I was researching WebMail providers, and noticed that most WebMail providers recommended in privacy communities are labelled as proprietary by AlternativeTo.
I made a list of WebMail providers, private or not, to see which ones were actually open source:
Proprietary
AOL Mail: Free
Cock.li: Free
CounterMail: Paid
Fastmail: Paid
GMX Mail: Free
Gmail: Free
HEY Email: Paid
Hushmail: Paid
iCloud Mail: Free
Mail.com: Free
Mailbox.org: Paid
Mailfence: Freemium
Outlook.com: Freemium
Posteo: Paid
Rediffmail: Paid
Riseup: Free
Runbox: Paid
Soverin: Paid
StartMail: Paid
Yahoo! Mail: Freemium
Yandex Mail: Freemium
Zoho Mail: Freemium
Open source
Criptext: Free
Disroot: Free
Forward Email: Freemium
Infomaniak kMail: Freemium
Kolab Now: Paid
Lavabit: Paid
Mailpile: Free
Proton Mail: Freemium
Roundcube: Free
Skiff/Notion: Freemium
Tuta: Freemium
Unless I’m missing something, it seems like people overlook this when deciding on WebMail providers. Is it a distinction between a proprietary backend server and a proprietary app, or is there a different way to decide if a WebMail provider is proprietary vs. open source? Lavabit was labelled proprietary by AlternativeTo, but open source by Wikipedia.
Note
If I have labelled an open source WebMail provider as proprietary by mistake, please provide evidence by linking to the source code, and I will happily change it.
Yea, people mostly equate email to an electronic letter, but it’s more like an electronic postcard. Anyone handling it can simply read it.
So you’ll want encryption, too. So either you get everyone to use PGP/GPG or get them to use a privacy-by-default provider.
Good luck with the first option and I’m not sure how interoperable the various providers are, so in the worst case you’d have to rally everyone to the same provider.