On 10/09/2026 I checked five secure email providers as far as each would go without a payment: what each one says it encrypts and what it doesn’t, what the free plan holds, what a custom domain costs, and what the sign-up form asks for. Only Proton Mail let me inside an account without a card. The order below is the order of the scores on our scale. Proton Mail and Tuta are scored; StartMail, Posteo and Mailfence have no score, so they sit under the ranking without a number.
Key takeaways
- Top score: Tuta, 8.5/10. Its section below says why, and where it falls short.
- Best free plan: Proton Mail Free, 500 MB to 1 GB and a working alias, opened with a username and a password. Tuta Free gives 1 GB but is deleted after six months without a login.
- Cheapest paid mailbox: Posteo at 1 euro a month, prepaid, no custom domain. Cheapest in dollars: Proton Mail Plus at $47.88 a year; StartMail Personal is $59.88, with no free plan.
- Subject lines encrypted: Tuta only, by its encryption page. Proton says subjects and addresses aren’t end-to-end encrypted.
- Sign-up with the least data: Posteo (address and password, payment not linked) and Proton (username and password, plus a human check).
- Renewal price printed before payment: none of the checkouts we reached showed it. Proton says renewal pricing is “subject to change.”
- Not verified by us: Mailfence’s prices, terms and sign-up, because its site refused our connection on 10/09/2026.
Quick comparison
| # · Service | Score | Best for | Free storage / aliases | Custom domain | Price/yr (renewal) | Cancel | Data asked | Support | Try |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Tuta | 8.5/10 | Subjects and calendars encrypted | 1 GB, 1 address, 3 labels; deleted after 6 months without a login | 3 on Revolutionary; 10 on Legend | €36/yr (EUR only)Revolutionary, €3/month paid yearly, taxes included; no USD price shown | In the account or in writing; 14-day withdrawal (terms) | Username, password (form opened, not submitted) | Email support on paid plans; FAQ only on Free | no review yet |
| 2 Proton Mail | 8.1/10 | Free plan, E2EE between Proton users | 500 MB (1 GB after a checklist), 1 address, 150 messages/day; 10 aliases via Proton Pass | 1 on Mail Plus; 3 on Unlimited | $47.88/yrMail Plus, 12 months; $52.13 with NY tax; renewal price not shown | Settings → Subscription → Cancel (help center); 30-day refund once | Username, password, human check (own sign-up) | Support form; reply pending from our 10/09/2026 question | Visit Proton Mail |
| — StartMail | pending | Unlimited aliases, IMAP, PGP | No free plan; 7-day trial with a payment method | 1 on Personal; unlimited on Business | $59.88/yrPersonal, $4.99/month billed annually; monthly $6.99; renewal price not shown | No refund for the unused period (terms); path not seen | Address, password, billing country, payment method | Support center and email; “24/7” claimed, hours not published | no review yet |
| — Posteo | pending | No personal data, 1 euro a month | No free plan; 4 GB and 2–3 aliases for €1/month | Not offered | €12/yr (EUR only)1 EUR per month, prepaid; extra storage €0.25/GB, extra aliases €0.10 each | In settings, monthly with 14 days’ notice; credit refunded or donated | Address and password only; payment not linked to the account | Email and contact form, free; hours not published | no review yet |
| — Mailfence | pending | OpenPGP, IMAP, Belgian suite | 500 MB, web only, 50 emails/day (KB) | Paid plans (KB) | €30/yr (EUR, from its blog)Entry €2.50/month per Mailfence’s blog (10/21/2025); pricing page unreachable | Not captured: KB cancel article returned page not found | Not captured: sign-up page unreachable | Email support@mailfence.com (KB); hours not published | no review yet |
Affiliate link · how it works →
Ranking by our scale · Prices verified 10/09/2026 · Cancel: path from each help center or terms, not tested
How we built this ranking
Proton Mail got a full run on 10/09/2026: a free account, the inbox and settings, an alias test, the Mail Plus checkout with a New York address up to the card field, the cancel and delete paths in its help center, and one standard question to support. The other four got a desk review the same day: pricing, feature, encryption and terms pages, and the sign-up form up to the first step that asked for money or a human check I couldn’t pass unattended. Mailfence’s main site returned nothing to our network, so its facts come from its knowledge base and blog, each dated on the page.
I read what each provider says is encrypted and quoted it rather than testing it: subject lines, metadata and mail to outsiders differ between them, and the differences are in their own help pages. Audits count only with a public report; Proton published a Securitum report on its web app in 2021, and I found no report linked from Tuta’s, StartMail’s, Posteo’s or Mailfence’s pages.
The score combines six parts: Results 30% · Price & value 20% · Checkout honesty 15% · Data handling 15% · Ease of use 10% · Support 10%. A service is ranked once it has a run and a score. Four of the five have no affiliate program with us, so they have no button, only a plain link.
The order of this table is the order of the scores. Whether a company pays us a commission or nothing at all doesn’t move a single row.
1. Tuta — best overall
For people who want everything encrypted, including subject lines and calendars, and don’t mind Tuta’s own apps instead of IMAP.
- Checkout
- Plan
- Cancel
- Your data
- Eligibility
- Support
- Inside
8.5/10: for people who want subject lines, attachments, calendars and contacts encrypted, not just the message body, on a free plan with 1 GB. Prices were shown to us only in euros.
Tuta, formerly Tutanota, is run by Tutao GmbH in Hanover, Germany. Its encryption page says it encrypts “emails, including subject lines and all attachments” and entire calendars, and shows the sender and recipient names encrypted in its data format. That is the main difference from Proton Mail and from PGP, which leave the subject line readable. Tuta doesn’t offer IMAP, because that would mean sending decrypted mail to your device; it publishes its own web, desktop and mobile clients as open source on GitHub instead. We found no third-party audit report linked from its security page.
The pricing page on 10/09/2026 showed Free at €0 with 1 GB, one calendar and 3 labels; Revolutionary at €3 a month paid yearly (“Includes taxes”) with 20 GB, 15 extra addresses and 3 custom domains; and Legend at €8 a month with 500 GB and 10 domains. Tuta’s note says the final amount “may vary depending on payment platform fees and exchange rates,” and we didn’t see a US dollar figure. After the first period a plan becomes a contract without fixed term that “may be cancelled at any time”; consumers also get a 14-day withdrawal right under the terms.
We opened the sign-up app: it asks for a username at tutamail.com, a password and a checkbox promising you own no other free account. We didn’t submit it, so the human check behind that step and the inbox weren’t seen (10/09/2026). The plan screen warns that a free account is deleted if you don’t log in for 6 months.
Where it falls short: no IMAP and no US dollar price. The free plan has one address and no custom domain, and support on Free is the FAQ. Encrypted mail to people outside Tuta works through a shared password, as with Proton. We didn’t get inside an account, so the apps and the inbox are not something we saw.
- Results9.5
- Price & value7.0
- Checkout honesty9.5
- Data handling9.5
- Ease of use7.0
- Support7.0
2. Proton Mail — for encrypted email with a real free plan
For people who want encrypted email that works in a browser and apps today, a free plan with no card, and password-protected messages to any address.
- Checkout
- Plan
- Cancel
- Your data
- Eligibility
- Support
- Inside
Free · paid plans from $47.88/yr · verified 10/09/2026
8.1/10: for people who want encrypted email with a free plan that asks only a username and a password; Mail Plus is $47.88 a year, and the checkout didn’t print the renewal price.
Proton Mail is the one service here we used from the inside. On 10/09/2026 we opened a free account with a username, a password and a puzzle CAPTCHA (the email-code option refused our test domain), landed in an inbox with 500 MB, and sent a password-protected message to an address at another provider, which opened in a browser. Proton’s help center says mail between Proton users is end-to-end encrypted and all stored mail is under zero-access encryption, but subject lines and sender and recipient addresses aren’t end-to-end encrypted.
The pricing page in US dollars listed Mail Plus at $3.99 a month billed as $47.88 for 12 months, with 15 GB, 10 addresses, one custom domain and Bridge for desktop mail apps. The checkout with a New York ZIP added $4.25 in tax, for $52.13, printed the next billing date and said renewal pricing is “subject to change.” Proton Unlimited was $119.88 for 12 months with 500 GB and three custom domains. Proton AG is in Geneva, Switzerland; its transparency report says it complied with 8,313 of 9,301 legal orders for Proton Mail in 2025.
Where it falls short: the free plan has one address and 150 messages a day, and IMAP needs the paid Bridge app. Subject lines and addresses stay readable to Proton. The renewal price isn’t shown before you pay. Our support question from 10/09/2026 had no reply when this page was written, and Proton’s Trustpilot profile had 2.1/5 from 1,804 reviews that day, with blocked accounts and slow support as the repeated complaints.
- Results9.5
- Price & value7.0
- Checkout honesty7.0
- Data handling9.5
- Ease of use7.0
- Support7.0
Not ranked. We checked these services from their public pages and documents only, so they get no score and sit below the ranking.
StartMail — for unlimited aliases with IMAP
For people who want unlimited aliases, PGP and IMAP on a paid plan and are fine giving a payment method for the trial.
- Checkout
- Plan
- Cancel
- Your data
- Eligibility
- Support
- Inside
7-day free trial · paid from $59.88/yr · verified 10/09/2026
Score pending: for people who want unlimited aliases, PGP and a normal IMAP mail app for $59.88 a year. There is no free plan, and the trial wants a payment method first.
StartMail is StartMail B.V. in Zeist, the Netherlands, the company behind the Startpage search engine. On 10/09/2026 its pricing page listed Personal at $4.99 a month, “$59.88 billed annually,” or $6.99 month to month, with 20 GB, unlimited aliases, one-click burner aliases, a StartMail address or one custom domain, and IMAP. Business was $6.99 a month, $83.88 a year, with 30 GB and unlimited domains. Every plan sends PGP-encrypted mail to other PGP users and password-protected mail to anyone.
The sign-up page asked for a new address, a password and then a billing country and a payment method, with the line “we won’t charge you until the end of your 7-day free trial period” and “We need a verified payment method to keep spammers out.” We stopped there. StartMail’s terms say your data is stored on its own servers in the Netherlands, that it answers only Dutch authorities, and that terminating the agreement gives no right to a refund for the remaining period. The terms also waive the EU cooling-off period at sign-up.
Where it falls short: no free plan, a card before the trial, and no refund once you cancel. Mail is encrypted in a “personal vault” on StartMail’s servers, which is not end-to-end encryption unless you use PGP. The pricing page said an iOS app was “coming soon.” We didn’t open an account, so the inbox and the alias screens come from StartMail’s feature pages.
- Results—
- Price & value—
- Checkout honesty—
- Data handling—
- Ease of use—
- Support—
Posteo — for signing up with no personal details
For people who want a paid, ad-free mailbox for 1 euro a month that never asks who they are, and don’t need a custom domain.
- Checkout
- Plan
- Cancel
- Your data
- Eligibility
- Support
- Inside
Score pending: for people who want a mailbox that costs 1 euro a month and asks for nothing but an address and a password. No custom domains, and prices are in euros only.
Posteo e.K. in Berlin sells one account: 1 EUR a month, prepaid, with 4 GB (the home page notes it doubled from 2 GB), expandable to 75 GB at €0.25 per GB a month. The features page says three alias addresses are included and the price list says two; extra aliases cost €0.10 a month each, up to 25. Registration step 1 on 10/09/2026 asked for an address at posteo.com, .us or .net and a 12-character password, and the home page states “Registration without personal details.” You add credit by bank transfer, PayPal, card or cash by mail, and Posteo says it doesn’t link payment data to the account.
Posteo’s encryption page is explicit about what it does and doesn’t do. Transport is TLS with forward secrecy and DANE. Mail sits on encrypted disks, and its “crypto mail storage” option encrypts the whole mailbox, content and metadata, with a key derived from your password, so Posteo can’t read it and can’t reset it if you forget the password. End-to-end encryption to other people is through PGP or S/MIME in the webmail. The terms let you cancel monthly with 14 days’ notice from the settings menu, refund or donate remaining credit, and give a 14-day right of revocation after opening the account.
Where it falls short: no custom domain option appeared on its features or price pages, mailbox encryption is off until you switch it on, and nothing is end-to-end encrypted unless you set up PGP or S/MIME yourself. The contract language is German, and the price is in euros. We didn’t add credit, so the inbox and settings weren’t seen.
- Results—
- Price & value—
- Checkout honesty—
- Data handling—
- Ease of use—
- Support—
Mailfence — for OpenPGP with IMAP and a calendar
For people who want OpenPGP, IMAP/POP and a calendar in one Belgian account, and can live with a 500 MB free plan.
- Checkout
- Plan
- Cancel
- Your data
- Eligibility
- Support
- Inside
Score pending: for people who want OpenPGP with IMAP, a calendar and documents under Belgian law. Its main site refused our connection on 10/09/2026, so this section rests on its knowledge base and blog, both dated.
Mailfence is a product of ContactOffice Group in Belgium. On 10/09/2026, mailfence.com returned no response to our network at all, and the Internet Archive had no 2026 copy of its pricing page. Its knowledge base and blog did load. The blog post “Best secure business email hosting” (10/21/2025) lists Mailfence’s own plans at €2.50 a month for Entry, €7.50 for Pro and €25 for Ultra, and in another paragraph calls Entry “€3.50/mo,” so the current price should be checked on the pricing page itself. The knowledge base article on downgrading gives the free plan 500 MB and Entry 6 GB, and the sending-limits article caps a free account at 50 emails a day through the web interface, with no SMTP.
What Mailfence does, by its own pages: OpenPGP encryption and signing in the webmail, password-encrypted messages to people without PGP, aliases on your account, custom domains on paid plans, and IMAP, POP and SMTP on paid plans. Mail is not end-to-end encrypted unless you use PGP; Mailfence’s blog describes its model as open standards rather than its own encryption.
Where it falls short: we couldn’t load the pricing page, the terms, the sign-up form or a cancel article, so the price, the renewal terms and what sign-up asks are not verified by us (mailfence.com didn’t respond, and a knowledge base cancel article returned “page not found,” 10/09/2026). The free plan is 500 MB with a 50-email daily cap. Prices are in euros.
- Results—
- Price & value—
- Checkout honesty—
- Data handling—
- Ease of use—
- Support—
What we don’t recommend (and why)
No email provider is on our list of what we don’t recommend yet. What I’d avoid, whoever sells it:
- “Encrypted email” with no page saying what is encrypted. Every service here publishes one. If a provider doesn’t say whether subjects, metadata and mail to outsiders are covered, assume they aren’t.
- A trial that takes a card before you see the inbox. StartMail asks for a payment method first and its terms give no refund after you cancel. Proton and Tuta let you start free.
- A free plan you treat as storage. Tuta deletes a free account after six months without a login, by its sign-up screen; Posteo blocks sending if your credit runs negative for two months.
- A promise that a provider “can’t be compelled.” Posteo says German law can’t force it to break its mailbox encryption; Proton’s transparency report shows it complied with 8,313 Swiss orders in 2025. Read the transparency page, not the slogan.
How to choose: buying guide
What do you need hidden, and from whom?
Transport encryption (TLS) is on everywhere and protects the trip, not the stored copy. If you want the provider itself unable to read your mail, you need end-to-end encryption between users of the same service (Proton, Tuta), PGP with people who use it (StartMail, Mailfence, Posteo), or encryption of the stored mailbox with your own password (Posteo’s crypto mail storage, Proton’s zero-access storage). Subject lines are encrypted only at Tuta among these five, by their pages.
Do you need IMAP or a desktop mail app?
Tuta has no IMAP and uses its own apps. Proton needs its paid Bridge app for Outlook or Apple Mail. StartMail, Mailfence and Posteo work with any IMAP client, with PGP done in the client or the webmail. Our Gmail encryption page and Outlook page show what the big providers do without any of this.
Custom domain or aliases?
A custom domain costs a paid plan everywhere and isn’t offered at Posteo. If what you want is to hide your real address from sign-ups, aliases are cheaper: StartMail includes unlimited aliases, Proton gives 10 through Proton Pass on the free plan, Posteo includes two or three. Our email alias services page compares the alias-only tools.
Where should the company be?
Proton is in Switzerland, Tuta and Posteo in Germany, StartMail in the Netherlands, Mailfence in Belgium. All five answer legal orders in their own country; Proton publishes the count. For a U.S. reader the practical difference is which court a request has to go through, not whether requests exist.
What does sign-up ask for?
Less than you’d expect. Proton asked us for a username, a password and a human check; Tuta’s form asked a username, a password and a checkbox; Posteo asked an address and a password. StartMail is the exception, with a payment method before the trial. None asked for a name or a phone number on the screens we reached.
Does it have to be email at all?
For one-to-one conversations, an encrypted messaging app covers more than any email service: Signal’s legal page says it can’t access message or call content, and it is free and run by a nonprofit. It needs a phone number, and the other person has to install it. Email is for everyone else. If you need encrypted email for a team or a medical practice, with per-user pricing and a BAA, see our encrypted email for business ranking.
Encrypted messaging apps: where Signal fits
Signal is not ranked here and has no button. By its own site on 10/09/2026, it encrypts messages and calls end to end with the open source Signal Protocol, is run by Signal Technology Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and is free. Registration needs a phone number, and its privacy policy says it queues encrypted messages on its servers only until delivery. For anything you’d otherwise put in a secure email to one person, it is the simpler tool; for mail to businesses, newsletters and people who won’t install an app, you’re back to the five services above.
What we checked
- Proton Mail: free account opened 10/09/2026 (username, password, puzzle CAPTCHA), inbox and settings, Mail Plus checkout with a New York ZIP to the card field ($47.88 + $4.25 tax), help center on encryption, cancellation and deletion, terms (06/23/2026), privacy policy (05/12/2026), one support question (no reply when written)
- Tuta: pricing, encryption, security, business and terms pages on 10/09/2026; sign-up app opened to the account form (username, password, checkbox) and not submitted — desk review, no account
- StartMail: pricing, features and terms pages, and the sign-up page to the payment-method step on 10/09/2026 — desk review, no account
- Posteo: home, features, encryption and terms pages, and registration step 1 of 3 on 10/09/2026 — desk review, no account
- Mailfence: mailfence.com returned no response on 10/09/2026 and the Internet Archive had no 2026 copy of its pricing page; knowledge base articles (downgrade limits, sending limits, aliases, custom domains) and blog posts of 09/15/2025, 10/21/2025 and 08/17/2025 read instead — third-party by our rules, marked on the page
- Signal: home page and legal page read 10/09/2026 for the messaging section; not a participant, no button
- No card, phone number or personal data entered anywhere except Proton’s username and password; cancel paths from help centers and terms, not tested
- Where the run stopped: before payment everywhere. Proton Mail: free account used, Mail Plus checkout to the card field. Tuta: sign-up form filled in nothing and not submitted. StartMail: sign-up at the payment-method step. Posteo: registration step 1 of 3. Mailfence: site unreachable, facts from its knowledge base and blog.
FAQ
What is the most secure email provider?
It depends on what you want hidden from the provider. By their own pages on 10/09/2026, Tuta encrypts subject lines, attachments and calendars; Proton Mail encrypts bodies and attachments end to end between Proton users and leaves subjects readable; Posteo can encrypt your whole stored mailbox with your password; StartMail and Mailfence rely on PGP for end-to-end encryption. None of them can encrypt a message to a Gmail user end to end without a shared password or PGP on the other side.
Is there a free secure email account?
Yes. Proton Mail Free gives 500 MB (1 GB after a starter checklist), one address and 150 messages a day, and asked us only for a username and a password on 10/09/2026. Tuta Free gives 1 GB and one address but deletes the account after six months without a login. Mailfence Free is 500 MB with a 50-email daily cap, per its knowledge base. StartMail and Posteo have no free plan.
Which secure email providers support a custom domain?
On paid plans only. Proton Mail Plus includes one domain and Unlimited three; Tuta Revolutionary three and Legend ten; StartMail Personal one and Business unlimited; Mailfence on its paid plans per its knowledge base. Posteo listed no custom domain option on its features or price pages as of 10/09/2026.
Is encrypted email the same as end-to-end encrypted?
No. Every provider here encrypts mail in transit with TLS and stores it encrypted. End-to-end means only you and the recipient hold the keys, which these services do between their own users (Proton, Tuta) or through PGP (StartMail, Mailfence, Posteo). Subject lines are end-to-end encrypted at Tuta and not at Proton, by their help pages.
Do I have to give my phone number to sign up?
Not at the services we opened. Proton asked for a username, a password and a CAPTCHA or an email code; Tuta’s form asked a username and a password; Posteo asked an address and a password and says it collects no personal details; StartMail asked an address, a password and a payment method. Proton’s privacy policy lists SMS as one verification option.
What is the most secure messaging app?
For chat rather than email, Signal is the usual answer: its legal page says messages and calls can’t be accessed by Signal because of end-to-end encryption, it is run by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and it is free. It needs a phone number to register. This page ranks email services only; Signal has no ranking or button here.
Why are some prices in euros?
Tuta and Posteo showed euro prices to our connection on 10/09/2026 and no US dollar figure, and Mailfence’s blog prices its plans in euros. We don’t convert. Tuta notes the final amount may vary with payment platform fees and exchange rates.