I hope I’m not annoying you kind folks too much with my ongoing Tutamail woes, but, in the long slow process of divorcing myself from them (and returning to Thunderbird), I’m looking for an email host/provider that integrates well with TB, meaning that it can sync mail, contacts, calendars, and tasks between the Linux desktop and Android. I’ve looked at so many different services, and each one seems to be missing one or more pieces of the puzzle. I’ve tried and did not like, for one reason or another, ProtonMail, Posteo, and Kolab (I can’t necessarily remember the exact reason for not liking each). I’ve gone through alternativeto as well without much success; I am in the process of investigating Mailfence, which looks promising, but seems to lack a few things as well. I don’t think I have the time or the brainpower to host my own email server either.
Looking over what I’ve just written, it seems like I’ve managed to make this a fairly challenging question, but I thought I should at least mention what I’ve already tried. Probably being too picky for my own good, but now that we’re 10+ years out from The Snowden Affair, having a FOSS email service that does all these things seems like it should be kind of a no-brainer. Anyway, any and all suggestions are welcome, and apologies for the written filibuster.
P.S. The comments to this article would seem to suggest that a @thunderbird.com email is being considered, after K9 mail becomes TB Mail for Android, but who knows how far off that will be?
Ok, now pardon me while I go take another look at ProtonMail…
Would https://www.fastmail.com or https://mailbox.org/en/ tick your boxes ?
I switched to mailbox, and am happy to pay for the features I want.
Works fine with thunderbird.
It’s frustrating how bad email/calendar clients have gotten. Thunderbird works, but by god it’s UI is awful… And it’s what I use.
+1 for Mailbox.org! Works well with FairEmail (Android) and Evolution (Fedora). Evolution is a bit more polished than Thunderbird in my opinion.
And looks like the web interface gets a revamp this year: https://mailbox.org/en/post/we-are-celebrating-10-years-of-mailbox-org
Mailbox.org looks like a winner! Tell me though, does it make sense to start setting it up from the web (mailbox.org) or from Thunderbird?
If you mean the calendar and contacts it’s probably best to set them up from Thunderbird. But you can import stuff in the web settings too.
There are some specific settings in the mailbox.org account so you should probably go through them once, just in case.
Mailbox.orgers (wow, that looks weird, but anyway), what mobile calendar and tasks app(s) do you use with it (besides DAVx5 which I guess is just for syncing purposes)?
Calengoo. It’s a super versatile app with lots of customization options and can bypass the dumb Android sync and connect directly to CalDAV. It has versions for pretty much all operating systems, including Android, iOS, Linux, Windows and Mac. On Linux you can install it via Flatpak.
You do NOT need a Google Calendar account like it says on the website for some reason. It supports Google Calendar but it’s not required. (The website is really dumb, it redirects me to the iOS section and it gives no clue the app is actually available for all OS.)
If you get it for Android I strongly suggest to purchase a license code directly by paying directly with CC/PayPal and receiving one in the mail. The version from Google Play is tied to the app being present on Google Play, and last week was booted out of the store temporarily for some terms confusion with Google, which has caused it to fail for all the people who had bought it from Play.
Does Calengoo integrate with Thunderbird?
In what way? Calengoo can send email notification for events but I think it connects directly to SMTP for that, it doesn’t go through an email app.