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Posteo is thought to be one of many best secure email providers, and the German firm has been round since 2009. The service claims to have over half 1,000,000 lively accounts and gained prominence following the 2013 world surveillance disclosures.
Posteo isn’t nearly privateness and safety, although – the corporate cares about sustainability, too. The agency’s workplaces run on inexperienced vitality from hydroelectric and wind sources, and so they’ve sponsored inexperienced vitality utilization at their knowledge heart.
The group offers workers with inexperienced vitality subsidies, Posteo abstains from flights and even provides employees free public transport tickets.
There’s little question that Posteo is doing the appropriate factor relating to safety and sustainability, however ought to this firm be your subsequent safe e mail supplier?
Posteo: Plans and pricing
Posteo is pleasingly clear about its safety, sustainability and firm ethos, and the agency’s pricing is simply as easy.
A single Posteo account with all of its options prices €1/$1.03/£0.83 per 30 days, with credit score added to your account upfront and charges deducted as you employ companies.
Further storage prices €0.25/$0.26/£0.21 per 30 days per gigabyte, and extra alias addresses and calendars are even cheaper. And in order for you a S/MIME certificates, it’s €3.65/$3.76/£3.03 for one 12 months.
PayPal, financial institution switch, bank card or money funds are attainable with Posteo, and any info that Posteo receives for cost will not be linked to your account – which suggests nameless funds. Sadly, cryptocurrency will not be supported.
There’s no free trial, however you’ll be able to cancel your sign-up inside fourteen days. Once you enroll, you’ll be able to select from a wide range of Posteo addresses with totally different nation suffixes, and bear in mind that you simply want to join a 12 months of Posteo credit score at first – which suggests a cost of not less than €12/$12.38/£9.97.
Posteo: Options
Posteo balances complete layers of encryption with some strong recommendation to assist customers obtain most e mail safety.
Each e mail transmitted to and from Posteo is protected by TLS and DANE/TLSA encryption that protects the e-mail’s contents and metadata, and all entry to Posteo’s companies is encrypted, too, with the aforementioned companies and HSTS.
All connections inside Posteo profit from SSH and TLS, too, and your password will not be saved in plain textual content and is absolutely encrypted. Two-factor authentication is on the market, and all of Posteo’s server onerous disks are absolutely encrypted, too. IP stripping can be supported.
If you happen to activate Posteo’s crypto mail storage, you profit from symmetrical encryption with AES and asymmetrical encryption with RSA, and all newly arriving emails are encrypted with S/MIME or OpenPGP if the sender has no preliminary encryption.
Alongside this complete providing, Posteo recommends that customers deploy their very own OpenPGP system, like MailVelope, to take pleasure in true end-to-end encryption. Pleasingly, it’s pre-configured inside Posteo, so it’s very simple to make use of.
It’s an excellent system – efficient and clear. And in order for you extra details about Posteo’s safety features, the corporate provides in-depth and accessible particulars on its web site, with extra info right here than you’ll discover from many rival companies. The agency additionally publishes transparency stories and is externally audited to bolster its safety and privateness credentials.
Related ranges of encryption are utilized to your calendar and deal with guide, and elsewhere Posteo is pleasingly sensible: it helps SMTP, IMAP and POP3 e mail shoppers, its migration service works easily, and the service is ad-free. It’s utterly open supply, too, and has a superb and configurable spam filter.
When it comes to core safety, Posteo is great, however there’s no denying that this extra inexpensive safe e mail supplier is somewhat missing in peripheral areas.
You solely get 2GB of cloud storage until you pay for extra, for example, which is a smaller quantity than many different dearer suppliers, and the utmost obtainable of 20GB is fairly low, too.
Customers must also look elsewhere for added options. It’s completely comprehensible given Posteo’s low value and small staff, however you don’t get workplace apps, a VPN or the rest with Posteo – the product concentrates on being a pure, safe e mail service. There are not any cellular apps, and Posteo doesn’t help customized domains.
Posteo’s lack of apps, further options, and in depth storage additionally signifies that it’s not appropriate for bigger enterprises, and also you don’t get the sturdy administration and deployment instruments for larger organizations that you simply’ll discover elsewhere.
Posteo: Interface and in use
Posteo makes use of a simple three-panel interface, though it locations your record of emails on the prime of the window and particular person emails under, with icons on the prime to permit entry to your calendar, contacts and settings.
And whereas Posteo’s interface appears somewhat old style at first, it comes with a great deal of customization choices so that you can make it your personal, spotlight darkish and excessive distinction modes, totally different colour themes and plenty of format tweaks.
You’ll discover a great deal of customization choices elsewhere, too, so you can too tweak performance – impressively, it’s all very simple to search out and navigate.
Posteo doesn’t have cellular apps, but it surely has an excellent cellular interface that’s simple to navigate.
Posteo: Assist
As a result of it’s such a small staff, Posteo’s help choices are restricted.
Positively, sending an e mail or submitting a type on Posteo’s web site is straightforward, and queries are answered inside one working day. Posteo helps German, French and English, and its help staff is lively between 7 am and seven pm GMT.
Posteo has a superb and in depth assist part on its web site that can clear up many points, however there’s no stay chat or telephone help right here – one other facet of the service meaning Posteo will not be appropriate for companies.
Posteo: The competitors
There are many safe e mail suppliers round, like Mailbox.org, that provide spectacular encryption alongside further options, like cloud storage, workplace instruments or a VPN. These merchandise are actually extra appropriate for companies or anybody who wants a set of instruments.
For pure safe e mail, although, Posteo’s encryption and ethos are glorious, and its closest opponents are companies like Tuta.
Tuta is somewhat pricier than Posteo, but it surely has extra in depth help choices and cellular apps – two areas the place Posteo falls behind.
Posteo: Remaining verdict
Posteo might fall behind its rivals relating to further options and help, then, but it surely’s tough to query its safety credentials – Posteo is great on this space, the group has the appropriate angle, and it’s a sustainable service too.
It’s a really inexpensive possibility, too, and its easy e mail consumer is customizable and simple to make use of. It might not have further bells and whistles, however Posteo is safe, inexpensive and efficient.
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