Introduction

We are living in a shared and digital world and most people still neglect their privacy. At this point in life and in recent years the importance of privacy and secure email is growing.

We are sharing more sensitive information and passing it between all kinds of platforms and systems such as smartphones, laptops and tablets, is getting riskier and riskier.

There are ways to counter that. There are alternatives to the global and well established providers such as Google, Yahoo and so on.

Tutanota is one of these examples. It is considered as one of the best email providers as of today ( the end of 2022 )

I personally have been using Tutanota for a year now, since the beginning of 2022 and I want to share not only the generic data that you can find everywhere on the internet, but also the casual user experience and the problems I have met with the service.

I always advocate for paying for the service you want, so I am going to be reviewing the paid premium version.

Features

I will share my own experience, but still can’t miss the opportunity to give you a little bit of generic information. I am going to list the features I think are important and provide the link for all additional ones.

• End-to-end encrypted mailbox
• Zero-knowledge calendar - One of my favorite features.
• Automatic end-to-end encrypted emails between users
• Secure password reset that gives us absolutely no access
• Secure desktop clients for Windows, Mac OS and Linux - I am using the Linux version of the app.
• Full access to offline mode: Store as many emails as you like locally and login without an internet connection
• Add aliases to your Tutanota account.

We will discuss some of them down the road.

One feature that I really like is the ability to connect additional email addresses that all fall under the hat of your main account. You have one primary inbox and receive all mails there.

Create folders to optimize everything and you receive a really well and worthy service.

I have heard from some reddit users that there are some problems with connecting to Tutanota while using a VPN connection.

I am using the service every single day and so far, haven’t encountered a problem with that. With or without VPN, I am still able to login.

There are some occasional times when the response is slower, but nothing that problematic.

Pricing

I always advocate to pay for the software and own it. In this case it is not different. In order to get real value, pay for it.

The service is pretty affordable and it’s actually cheap compared to the value it provides.

One of the biggest cons is the lack of crypto payment.

Tutanota is claiming to be focused on Privacy, but still hasn't implemented cryptocurrency payment.

It is down the road and it is in their feature list, so I guess we will eventually get there.

The Look of the UI

The visual of the UI is very good in my humble opinion. I like both the Android and the Desktop version of the app.

At first it could be a little confusing as we have a grid of three columns and there are a lot of buttons and options.

On the left we have the main Call to actions that get us to the settings, invite, help ( it needs improvement ), a new window and a button providing us with the ability to buy a gift card to someone.

Once you get used to the structure of the application, you start to like it and working with it is getting fast.

I have had only one problem these months with the app. When I tried to upload a document, everything was freezing and I couldn’t do much. I tried a lot of stuff, the console was clean, but after killing the process and starting it again, it worked perfectly.

I still am not sure why this happened. The support was very friendly and quick to respond.

A nice touch to all is that there are a variety of languages to choose from and there is a good chance they have yours.

I am really happy to say they provide their UI in Bulgarian.

Messages ( including the non-Tutanota users )

Sending messages to other Tutanota users is encrypted all the way and automatic.

Sending messages to non Tutanota users is more interesting. Most of us, probably, won’t be able to make all our friends switch to Tutanota so a question arise. How to send encrypted message to someone?

The answer is pretty elegant. You provide a password and share that password with the person you want to send email to.

They use that password to read the email.

Of Course you can choose to send the email non encrypted and without a password.

Searching

When you receive a lot of emails, you have to find a way to structure everything.

Searching manually is good, but searching with a filter is awesome.

The way Tutanota search through the emails is interesting:

• The data is indexed.
• The search index is encrypted and stored locally on the client.
• The search index is searched according to the user's search queries.

The biggest benefit is that the search itself is done on the local machine and not on the server. This also means that all search meta data is not sent to the server as well.

Calendar

I really love that feature. One of my best actually.

It could be easier to use the Google Calendar, since there are many platforms that allow connection and integration with it, but it will lack privacy, right?

I book a lot of my appointments there and it allows me to function more efficiently. I no longer require myself to remember everything or write down all of it.

The Tutanota calendar made it for me.

It works like every other calendar ( I guess ). You create an event and it reminds you of it ( if you check that option ).

Nothing fancy, but it is private and secure. You have the option to share it tho.

Support and the problems with it

I have one big issue with Tutanota.

Even though the pros outweigh the cons by a big margin, this is something you have to consider. The support is kind of bad. I have needed them only once and they responded quickly, but you have access to the support team only as a premium user. To get to the email and ask them a question, you have to search for potential self help articles and if the problem is not resolved there - then you can talk to them directly.

That is something that I consider a red flag. They are providing a service, and they have to respond to every request. That’s how a business should be run.

If they don’t care that much about the free users, why provide a free user service in the first place?

A trial could be a good fit in that condition.

Not providing a phone number is also a little bit problematic. They should be completely transparent. After all, they are taking care of our data.

User feedback:

• I like how clean and easy everything is. You can do 90% of what you need from the app. I have an Outlook account (former Hotmail) and to make an alias is a pain!
  
  Price was also a factor. $12 a year for me is good. If I want or need more storage, $12 extra a year. If I do need the storage, it’s still cheaper than ProtonMail. I can pay $48 a year with ProtonMail and still only have 5 GB of storage and 5 aliases. For $24 a year with Tutanota, I get 5 aliases and 10 GB of storage.
  
  I had ProtonMail for about 2 years and the iOS app is extremely unreliable with notifications. I get signed out a lot too.
  
  Tutanota is not perfect, but I like the direction they are going. I also feel like this community is very friendly and helpful. A lot of experienced users here and they seem so happy to help. - Epsioln_Rho_Rho

• I wanted to use a custom domain and Tuta had the balance of privacy, security, ease of use, and very reasonable price (deciding factor between tuta/proton for me). I’d rather pay €12 a year than have google trawl through my email. -  Zeldir

• I use Tutanota besides ProtonMail, each for different purposes. I chose Tutanota because of their privacy focused service, their fairly priced plans and their straight-forwardness in general.
  
  Tutanota is not (yet) perfect though: I though about migrating my business emails and domain to Tutanota, due to their great business plans and their feature to use templates. However, I had to omit it since emails sent to Russian email addresses such as mail.ru get blocked. Since I have many Russian customers, I cannot afford it to be blocked from replying to them. Otherwise, I would go straight to Tutanota for managing my business emails. - greenBlueChameleon

• Because:
  
  Simple yet Elegant UI
  
  Secure
  
  Focus on Privacy and Trustworthy(Read their stand on Privacy, you'll understand you're in good hands)
  
  Pricing is good
  
  Have good non-toxic community
  
  Name is catchy and there are a lot of domain you can use.
  
  Roadmap are layed out and open for improvements.
  
  Calendar
  
  I've made the switch from bloated ads mail provider and I never looked back, changed everything from that old bloated ads email to Tutanota. Never been so confident that I'm secure in my entire digital life.

Conclusion

In conclusion I want to point out that Tutanota is a great fit for me. There are many services  and a lot of features to choose from.

I am generally happy with my subscription to Tutanota and I have no plans to switch any time soon.

There are ofcourse negative reviews on the Internet, and I am sure some of them are legit, but I haven’t experienced anything wrong for now.

Go and take a look and try to be more oriented toward security and privacy. Diversifying our presence in the digital world is important. Not giving everything to Google or Apple is a good idea.