Hello,
I am thinking on which email provider to use as an alternative for Gmail.
I don't expect E2EE because I know nobody who uses either Tutanota or Proton Mail personally. I just want an alternative to Gmail, where I can message people I know who use Gmail securely.
EDIT: I have chosen my email provider as Proton Mail because I can send encrypted emails not only to people using Proton Mail, but to people who don't too, which I feel is better.
Came here to say that I have been using tutanota for years now and it works very well.
It does fit the use case of encrypted emails to people who don't use tutanota. How it works is they will receive an unencrypted email letting them know they have an encrypted email waiting for them, along with a secure link to an https encrypted, password protected web interface with inbox and outbox.
Just wanted to point this out for anyone else evaluating privacy focused email providers.
If the recipient of my mail uses a OpenPGP-compatible client (say, Apple Mail or Thunderbird), then they should be able to receive encrypted mails if they set it up correctly.
True.
Then with Proton (idk about tutanota) you should be able to mail E2EE with them, since you can import their Public Keys into Proton. It's not just "E2EE Proton2Proton", since Proton uses PGP, you can safely mail E2EE with anyone using PGP.
It depends on what you need and what the other side has. It is true you can use PGP encryption with proton, yet not with tutanota. However, how many of your friends use PGP? You could also host yourself? This said, on both tutanota and proton you can set a password to encrypt to none tutanota/proton users. Both services are excellent, both lack imap or pop3. Yes proton can do this with a bridge on desktop, but has google services on android where only the app works. Tutanota does that without Google services.
The big question is, what are you looking for? Just a Gmail replacement or PGP capable email. If it's just for a Gmail replacement have also a look to skiff.com.