Hello,
I took the degoogle boat in 2024 when I saw shit like gulf of murika.
So far I have no regrets, and if I have to do it again, I’ll do it again.
My actual setup : Phone : Pixel with GrapheneOS.
Mail : Proton Drive : Proton VPN : Proton Password Vault : Proton
Calendars/Contacts : radicale (selfhosted) Photo : Immich (selfhosted) Home : Home Assistant (selfhosted)
Notes : Standard notes YouTube : Newpipe/Grayjay/SmartTube Maps : CoMaps Authenticator : Aegis Wallet : Catima & (Mybank app)
Now with the last declarations from CEO of Proton, I’m seriously thinking to change some of my setup.
Did someone have recommandations for mail provider, with a private domain name? I want to be more resilient in case my mail provider turn on the dark side.
Actually I’m thinking about mailo services. 1,5€/months for 20Go with drive. If someone have some experience with them and coule advise me.
Also I need a solution for my aliases. I was thinking of Addy.io or duck.
VPN, I need a solution for Android with split tunneling, and also for linux. Maybe Amnezia, but there website don’t inspire me confidence.
And also I need a new password vault, easy to sync between my devices. Lots of articles talk about BitWarden and VaultWarden, but from US, and I don’t wan’t to feed the beast even if it’s a geniune editor focused on privacy.
I just moved from Tuta to mailo for their free account. So far, it looks fine and simple. The custom domain config was not so straightforward, but finally ok. I find that their documentation could be improved, honestly.
Just curious why you moved from Tuta?… we are just trying it out, but it appears the NHS in the UK blocks all Tuta mails… so we trying to decide between an alternative or complementary provider.
I moved from Tuta because encryption makes it real slow, but the biggest reason was that searching in mails is very painful, ineffective, in addition to slow. So I decided to ditch the whole end-to-end encryption thing for mail considering all I’ve read about that recently.
Since I’ve moved, I could re-browse all my emails and realized 80 % of them are very un-sensitive data like order confirmations etc Since I selfhost paperless, which is awesome, I really don’t need to keep a record of more important stuff in my mails anymore
Ah that makes sense, we’ve not used it enough for search to be relevant, but it will be eventually. I’m a big user of folders so my inbox is often sorted enough to find things quickly without search but after a couple of years search becomes essential.
With with trust in Proton steadily declining it’s difficult to know who to trust with Mail and VPN and Passwords.
TL:DR: self hosting is the way, get off site backup and a domain name.
TL: I notice you are not opposed to self hosting, I personally have a VPS that hosts my blog just something for me to write in, nothing special. This VPS does more than host my blog, it backs up my vaultwarden, immich, documents (some what still figuring that stuff out), HA, and I am sure there are other things backed up as well. I am sure I could get wireguard running on there if I wanted to hide my IP, but I have so much stuff running on my home lab that I would need to move to the VPS plus I live in Canada none of the rights holders from the US are going to spend more money than they can possibly get to come after me for sailing the high seas. If you are using the VPN for other reasons than that I have other things setup that reduces attack surfaces.
Before I mention the things, I got the VPS because I was self hosting my very simple blog but on the same vLAN I was running the rest of my homelab. But I got it from the same host that was hosting my domain name and email (easydns); I am sure you like being able to keep emails anonymous hence Proton mail easydns offers a wildcard email option so you can just create a random email anywhere anytime they have some amazing spam filtering on top of that so I rarely see things come to addresses like info@mydomain.ca.
For a Drive replacement I currently just have a smb share that I am using but I am thinking of getting back into Nextcloud, I was having difficulties with all of its other things (like contacts, calendars, and the other stuff that is not file storage but those are all sorted out now).
Depending on what you use the VPN for (shopping, streaming, etc) I do not no what to offer you, if it is for sailing the high seas you can do what I suggested above with a VPS and wireguard. If it is for security you can do what I did, or you could go way over kill and go further: I have a Flint 2 that I flashed with a vanilla install of OpenWRT I than have 5 or 6 APs, I have 8 or 9 vLANs, and 2 or 3 VPNs back to my LAN. My IoT is on its own simple IoT vLAN that is controlled by a pi 4 running HAOS controlling all of the IoT stuff I have limitting its access to the web. The VPNs are used so that I have the security of my my LAN when I am away from the LAN. I have a fairly strict firewall that I may need to modify everytime I bring a new device onto the network but that is coming less and less frequant, because I use non standard ports for almost every thing.
If your VPN is to block ads and trackers, may I strongly suggest investing time into pihole and finally funing it for your uses, no more ads and trackers! If it is for security may I suggest setting up crowdsec as a honry pot and change the ssh port for every thing else on your LAN.
For Passwords may I suggest vaultwarden than you can use the bitwarden app but with all tje paid for services for free. My ISP gives away to satic IPs with their service so I am lucky like that but I hrsr there are options to use other thing. I use caddy with easydns’s ssl crtd.
I spent hours yesterday doing exactly this. Years ago I went full Proton to get away from Google. I knew putting all my eggs in one basket wasn’t smart, but it was a big task so I did what I could at the time. I’ve learned a lot since, and in migrating this time I’m using custom domains to make it easier the next time.
I started with Proton Pass, arguably the most important of the Proton Suite. I went with KeePass, and was really concerned about the difficulty in switching but it was shockingly easy. It’s certainly less polished and has some hiccups and is a bit slower, but it works great.
2FA is with Aegis.
Drive. I looked into a lot of options and decided to go with Filen.io . I’ll be testing it this week (I use it for freelance work) but it seems solid so far. A year was around $35 CAD.
Still looking into a calendar (I’m new to self hosting so it’s a huge learning curve for me).
VPN. I need port forwarding so the only other option I’ve found is AirVPN, which seems pretty good, but it’s based out of Italy which is an eyes country. For now, I’m staying with Proton VPN.
Standard Notes was acquired by Proton, so I’ve switched to Obsidian but haven’t pulled the trigger on paying for a sub yet.
The big one, mail. I’ve gone full custom domain (Cloudflare for now) and have been switching my emails on all my accounts. I decided to go with Thundermail, and so far it’s working great. I’ll be looking into self hosting a server soon to try to sync settings between devices (no idea if I can get that to work lol). Once everything is migrated, if Thunderbird goes tits up like Proton is doing the switch will be really easy with domains.