Download your emails
Recently, I’ve experienced an upsetting breakup with ProtonMail, and I’ve made some changes to how I handle my mailboxes. Over the years, I’ve gone on quite a journey as an email user. Here are some lessons that may be useful to you:
Where to start… I love email.
It’s a foundational protocol of the internet, 20 years older than the web, and my bet is: it will still be here when Facebook and Google Search no longer exist. I’m a big believer that everybody should not only get one, but also set it in their own domain. Here are three good reasons why:
Independence
Owning an address in your domain allows you to switch providers anytime during your lifetime. Maybe you want to try out some new cool service like Hey, have concerns with Google’s privacy policy, or ProtonMail delivered a nightmare experience of over a week with no access to your emails. No problem! Move your mailbox somewhere else in a few simple steps, and none of your recipients will even notice. I went through letting everyone know that I changed my email address once, and it took four years before I stopped receiving emails at the old one.
Branding
Email in your own domain is a statement—it’s like wearing stylish clothes. The domain can say something about you and immediately position you where you want to be. Even if it’s just your surname or nickname, it projects some level of independence and agency, making a good impression. When I receive professional communication from a @gmail address from an unknown person, it’s not a good look, which leads to the last point…
Trust
The worst outcome of writing from a generic domain is looking untrustworthy. Whenever I receive professional communication from an unknown contact, I check the domain, I check the website, and I check the website’s ranking, or even google the brand. It’s a good way to filter out scams and quickly get a lot of context.
Facts: I never reply to “gmails” offering services.
Here is a “bonus” topic:
Privacy
Five years ago, I moved my private email from Google to ProtonMail. The main reason was concern about Google abusing access to the content of my mailbox. I don’t need ads targeted based on private emails with my girlfriend. No, thank you. Also, in general, I find it a threat to the internet that one of the most important protocols is so centralized, and one company can decide if your emails will be delivered to 60-80% of your recipients. Since then, I recommended ProtonMail to everyone who asked. If encryption is your priority, or you plan to use it as an anonymous/vanity address — Proton is great.
Unfortunately, what I painfully experienced, despite the noble idea behind it, is that the quality of customer service suffers from bad corporate culture and is not sufficient for serious purposes. They don’t work on weekends, reply slowly, and it took weeks (!!!) of fighting until they restored access to my business mailboxes, lost due to an error on their payment page (the error was still there when I left). That’s way too much trouble to easily recommend them for serious users. And it wasn’t even the first time I reported a problem that wasn’t fixed for months.
Backup
My big takeaway from this event was realizing how important it is to have a backup of your mailbox. This is really the heart of many of my operations (as well as access to many services). I can’t even remember when I stopped downloading my emails locally. I was traveling, using different devices, while the cloud got so reliable and convenient. But having a single point of failure is never a good strategy.
It’s simple: connect your mailbox to some local mail client, and let it store all your stuff locally — even if only as insurance.
In my case, after the whole Proton “adventure,” for my private address, I settled on iCloud and the surprisingly good default Mail app. First, I appreciate Apple’s focus on privacy. In that regard, I trust them much more than Google or Microsoft. Second, like surely many of the readers, I use an iPhone and already pay for iCloud, which includes this option for free.
And for business… if you need to integrate your email with services like Zapier and Pipedrive—just go for Google Workspace. Your privacy is already compromised by connecting to all the third-party services, so at least make your life easier. I hired ProtonMail for that job for over four years, and all I can say: it’s a lot of extra hassle — make sure you really need it.
I may not be fully done. Fantasies about running my very own email server are back.