In 2018, email users across the world sent over 280 billion emails per day according to Statista. That number is expected to very soon, if not in 2019, go over 300 billion and in by 2023, it should come very close to 350 billion by Statista email usage projections.
As you might have imagined, big email providers like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail and the like mostly lead the charge when it comes to email usage.
But here’s another, much more alarming statistic:
76% of businesses have reportedly been a victim of an email phishing attack in 2018, says Retruster in its 2019 Phishing Statistics and Email Fraud Statistics report.
Phishing attacks are behind 90% of data breaches, according to the same report, and the average cost of just one data breach is $3.86 million.
That has to make you wonder:
Am I using the most secure email provider?
Well, what email service do you use?
If your answer is “Gmail” then the answer to our first question will be:
No, you are not using the most secure email hosting.
Last September, Google warned its users about a security problem that can affect 1.5 billion Gmail and Calendar users.
So, if not Gmail, then what is the most secure email provider in 2020?
Here are the 5 most secure email providers and hosting services that offer better email privacy and security:
CTemplar is 100% anonymous and open source email service based in Iceland, which offers 4096-bit encryption, with zero-knowledge password protection (meaning they don’t know your password so they can’t access your decrypted data).
Although a newer service compared to the others on this list, CTemplar already shows signs of being more than capable of protecting its user’s privacy and security. That’s made possible by a myriad of security features CTemplar offers.
Also, since Iceland has one of the strongest privacy protection laws in Europe, CTemplar is one of the most secure email hosting providers.
However, you’ll have to sign up for a paid plan or upgrade from the Free plan to enjoy many of these features. The Free plan still encrypts your contacts, content, attachments, offers 2FA, anti-phishing and brute force protection, just to name a few features.
Paid pricing plans start from $6/m when billed yearly.
CTemplar offers six different pricing packages.
- ProtonMail
ProtonMail is one of the most popular private email services around. It has its beginnings at MIT and CERN, which joined forces in 2014 to fill the gap that was left when Lavabit was shut down and create the “only email system the NSA can’t access”.
All attachments and messages are stored on servers in Switzerland and use PGP encryption. However, ProtonMail (and in general PGP) does not encrypt email subject lines and only allows you to search the subject lines within the inbox, not the actual content of the emails.
Switzerland boasts strong privacy laws, taking ProtonMail to the very top of the most secure email hosting services list.
Pricing plans start at $5/month. There is a Free plan, but it is very limited (just 500GB storage, no custom domains, no email filters, etc.).
- Mailbox.org
Unlike most secure email providers on this list, Mailbox.org has a few more things to offer in its sleeve as it can also serve as cloud storage, has webchat, calendar, presentations, address book, spreadsheets, text, portal and tasks.
Mailbox.org uses secure servers in Germany to store data, which are all PGP encrypted (at rest). Perhaps the biggest problem is that the registration isn’t fully anonymous as there is some tracking going on there (presumably due to German laws).
There is no free plan available, however, there is a 30-day, no-obligation free trial. Plans start at €1/month, which includes 2GM mail storage, 100MB cloud storage, 3 aliases and more.
- Kolab Now
Kolab Now is another secure email provider based in Switzerland (at least it uses Swiss-based servers) that deserves some attention from us.
It offers plenty of features, including email, cloud storage, collaboration, sharing, scheduling, calendar, etc. and would be a good choice for most private and business users. However, for someone concerned about their email privacy, the lack of end-to-end encryption and the fact that Kolab Now does not encrypt emails at rest might be a deal-breaker.
Kolab Now offers two types of accounts, Individual and Group, depending on your needs. Unfortunately, they’re not only on the higher pricing end ($4.50 and $5.50 per month), but you also can’t upgrade directly from Individual to Group.
- Tutanota
Tutanota is a brainchild of a group of German privacy experts, who wanted to offer a service that would not only provide a high level of email security, but would also be user-friendly.
What’s unique about Tutanota is that it doesn’t use PGP or S/MIME for encryption (it doesn’t even support PGP, SMTP, IMAP or POP), but its own AES/RSA-based encryption standard, which encrypts the email subject line.
Tutanota offers a Free plan (only for private use), which you can upgrade to any of its paid plans, which start at €1.20/month for Premium.
Conclusion
Of course, these five are just some of the many privacy email services you should consider if you’re worried Gmail doesn’t do a good enough job protecting your privacy or keeping your emails secure from malicious attacks.
What is the most secure email provider 2020 though?
The choice was not easy as there was a lot to consider when choosing the most secure email provider 2020.
Certainly, you won’t regret going with any of these, but overall we have to recommend CTemplar for its strong encryption, zero-knowledge password protection, IP removal from emails and full anonymity it offers (100% anonymous sign-up and payment).
What do you think? Would you agree with us or would you go with a different most secure email provider?
