this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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NorthMail.ca – Free Canadian email server with video calls, photo storage, and an office suite: Somehow part of the Seth Meyers' Monologue (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 days ago by ShopCanadianStuff@lemmy.ca to c/buycanadian@lemmy.ca
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Originally posted at ShopCanadianStuff.ca/blog which has no affiliation to NorthMail.ca

I noticed NorthMail.ca which I had previously only know for being a Canadian hosted and owned free webmail provider was now listing Video Calls and an office suite as features.

Oddly enough Northmail was featured in a recent monologue joke on Late Night with Seth Meyers. You can see the joke on TikTok here or at 7:15 on this YouTube video of the show.

I tried out the video calling and it works pretty well though it is not obvious how to do it.

I made a brief guide on how to use the video calling feature in this blog post at ShopCanadianStuff.ca/blog

NorthMail.ca has many other features, a calendar, file and photo storage, dark mode and other theme customization. Language settings allow for both English and French as well as many other languages.

The paid premium version of NorthMail.ca provides 100 GB of storage (1GB for free version), no ads, and promises a faster smoother experience for $0.99/month.

If you sign up soon you can get a pretty good pick of the available email addresses so you don't have to go with something as long a BuyCanadianElbowsUp_1867@NorthMail.ca unless you want something that long.

If anyone is concerned about if Northmail.ca is actually Canadian, the owners name is listed on their website, I checked their linked in page which lists the same person as their CIRA domain registration.

To find more Canada made products and services check out ShopCanadianStuff.ca

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[–] zhenbo_endle@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

I've made a post about using northmail.ca to replace Google Calendar https://lemmy.ca/post/42995779

[–] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca 25 points 2 days ago (3 children)

On the one hand, I like that we have a Canadian email service.

On the other hand, being required to give my phone number for signup was an instant nope.

[–] KanadrAllegria@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

According to the privacy policy page they use the phone number only to send a verification code. Maybe you could use a virtual number type app for that... I have no idea how secure something like that would be I've never used one.

[–] GrizzlyBur@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I know google can give you temporary phone numbers that are intended to be used for work so you don't give your private number. Could probably be used for this. Although if you ever need to recover your email using that phone number, you might be SOL.

[–] Typotyper@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago

I was also thinking 2FA for higher security

[–] GrizzlyBur@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

On the other other hand, it could somewhat make sure only Canadians are using it? Assuming it accepts only Canadian phone numbers. Although I don't think that really means anything with email accounts.

Ngl, I'd love to see online communities where you have to actually verify that you are a real Canadian citizen speaking and not an astroturfing bot or troll-baiter. It's so annoying seeing a person online roleplaying or misleading people to believe they are a Canadian and then you check their post history and they're blatantly not. Or the people that feel compelled to give their wildly uninformed opinions on Canadian topics. I hate to imagine how many people are smart enough to hide they're not Canadian and influencing Canadian online forums.

I think anonymity on the internet is a double edged sword, but one side is getting a lot duller while the side that cuts us only gets sharper. Especially considering the implications of AI.

[–] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Good point actually, I just try avoiding connecting my personal identity to my online one as much as I can since I like that separation so that only people I truly trust can see what I interact with.

I'm really touchy with my privacy online, almost to the point of paranoia to be honest.

[–] GrizzlyBur@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Same, but to a lesser degree. I don't ever lie about who I am, but I split it between several accounts to keep a veil of plausible deniability. And most critically, I never post photos of me or anything or anywhere people who know me could identify.

That is actually why I enjoy lemmy.ca, it is a mostly safe bet to assume most people on here, especially the Canadian communities, are actual real Canadians. But that will surely change once the community grows and more bad faith actors or general idiots come on to these discussions.

As Lemmy.ca gets bigger and bigger I think there should be serious consideration put into how to tackle these issues. I'm fine speaking with anonymous people globally, but for certain topics I'd prefer to know if the person I'm speaking to is even Canadian.

How to verify that while keeping privacy is a tough one, I don't have an answer. IP locking would help, but it is insanely trivial to get a VPN nowadays. A good start would probably be making verification entirely voluntary, and just see how that goes. Or, just give user flairs (once they are added) to users who have a history of engaging with local Canadian communities on Lemmy. It would be a safe bet to assume they are Canadians, or at least having to put in exorbitant amounts of effort to lie.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But that will surely change once the community grows and more bad faith actors or general idiots come on to these discussions.

That is already happening to some degree, albeit lesser than, say, reddit.

[–] GrizzlyBur@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

Yep, lemmy is mostly flying under the radar at the moment but I suspect it would be rather trivial to do the same stuff here as on reddit. The Canadian subreddits there are infamous for heavy astroturfing allegations.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

I think most people concerned with privacy have anonymous email accounts and at least one tied to their real identity. How do you communicate with your prospective employer? Your family? Your lawyer? That email should protect your privacy, but it sure isn’t anonymous.

[–] LoganNineFingers@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This is one I'm really struggling with.

I'm willing to seperate my email to something like this (and pay for the space)

I'm willing to pay for Ente for photos

And I'm willing to pay for a different cloud service for storage

But my problem is that with Google, it's all in one and my wife and kids certainly aren't willing to fracture like that.

Is there a Canadian or European alternative that does it all much like Google or Apple?

[–] ChillPill@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Proton

[–] SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

😢 sucks that they screwed their image over like that. I had been contemplating pulling the trigger on their ecosystem for months.

[–] goldenquetzal@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

pCloud does just about all of that except email. So does Nextcloud and Cozy Cloud

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

I really like the idea, but if someone is going to put in the work to change over their main online identity to a new email address, it’s not ideal to change over to an address of a random company. It’s a lot of work, and think of the accounts that use your email for logging in, the friends that may email very rarely, etc. Consider using one that supports a custom domain and buying your own. That way you can move providers whenever you want. Barring that, I would make sure the company has been providing email reliably for at least a decade, preferably two, before investing in it as a main email. Email is a long term thing. As a secondary email account?, give it a try. Everyone should have a few anyway.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago

Managed to snatch just my initials as my email, that's cool (and more professional than my Gmail...)

[–] paequ2 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Sync easily across devices using the NextCloud app (iOS, Android, PC).

Ah, using Nextcloud, huh. Neat!

Damn, I think I'm gonna have to try this out. After my experience with Nubo I discovered using Nextcloud ain't that bad.

(I tried deploying Nextcloud with the AIO image for like 1 hour and quickly noped out of that situation. I'm down to pay someone else to deal with that mess.)

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I host my own Nextcloud on my LAN and VPN in when I am away.

[–] paequ2 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nice. Hosting on a LAN+VPN is probably what I would do next time. I tried deploying on a public cloud with 2GB of memory and I started receiving memory usage alerts almost immediately on an empty instance with everything disabled, except image previews. I didn't want to rent an even more expensive instance. I bet it runs great with a ton of memory and CPU.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have a pi 5 running NextCloud, Pihole, and a few other services. I have a pi 4 running Wireguard and backing up my pi5. Then I have another pi 5 that is running an other instance of pihole and it will become my iPhone and iPad backup server in the next few days. I used to pay for apple services so now I need to find a way to backup my devices so I can stop paying even the $1 something.

I am thinking I should move transmission and some other things to the other pi5 instead of the NextCloud pi5.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

How do you go about installing multiple things on the pi? When I built my pihole I don’t think it partitioned anything or whatever..?

I used whatever installer thing the pihole page had on it (but I did it a while ago), and if you can’t tell I’m not super techie, just enough to usually do what I need with guidance.

I’m probably dramatically misunderstanding what the setup entailed..

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 1 points 20 hours ago

I recommend Yunohost https://doc.yunohost.org/admin/install/install_on/raspberry_pi

Point and click on an admin page to install from a big list of apps. It warns you if a particular app might use a lot of memory.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

I run pihole on the raspberry pi, like an app it takes up port 8080 (I think it is on both my pi’s). I use different ports for different applications like 8087 for my NextCloud.

[–] paequ2 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I signed up! They're running Nextcloud 30.0.8.1.

I mean, it does what it says on the tin. Compared to Nubo's Nextcloud deployment, NorthMail is running a newer version, they accept credit card payments, and it seems to run faster.

They don't have Nextcloud Tasks enabled though... 😭

[–] nkat2112@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago

Thank you for sharing this! I'll check it out today.

[–] BlackSheep@lemmy.ca -5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh Please. The Internet is just several degrees of how much you want to give up. If Jesus came down to earth and saw what was happening, he’d never stop throwing up

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

Same with Zenu and Luke Skywalker!