administered a business email system, and the only one I have had real-use experience with is Office 365 as a part of my school), but they are recommended on privacytools.io, and they recommend you use open source tools (Thunderbird and KMail over Outlook, for example) on their website. They also use open protocols like DAV for Contacts/Calendar. It seems like a good service for a business that wants a privacy-focused email system.
This is a mess. Okay, I would go Kolab it uses Cyrus IMAP as backend and the ACLs work fine. Also it stores most part of info as data in the mail.db boxes making the management of the application easier as you don't have so much stuff to handle on the relational databases.
Self-hosting email is a PITA. If you have averge-user privacy concerns, or don’t like the idea of Google, think it’s worth it to pay.
My personal recommendation is https://kolabnow.com
Also a good list here: https://www.quora.com/Which-is-the-best-paid-email-service
Also for what it's worth, I have been a Kolab Now! subscriber for several years. If privacy and getting lots of email aliases for free are considered good things to you, it's totally worth the money. The fact that Kube isn't here or a fully functional email clients yet really makes no difference to me, because the service works well with Thunderbird, KMail, K-9 Mail (Android), and any IMAP-supporting email client. Plus the web apps are great and include calendar, email, to-do's, notes Etc. I highly recommend checking them out, again if getting away from Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, and friends are something you're considering.
https://kolabnow.com/feature/confidence
I'm in the same boat. I've been Googling since at least 2000. I thought they were going to be great. I really believed they would do some good in the world. Now Google's tentacles are nearly everywhere and they are in a position to manipulate your world view and boy have they tried.
I'm done, my news feed is majority idiotic far-left-liberal-commie blogs and alleged news. The headline bias started a long time ago and I'm tired of it. It sucks because I make an effort to stay informed and sadly Google seems determined to decide for me what news I should be reading. I don't need more opinion pieces from leftists hacks that have been led to believe they are smart and intellectual.
I've already dumped Chrome. For searches, Searx.me has been used and I'll now try out DuckDuckGo too.
Flushing my email will take a while as I've had a Gmail address for quite some time. MyKolab is at the top of my choices right now. It is a paid service. However, I can ditch some certain streaming services and not shell out any extra money. I will voluntarily pay a fair price in exchange for excellent service and products.
Every Google service I use is free. Google is beholden to investors and corporations. With Google, YOU are the product. I would stick with them if they get out of politics and actually serve customers.
For the reason given for uninstalling I've simply been entering: "Don't be evil."
Thanks for the suggestion; I didn't know about this service. Kolab doesn't meet criterion #2 (free tier) or #3 (Android app) in the OP. Also, I don't see anything about encryption on its homepage or features page so I'm not sure criterion #5 is met either.
Available as a service or host it yourself somewhere that you can trust.
Edit : Another link.
Another edit: They're integrating that with Collabora (online version of Libreoffice) but it doesn't seem to be available that way just yet.
I'm currently using Kolab Now, with a monthly cost of around $10, and I'm really happy with it. The Kolab project is open-source, based in Switzerland which are renowned for their efforts to protect citizens privacy, and while it doesn't provide client- or server-side encryption it has a perfectly good explanation to that (https://kolabnow.com/faq?nid=188). Why would I want to switch to Lavaboom?
In the end it feels like I would be handing over far too much responsibility to you, for me to feel like it's secure. Also, I have a hard time trusting services that try to be free.
> Do you not use Facebook? (entirely possible - genuine question) And what about everything else vaguely mainstream, like Gmail or an iPod, etc. etc.
No, I don't use Facebook, but I use privacy respectful social network (diaspora*) which is not built to monetize users' profiles but simply for communication. iPod? No, Apple irritates me in so many ways :) I have Rockbox installed on a Sansa player ;) It can even play Opus files (in which a major part of my portable audio collection is encoded) which you can't say about Apple stuff.
I quit Gmail some time ago, (it took some effort to unstick from Google, but it's doable). Kolab Now works very well instead. Same with search - I started using mostly DuckDuckGo, and Google only as a fallback with !g bang when needed.
> And unless one takes it to near Stallman levels of obsession, I don't see how any of us can claim to be totally 'off the grid'.
No need for obsession, but at least we can make an effort to use better alternatives, especially when they are available. No reason to despair and say if Big Brother is around, no need to care about privacy anymore.
> Companies aren't going to decide to stop spying on people and ripping them off just because people don't like it
That's where I think the opposite. Companies do care when people vote with their wallets. If more users actively had rejected DRM, none of this junk would have become widespread. Luckily there is now a good push in the right direction (from GOG for example).
> hope I didn't come across too aggressive. It's pretty late and I'm in a ranting mood, it's nothing personal mate.
No worries, it's a serious discussion which is worth having :)