Here’s a list of servies I think are worth checking out. I either use or have used all of these and find them to be quite viable in practice.
Objectives
- Focus on privacy
Software as a service is inherintly a privacy abusing paradigm. There isn’t any way to verify that a certain provider isn’t abusing their service. A service could say that they encrypt everything and that they don’t sell or share your data, but that might not necessarily be true. You simply have to take their word for it.
That being said, the services that do have a focus on privacy don’t seem to have any other thing going for them. For example, if someone found out that ProtonMail was leaking emails to advertisers it would be the complete end of ProtonMail. This is because that’s their entire pitch. My conclusion of ProtonMail is that they are, indeed, respecting your privacy, but again is only because I simply trust them and I don’t have any way of actually verifying that.
- ProtonMail: As mentioned before, I have had a great experience with ProtonMail. I enjoy their UI and use their bridge with mutt. I have to pay for it, but it makes sense since they aren’t making money from any other source.
Hosting
- Linode: I am currently a subscriber to Linode and have been for at least a decade, if not more.