The 10 most secure email providers of 2024

Finding the most secure email providers with reliable end-to-end encryption, spacious storage space, and other security features is not an easy task. Plenty of companies claim to be the safest, while in reality, their email service has critical security flaws that grant hackers and snoopers access to your data.

In this article, you’ll find my list of actually safe and reliable email companies. Hopefully, this guide will put an end to all that head-scratching and wondering what email is the most secure. However, not even the safest email providers are capable of providing you with all-encompassing cybersecurity, and I always recommend using a VPN together with secure mail. That way, not only your messages, but also your browsing, streaming, and torrenting will be secured from IP and DNS leaks.

Getting back to secure emails, there are fantastic operators running some of the safest email accounts ever created. Currently, the number one is ProtonMail, which also pairs perfectly with Proton VPN. It has end-to-end encryption, up to 500 GB of storage, and 2-factor authentication.

Top 10 most secure email services

Popular (and unreliable) email services are free of charge because they make ends meet via ads. However, they may scan your inbox for keywords to provide relevant ads you’re more likely to click on.

This is why I recommend using premium, aka paid email providers. Then you can be certain your data isn’t collected against your will. Luckily, frugal netizens can utilize the free plans of some of these providers if they don’t mind a fair number of limitations.

Read my brief overviews of the safest email providers below and check out the complete reviews for more detailed information.

1. ProtonMail

ProtonMail is arguably the most well-known secure email service, and for good reason, too. Firstly, it has a solid free plan with end-to-end (E2E) encryption, 500MB of storage, a 150 message limit, plus 3 folders and labels. Meanwhile, the paid plans combine a staggering number of security features that go beyond email protection.

Investing $4.99/month in the Mail Plus plan unlocks 15 GB of total storage, up to 10 different email addresses, 1 custom email domain, and an unlimited number of daily messages, folders, labels, and custom filters. Premium users can also create contact groups for convenient email sending to a large number of users (up to 100 per group). Plus, you can even set up auto-replies.

The Mail Plus plan includes Proton Drive and Proton Calendar. Keep in mind that your 15 GB of storage space is shared between these tools. If that doesn’t seem like enough, consider the Proton Unlimited plan, which starts at $11.99/month, grants 500 GB of cloud storage, and even unlocks Proton VPN.

Learn more by reading our complete ProtonMail review.

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2. Tutanota

Tutanota is a freemium and open-source email provider from Germany. The service has a limited free plan and an impressive selection of premium plan options. The cheapest plans start at 1 euro per month, although can go up to 7 euros per month if you need the complete set of features.

Non-paying customers are limited to 1 GB of storage, Tutanota-only domains, limited search, and only one calendar. Meanwhile, investing the bare minimum unlocks one custom domain, unlimited search, multiple calendars, and 5 alias addresses. You can upgrade storage space separately if that’s the only thing you think is lacking on the free plan. Plus, adding users is also an option if you want to share the subscription with some colleagues.

The priciest business plan includes previously-mentioned features plus multiple custom domains and calendars, email templates, autoresponder, and much more. Use Tutanota’s pricing calculator to find out how much your desired tools would cost.

Learn more by reading our complete Tutanota review.

3. FastMail

FastMail advertises itself as a privacy-respecting alternative to Gmail. Instead of paying with your privacy, you commit to a subscription and save yourself from surveillance, tracking, ads, and other Google practices many are familiar with.

The Basic FastMail plan starts at $3/month and includes the essentials. For starters, there are no ads or tracking, fully-featured calendars, Masked Email, and over 600 alias addresses. Furthermore, you can add more users to a subscription, and each one has 2 GB of storage.

If that’s not enough, there’s the Standard plan. It costs $5/month and increases storage capacity to 30 GB. Additionally, you can use custom domains and different email apps that suit your needs better. The final Professional plan unlocks the retention archive to safekeep your email forever.

Although FastMail doesn’t have a free plan, you can test it out without commitment using the 30-day free trial.

Learn more by reading our complete FastMail review.

4. HushMail

Hushmail is one of the oldest secure email providers available. It was founded in 1998 and offers plans for personal use, lawyers, healthcare specialists, and small businesses. The service previously offered free plans, but these have since been eliminated.

The personal use plan costs $49.98 annually and includes up to 10 GB of storage per account. Plus, you can easily refund the service, thanks to the 60-day money-back guarantee. The service uses OpenPGP encryption to secure your conversations. Additionally, you get an unlimited number of email aliases.

The HIPPA-compliant Healthcare plan costs $19.99/month or $219 annually. You get up to 5 encrypted email accounts, secure web forms, and the ability to customize your domain name. Moreover, integration with electronic signatures is available for your convenience.

The most popular Small Business plan costs $5.99/month per user and grants each one 10 GB of storage. Communication between employees is automatically encrypted, while outsiders get on-demand encryption. Your company can use existing email addresses and easily add new users with HushMail’s administrative tools.

Learn more by reading our complete HushMail Review.

5. Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail is primarily meant for business users, but that doesn’t mean regular people can’t use the service. Best of all, the generous free plan gives interested customers the opportunity to try out the service without commitment. And once you’re ready to dive in, prices start at only $1/month.

The cheapest Mail Lite plan allows you to manage multiple email domains, grants offline access, IMAP/POP access, 250 MB attachment size, and much more. The Mail Premium plan goes up to $4/month and increases attachment sizes to 1 GB, allowing you to customize email retention policies, white labeling, and digital signature support.

The Workplace plan is an all-in-one solution for businesses with included online file management, spreadsheets, presentation software, instant messaging, intranet, and other essential tools for collaboration. Lastly, you can get familiar with any plan using the 15-day free trial.

Learn more by reading our complete Zoho Mail review.

6. StartMail

From the creators of the well-known Startpage search engine comes StartMail. The service touts absolute privacy, zero ads, top-notch encryption, and solid security features. Unsurprisingly, all of these benefits come at a starting price of $3/month. Luckily, there’s a 7-day free trial if you need a test run first.

The Personal plan includes 10 GB of storage, unlimited aliases with the Starmail domain, IMAP email program support, and inbox layout customization. The service complies with GDPR and wipes away ads and trackers from emails. Plus, you can enable 2FA for improved security.

As the name suggests, the Custom Domain plan allows you to alter your email address with a preferred domain over StartMail. Naturally, the unlimited aliases feature remains with your custom domain.

Learn more by reading our complete StartMail review.

7. Posteo

Posteo should appeal to eco-focused individuals. The provider touts a sustainable and green-powered service, plus cheap subscription costs. There’s no free plan, but you can customize your subscription to best suit your needs.

The basic plan starts at 1 Euro per month and provides 2 GB of storage, 50 MB attachment size, IMAP support, two aliases, and IP stripping. You can pay extra if you need bonus storage space or aliases. Plus, switching to this provider is made easy using various migration tools.

Posteo uses open-source software to maintain its service. Plus, there are no ads on the website or email client because the provider doesn’t collaborate with advertising agencies. Best of all, the efficient spam and virus filter will keep your inbox clean from unwanted messages.

Learn more by reading our complete Posteo review.

8. Thexyz

Thexyz is an under-the-radar service from Canada with roughly 40K customers across 100 countries. The provider is perfect if you’re looking for an obscure inbox. Naturally, Thexyz doesn’t have a free plan and relies on premium subscriptions to maintain an ad-free and secure user experience.

The Premium Webmail plan starts at $2.95/month and comes packaged with 25 GB of storage, IMAP synchronization support, unlimited aliases, and 50 MB attachments. The second plan adds contact sync and 30 GB of cloud storage to store files. Meanwhile, the most expensive plan includes unlimited email archiving.

New users can sign up using predefined domains or with custom ones. Plus, you can enhance your security using 2FA, while reliable filters will keep spam out of your inbox.

9. CounterMail

CounterMail is a veteran in the secure email provider market. It has been operating since 2008, and the website design clearly illustrates this. However, the old-school exterior shouldn’t dissuade security enthusiasts.

The service doesn’t have a free plan and instead requires 6 months or lengthier subscription commitments. Prices start at $3.29/month and include 4 GB of storage, 3 MB attachment sizes, end-to-end encryption with OpenPGP, IMAP support, and diskless servers. You can also expand your storage space by a maximum of 1.75 GB for a whopping $89. The justification for such prices is full disk encryption.

CounterMail includes Safebox, a password manager protected by one master password. Additionally, the service adds protection against MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks. Lastly, it supports 2FA with a USB drive or authenticator app.

Learn more by reading our complete CounterMail review.

10. Mailfence

Mailfence touts “privacy is a right, not a feature” as its modus operandi. Thankfully, it offers a free plan with OpenPGP encryption, 500 MB for email storage, and another 500 MB for documents.

The Belgian service guarantees an absence of ads and trackers. Plus, it doesn’t cooperate with any third parties, including foreign governments. The Entry plan costs 2.50€/month and increases storage to 5 GB for emails and 12 GB for documents. Additionally, customers gain 10 aliases, POP/IMAP support, and a custom email domain.

The priciest Ultra plan costs 25€/month and allocates 50 GB for emails and 70 GB for files. Lastly, users gain priority customer support via email or telephone.

Learn more by reading our complete Mailfence review.

Most secure email providers compared

Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of some of the best email providers I described earlier. Hopefully, this will make it easier to pick the most suitable provider for your needs.

Try out the best email provider

Do you need a VPN while using a secure email provider?

While my recommended secure email providers are excellent, they’re only one part of a well-rounded cybersecurity stack. Plus, some aren’t perfect and don’t offer complete E2E encryption or IP address protection.

That’s why I urge you to use a secure VPN service to protect your online activities. The most crucial benefit is it protects your entire online traffic, not just email activities. Not only that, you can use it to change your location to access geographically-restricted content from abroad. Additionally, it’s an essential tool for keeping your personal information secure while traveling and using public Wi-Fi.

And just like with email services, picking the correct provider is paramount. I suggest opting for NordVPN, the best overall VPN.

What you should look for in secure emails

When reviewing secure emails, I always have a must-have set of features. Below you will find the attributes that let me decide whether the score will be negative or positive. In the same way, they can be your guiding light when choosing your own safest email provider. In addition to that, you can also look for email verifier tools to ensure that you are not receiving emails from fake email addresses.

• Two-factor authentication. Also known as 2FA, this feat adds an extra layer of protection and is necessary not only for secure emails but also for online banking and other activities. There are plenty of 2FA options, ranging from USBs to authentication apps. However, probably the most common one is a smartphone, known as “something that you have.”
• End-to-end encryption. While this seems to be a core feature of any secure email, some services present themselves as secure without end-to-end encryption. Without it, third parties can potentially read your email while it’s traveling from server to server toward the recipient.
• Removing metadata headers. Most users don’t know that each email contains these headers, containing browser and device info. In some cases, you may find the recipient’s data as well! Therefore, to have true privacy, removing all this is a must.
• The location of servers. Basically, that’s where your secure email provider resides. Many countries have data retention laws, meaning that they will collect your data without any warning. That’s why a provider from Russia or the US will always be suspicious.

Why should you use a secure email?

If you’re reading this article, you probably know the answer. And for those who still haven’t made up their mind, I’ve made this list of some very good reasons to ditch Gmail or Apple Mail.

• Securing your emails. Again, this is quite self-explanatory, but too many people think mainstream providers do their best to keep your messages private. On the contrary, they do what they can to read them and serve personalized ads.
• Hiding all metadata. As mentioned above, this is less informative but still dangerous data to lose to cybercriminals. If they already have something, adding a device and web browser info might just do the trick for them.
• Privacy-friendly storage. Even if nobody has read your Gmail inbox yet, they just might in the near future. Therefore, choosing a secure email that’s located in a country with no data-retention laws and far away from the Five Eyes Alliance should give you less to worry about.
• No data sharing. Data has become more important than ever. Corporations pay huge sums knowing that they’ll end up earning money. So the question is – are you fine with giving it away for free and seeing it used for personalized ads?

Conclusion

It’s really easy to think that all the free services we get on the internet, like email and social media, are completely safe to use. Unfortunately, that is not true, and it’s clear that we’re paying for these services with our personal data. This means that using the most secure email providers that won’t share your data with anyone will cost.

My top choice for secure email is ProtonMail, as it offers the most well-rounded data security and encryption package. However, if you’re looking for a truly effective cybersecurity solution, I recommend combining your secure email together with a VPN. So, grab a premium ProtonMail plan that comes with Proton VPN, or choose NordVPN to avoid consolidation of services.

Do you think paying for a secure email provider is worth it? Share your opinions by leaving a comment!

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FAQ

Which email service is most secure?

ProtonMail is the most secure email provider. The provider is well-regarded as the safest in the industry, due to its failproof end-to-end encryption and open-source software. Additionally, it’s based in Switzerland which is a privacy-respecting country. If you’re interested, you can start with a free plan but upgrading to premium unlocks tons of benefits, including Proton VPN.

Is Gmail a secure email provider?

Gmail provides solid protection against spam, phishing attacks, and other unwanted messages. However, it doesn’t grant end-to-end encryption to prevent third parties from intercepting and reading your communication. Plus, it relies on ad revenue to stay afloat.

Is ProtonMail safer than Gmail?

Yes. First of all, it doesn’t scan your inbox to provide predictive text and other “benefits.” Secondly, ProtonMail has end-to-end encryption and a privacy-friendly location in Switzerland. Lastly, it uses the premium plan to avoid relying on ad revenue.

Why would I encrypt my emails?

Encryption makes your emails unreadable to third parties. The most secure email providers encrypt your messages on the servers they’re stored on and even in transit. Additionally, you can use a virtual private network to mask your place of origin, making it impossible to track your communications entirely.

Which free secure email is the best?

Free or paid, the answer is the same – ProtonMail. The provider is in Switzerland, a country with strict privacy protection, and anybody should think twice before messing with that. Furthermore, it has a great free and premium version, both full of features.

What is the least hacked email provider?

The least hacked email provider is ProtonMail. It’s open-source, based in Switzerland, and provides bank-grade end-to-end encryption. Another safeguard against hacking is the self-destructing email feature. You can try it for free if 150 messages per day are enough for you and you don’t need a lot of storage space.