Recently I added a custom domain to my protonmail account and during the procedure it makes you do this steps (adding SPD, DKIM and DMARC) to pass all the steps. They tell you exactly what records you have to add, where to add them and what the content should be. These guys are great

Doing the lords work

Hi, this is Andy here, the Founder/CEO of Proton. As former scientists, we don't do what we're doing to make the most money (otherwise we wouldn't have picked science as a profession). There's no price which we would sell Proton to Google or Facebook. We also don't need to because thanks to the strong support of the community, Proton has the resources to thrive and grow as an independent organization. Safeguarding this independence is how we ensure that over the long term, we can always put user interest above all else.

-Protonmail Founder, 2 years ago, for what it's worth.

That’s the benefit of a custom domain, I suppose; you can always change he provider without changing your email.

It’s unlikely but not impossible. I’ve been using PM with a custom domain for about five years now, and never thought too hard about leaving.

In an ideal world, a company like ProtonMail would be cooperatively owned by the workers and paying users, sort of like a credit union.

Pragmatically, they’ve done fine stewardship of the service for the last decade or so they’ve been around. A big part of it is that their value proposition depends on stability and trust. But it could be better.

You're pretty close, the thing you missed is, "Google is creepy."

Your emails are.more private in the same sense that if you have a letter with something on it, turning it over means someone can't read it over your shoulder, but they could have read it before it got to you.

Google has access to the contents of your inbox, Proton mail does not. But the protocols are unchanged and unencrypted email is accessible in transit.

So moving to Proton is a definite improvement, particularly as email remains a basic means of communication. But as you say if you wand secure communication then it is very flawed.

You can just use a custom domain at Tuta, Proton, or any of the other email providers until you decide to self-host. Honestly, I don't think self-hosting is worth it, I value the spam filtering and uptime that major providers offer.

Register a domain, Postfix, spamassassin, freebsd jails... Do it like we did in the early 2000s, it never got better

Don’t.

Not only is it not worth the hassle most home ISPs block port 25 to avoid compromised computers sending out spam.

Welcome to Earth

Self hosting email is even more of a pain.

Move it to a custom domain and host it at Proton or Tuta. That way it's a pain once, and then you don't have to switch email addresses ever again.

Yes, a royal pain in the ass. However. I did it recently but the way I did it means any future moves, of all my 300+ websites that I have logins for, is now done in seconds.

I signed up for SimpleLogin and a custom domain. I then went around creating aliases for all these sites. Changing the sites is indeed the worst part. Still, this is the last time I will ever do it. All my aliases were pointing to my Gmail account. Once I'd finished I settled on Proton. I just moved all my aliases to my Proton email address.

No one knows my Proton email address other than SimpleLogin.

I haven't yet, but I can now ditch Gmail. I still keep the account for a number of reasons but none are for emails.

I've also been testing Tutamail. I can get aliases to go to multiple mailboxes. I have the ability to respond to the emails from either Tuta or Proton and the recipient is none the wiser of where my mailbox resides.

It certainly can be a bit involved. When I moved from Gmail address to my own personal domain I did it slowly over a few months.

I set my Gmail address to automatically forward to my new email address. Then I setup a quick filter which added a label on everything that had been forwarded. Once a week or so I would look at all the emails that had been forwarded and update them to my new email (or delete them if unwanted).