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Posteo is regarded as one of the best secure email providers, and the German company has been around since 2009. The service claims to have over half a million active accounts and gained prominence following the 2013 global surveillance disclosures.
Posteo isn’t just about privacy and security, though – the company cares about sustainability, too. The firm’s offices run on green energy from hydroelectric and wind sources, and they’ve sponsored green energy usage at their data center.
The organization provides employees with green energy subsidies, Posteo abstains from flights and even gives staff free public transport tickets.
There’s no doubt that Posteo is doing the right thing when it comes to security and sustainability, but should this company be your next secure email provider?
Posteo: Plans and pricing
Posteo is pleasingly transparent about its security, sustainability and company ethos, and the firm’s pricing is just as straightforward.
A single Posteo account with all of its features costs €1/$1.03/£0.83 per month, with credit added to your account in advance and fees deducted as you use services.
Additional storage costs €0.25/$0.26/£0.21 per month per gigabyte, and additional alias addresses and calendars are even cheaper. And if you want a S/MIME certificate, it’s €3.65/$3.76/£3.03 for one year.
PayPal, bank transfer, credit card or cash payments are possible with Posteo, and any information that Posteo receives for payment is not linked to your account – which means anonymous payments. Sadly, cryptocurrency is not supported.
There’s no free trial, but you can cancel your sign-up within fourteen days. When you sign up, you can choose from a variety of Posteo addresses with different country suffixes, and be aware that you need to sign up for a year of Posteo credit at first – which means a payment of at least €12/$12.38/£9.97.
Posteo: Features
Posteo balances comprehensive layers of encryption with some solid advice to help users receive maximum email protection.
Every email transmitted to and from Posteo is protected by TLS and DANE/TLSA encryption that protects the email’s contents and metadata, and all access to Posteo’s services is encrypted, too, with the aforementioned services and HSTS.
All connections within Posteo benefit from SSH and TLS, too, and your password is not stored in plain text and is fully encrypted. Two-factor authentication is available, and all of Posteo’s server hard disks are fully encrypted, too. IP stripping is also supported.
If you activate Posteo’s crypto mail storage, you benefit 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 initial encryption.
Alongside this comprehensive offering, Posteo recommends that users deploy their own OpenPGP system, like MailVelope, to enjoy true end-to-end encryption. Pleasingly, it’s pre-configured within Posteo, so it’s very easy to use.
It’s a very good system – effective and transparent. And if you want more information about Posteo’s security features, the company offers in-depth and accessible details on its website, with more information here than you’ll find from many rival services. The firm also publishes transparency reports and is externally audited to bolster its security and privacy credentials.
Similar levels of encryption are applied to your calendar and address book, and elsewhere Posteo is pleasingly practical: it supports SMTP, IMAP and POP3 email clients, its migration service works smoothly, and the service is ad-free. It’s completely open source, too, and has an excellent and configurable spam filter.
In terms of core security, Posteo is excellent, but there’s no denying that this more affordable secure email provider is a little lacking in peripheral areas.
You only get 2GB of cloud storage unless you pay for more, for instance, which is a smaller amount than many other more expensive providers, and the maximum available of 20GB is pretty low, too.
Users should also look elsewhere for additional features. It’s entirely understandable given Posteo’s low price and small team, but you don’t get office apps, a VPN or anything else with Posteo – the product concentrates on being a pure, secure email service. There are no mobile apps, and Posteo doesn’t support custom domains.
Posteo’s lack of apps, extra features, and extensive storage also means that it’s not suitable for larger enterprises, and you don’t get the robust management and deployment tools for bigger organizations that you’ll find elsewhere.
Posteo: Interface and in use
Posteo uses a straightforward three-panel interface, although it places your list of emails at the top of the window and individual emails below, with icons at the top to allow access to your calendar, contacts and settings.
And while Posteo’s interface looks a little old-fashioned at first, it comes with loads of customization options for you to make it your own, highlight dark and high contrast modes, different color themes and lots of layout tweaks.
You’ll find loads of customization options elsewhere, too, so you can also tweak functionality – impressively, it’s all very easy to find and navigate.
Posteo doesn’t have mobile apps, but it has a good mobile interface that’s easy to navigate.
Posteo: Support
Because it’s such a small team, Posteo’s support options are limited.
Positively, sending an email or submitting a form on Posteo’s website is easy, and queries are answered within one working day. Posteo supports German, French and English, and its support team is active between 7 am and 7 pm GMT.
Posteo has an excellent and extensive help section on its website that will solve many issues, but there’s no live chat or phone support here – another aspect of the service that means Posteo is not suitable for businesses.
Posteo: The competition
There are plenty of secure email providers around, like Mailbox.org, that offer impressive encryption alongside extra features, like cloud storage, office tools or a VPN. Those products are certainly more suitable for businesses or anyone who needs a suite of tools.
For pure secure email, though, Posteo’s encryption and ethos are excellent, and its closest competitors are services like Tuta.
Tuta is a little pricier than Posteo, but it has more extensive support options and mobile apps – two areas where Posteo falls behind.
Posteo: Final verdict
Posteo may fall behind its rivals when it comes to additional features and support, then, but it’s tricky to question its security credentials – Posteo is excellent in this area, the organization has the right attitude, and it’s a sustainable service too.
It’s a very affordable option, too, and its straightforward email client is customizable and easy to use. It may not have extra bells and whistles, but Posteo is secure, affordable and effective.
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