In this piece, we will outline the differences between 

 - two end-to-end encrypted, privacy-first email providers. At the most basic level, both email providers focus on privacy above all, including end-to-end encrypting all email content. However, if you are investigating private email providers, considering leaving your existing email provider, or 

 (Gmail or Outlook) to an email service which provides end-to-end encryption, this piece is critical for you to read.

 was founded in Hanover, Germany in 2011 with the express goal of fighting against surveillance and for email privacy. Since then, Tutanota has expanded beyond email and delivered a privacy-first email and calendar combination.

 was founded in 2020 in New York City. Skiff’s goal is to bring privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted communication and collaboration to world by delivering best in class security with usability and intuitive user experiences.

 as their main form of email encryption and security. End-to-end encryption is a method of communication where only the communicating parties can read the messages. This is done by each party encrypting their messages using recipients’ public keys before sending them, and wherein the other party decrypts users’ messages. This means that even if a malicious actor were to intercept the messages in transit, or recover encrypted data from the email provider, the hacker or malicious actor would not be able to read them.

For more detail on how Tutanota and Skiff use end-to-end encryption and public key cryptography, check out 

. Generally, both products use similar encryption schemes wherein each user has encryption and signing keypairs for sending secure messages to other users, as well as for communicating externally.

Skiff Mail and Tutanota share many similarities in terms of this security functionality, but there are also key differences that could make the difference in helping you choose your next email account, particularly depending on your use cases and preferences. Let’s go through some of the key features of each email service.

In recent years, Tutanota has run into legal troubles as German courts have ordered a "

" to be installed for monitoring certain users. This has raised significant privacy concerns for users, as it is now unclear whether the provider yields significant privacy benefits. Skiff has had no such concerns.

Both providers store all emails with zero access encryption, meaning that all data is encrypted with user public keys and cannot be accessed.

Both Skiff Mail and Tutanota offer a free email tier to their users, and both service providers also offer paid plans for their respective secure email services. Tutanota has a Personal private and teams plan as well as a several business email plans. Skiff on the other hand offers 

Free tiers are particularly helpful for email services as new users can test different features, from email signatures and auto replies to folders and undo send, 

. So, you can always experiment by creating accounts on both platforms and seeing which workflows and products best suit your needs.

Skiff Mail is dedicated to being as transparent as possible to its users and thus have made the Skiff Mail client code open-source, encryption protocols open source, and most of the company’s user interface and design components open source as well.

. There email does not use any closed third party sources and are available on Android using F-Droid.

Both Skiff Mail and Tutanota are also Google Free meaning they use no external service belonging to Google, including Google’s Captcha products. This ensures your personal information is never shared with, sold to, or monetized by big tech.

Skiff Mail offers free users 10GB of storage, Essential users 15GB, Pro users 200GB of storage, and Business users 1 TB. This additional storage is a great benefit for users who use their email messages as a way to store their personal data and use email for file sharing and archiving.

Tutanota offers its free and premium users 1GB of storage. Team users on Tutanota receive 10GB of storage. As a result, Skiff’s more generous free plan may help you leverage additional products and features, such as drive storage, real-time collaboration, personal notes, or other professional use cases.

Both Skiff Mail and Tutanota make use of cloud-based storage; however, Skiff Mail also lets users use the 

 (IPFS) to store their emails. IPFS is one of the best alternatives to centralized cloud-based server storage, as it makes use of a decentralized network of nodes and storage providers to store files across the internet.

Skiff Mail currently does not support IMAP or SMTP support but offers its own email clients for users across multiple devices (see section below). Tutanota also does not support IMAP or SMTP support, instead opting to use their own mobile apps for security and protection.

 as well as a macOS desktop app. Skiff Mail is also available on all web browsers. Skiff recently released an open-source 

 as well, enabling access on all Windows machines.

 on Android and iOS as well as apps for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Tutanota is also available on all browsers.

Multiple device support is important for any new email account; in particular, mobile or desktop devices allow users to receive email notifications, which may be especially important for professional email users who are expected to respond in a certain time window.

. To read more about Skiff’s encryption check out Skiff’s 

 here. To read more about Tutanota’s email encryption see their website 

PGP has largely fallen out of mainstream use and adoption; furthermore, it has some larger 

 that have pushed most secure emails to employe methods that are simpler and more reliable.

Skiff provides 1 free custom domain, and Tutanota requires payment

A custom email domain is an email address that includes your company or organization's name, rather than a generic provider such as Gmail or Yahoo (such as @yourname.com). This can make you appear more professional and credible to customers and clients. It can also make it easier for people to remember your email address. Adding a custom domain generally involves modifying DNS records; once complete, you will be able to use your custom email domain for all of your email accounts.

For business users or professional email accounts, custom domains can be a valuable way to own your own email identity.

Skiff's generous free tier makes it a much better fit if you are looking to bring a custom domain to your email.

Skiff Mail supports email security features such as two factor authentication, end-to-end encryption, priority customer support, client-side search, and spam and phishing detection software. Skiff also proxies remote content, such as all images, which could be used to track users and invade privacy.

Tutanota supports two factor authentication as well. Both services offer end-to-end encrypted calendars for managing your schedule.

Both services also support hardware keys (like Yubikeys) for 2FA.

Skiff Mail supports mail features such as schedule send, 

, and even auto-reply. Skiff Mail also has mobile and desktop notifications as well as folder, label, and archive support for all users. Skiff also has a robust array of keyboard shortcuts that will be quite familiar to Gmail and Microsoft Outlook users.

Tutanota supports custom signatures, auto-reply, mobile and desktop notifications, as well as folder and archive support. As a result, both email products maintain somewhat similar consumer functionality for organizing and managing your inbox, navigating through mail applications, and more.

Email aliases are email addresses that are associated with a single user's account, but are displayed to recipients as if they were coming from a different email address. This can be useful for a variety of reasons, such as creating a more professional-looking email address, or consolidating multiple email accounts into a single inbox. They can also be critical for preserving privacy or anonymity, as a recipient will not know which root email address was used to send email from an alias. For more on email aliases and privacy benefits, check out our blog on 

Skiff Mail currently lets users have 4 addresses per free account as well as access to the 

 email aliasing service. Tutanota currently lets free users have 1 alias and 5 aliases for every Pro account.

If you’re looking for a great free email service that lets you maintain multiple aliases, you may want to try adding multiple to your Skiff account. Otherwise, if you’re set on a particular alias or custom domain, Tutanota’s alias limits should not impede your ability to use the service.

Both Skiff Mail and Tutanota work with VPNs (

), so whether you are using a desktop browser, using your inbox inside an Android app, or composing emails on an iPhone, you will be able to access all your emails with a private network connection. By routing your internet traffic through a VPN server, your IP address and other personal information is hidden from view. This can help to keep your online activity private, and can also help to avoid online censorship.

this blog on securely navigating web services

 and communicating online, we outline more good practices for using VPNs, particularly when accessing sensitive accounts (bank accounts, medical providers, insurance information, or any corporate work). Regardless of the email provider you choose, we recommend also setting up a VPN to keep your IP address and other personal information private.

Skiff offers a much more robust free plan, a powerful email aliasing service, and more cross-platform apps. 

On Skiff, all emails - including those arriving from other providers - are encrypted with a user's public key immediately upon receipt, ensuring that only a user has access to their emails. 

Skiff also provides far more value on the free plan, from more email aliases and custom domains to entire products for note-taking and file storage.

As a result, we recommend you try out Skiff.

Sign up for Skiff

To sign up for Skiff, you can visit the signup page at 

Skiff's paid plans, including Essential, Pro, and Business tiers, have many additional features across the Drive, Calendar, and Pages products than Tutanota offers today. Beyond 1 TB of storage and the ability to purchase domains in-app (Skiff Domains), Skiff is well suited to teams and business use, such as sharing a custom domain across multiple users, sharing docs/drive files, and creating public wikis. 

For the full feature set, check out the table below.

 user gets full access to the following products:

 (private domains integrated with Skiff Mail)

Skiff Mail also has accompanying encrypted cloud-based file storage (

) and encrypted document collaboration on its platform (

). This means you can use your Skiff Mail account not only as your email service provider, but also as a full workspace productivity suite. This includes everything from real time document collaboration, to end-to-end encrypted backup storage for all your important personal or professional information.

Tutanota offers an encrypted calendar and contacts app which pairs nicely with its main encrypted email application. These capabilities are 

, which provides useful resources and notifications to keep you up to date on your events and schedule. So, when selecting a provider, consider the additional accounts that are integrated into their offerings.

Other Skiff Mail and Tutanota alternatives include ProtonMail (based out of Switzerland), Mailfence (OpenPGP email service based out of Belgium), and Posteo (based out of Germany.) Others also include Apple Mail, Fastmail, Virtru, and Mailbox.org, which are discussed and compared in additional blog posts.

 for more information on privacy-first email, the benefits of encrypted email, and 

Comparing Tutanota and Skiff Mail

AI training on the public web is nothing new. It’s safe to assume that your old Tweets, YouTube videos, WordPress posts, and LinkedIn profile have made their way into massive, for-profit datasets.

What is new is training AI models on proprietary content or private data - your calls, video chats, documents, notes, and emails. You’d be surprised to learn that this is becoming even more common across consumer products, even with companies as big as Google and Zoom.

This blog is an updated list of consumer products that do use your data to train AI models. ​Have more to share? Open a pull request 

: In March 2023, Zoom updated its terms of service to allow the company to use user data to train AI models. The update has sparked intense media coverage and controversy, as it gave Zoom broad control over user data without clear consent requirements. Zoom later backtracked on the update, saying that it would not use user data to train AI models without consent. Read more in 

: In January 2023, Google updated its privacy policy to state that it may use user data to train AI models. The update was met with criticism from privacy advocates, who argued that Google was not being transparent about its data collection practices. Google has since clarified that it will only use user data to train AI models that are necessary for its core products and services. Read more in 

: Facebook has an established history of using public data - including photos on Instagram and videos on Facebook - to train AI models. Read more in 

: Apple has generally toed a line between training ML models and indiscriminately harnessing user data. Recently, Spotify stopped allowing Apple to train on podcast data (read more in 

: Although Getty Images does not train AI models of their own (that we know of), they filed a lawsuit against Stability AI alleging that over 10 million photos were illegally used in AI training. Read more in 

: Unsurprisingly, user interactions with ChatGPT are used to improve the chatbot’s service. However, in a prior version of OpenAI’s API terms of service, the company could use developer-provided API requests as training data as well. OpenAI later changed this policy, as developers objected to their API calls being used as training data by OpenAI. Read more in 

: At the very least, Snapchat is known to use conversations with “My AI” - it’s AI chatbot - to train its AI models. Read more 

. Snapchat also allegedly uses data from 

 to train models capable of recognizing user content.

If you have any questions or suggested additions to the list, please contact us at the email address above, or open a pull request against the 

. To have a longer conversation about privacy, join our 

 communities. If you're looking to request a feature or update for Skiff, visit our 

A list of services training AI on your data

Skiff Mail is now a recommended email provider on PrivacyGuides’ privacy-first email services. This milestone comes after months of major product updates, including the ability to add hardware security keys, new mobile apps, open-source updates, and positive reviews throughout the media and other product guides.

Skiff Mail is now widely recommended by privacy and security advocates. This includes recommendations on:

, where Skiff received the Editor’s Choice award

PrivacyGuides.org is a non-profit, free-to-use website that provides information for protecting your personal security and privacy across all areas of technology.

The website offers a variety of resources, including:

 These provide detailed instructions on how to protect your privacy with specific online services, such as email, browsers, and VPNs.

 These list the best privacy-focused tools and services for different categories, such as email, browsers, and VPNs (this list now includes Skiff!).

 This forum allows users to discuss privacy-related topics and share tips and tricks.

PrivacyGuides.org is a valuable resource for anyone who wants to learn more about online privacy and how to protect personal data and privacy.

At Skiff, privacy is the basis of everything we do. From blocking email trackers and supporting Yubikeys, to end-to-end encryption of all sensitive information, Skiff is built to protect your privacy.

To learn more about how our products work, consider exploring:

, which includes detailed diagrams and a comprehensive breakdown of how we integrate end-to-end encryption into all Skiff products.

Our comprehensive and annotated privacy policy

 elucidates how Skiff safeguards your data as a product and a company (you can register, upgrade, and utilize Skiff without divulging any personal details, and Skiff does not even collect IP logs of user activity!).

, including Skiff Mail, our user interface library, and our cryptography library.

Support from the privacy and security communities helps amplify our message to like-minded users and make Skiff products even better. Over the coming months, we’ll have numerous more updates to the Skiff product suite, and we’re excited to see even more enthusiasm from our communities. See below for more information on being involved with Skiff’s online communities and guiding our development process.

If you want to be more involved in the Skiff community, check us out on 

Skiff is on PrivacyGuides

Custom domains empower you to own your identity online. In addition to having a more personalized email address or sharing your domain with colleagues or family members, custom domains align deeply with our vision to empower more private, free communication.

Adding a free custom domain is a game changer.

Sign up for a free custom domain

In this section, we’ll guide you through the steps to set up your custom domain in Skiff Mail.

Click settings, then select “Custom domains” (or, visit 

https://app.skiff.com/mail?settingTab=custom+domains

Now, you can choose between transferring an existing domain you own, or purchasing a new domain

If you are transferring a domain, click “configure domain” and enter your domain details.

Configure your DNS settings to route emails to and from Skiff Mail.

Confirm that your custom domain is active and ready to use.

Navigate to the aliases tab to add more aliases! Or, see the section below.

Having multiple aliases is a game changer for your privacy online.

To add aliases, go to “Settings” and select “Aliases” (or, visit 

https://app.skiff.com/mail?settingTab=aliases

Select your new custom domain from the custom domain dropdown in the top right (your domain must be verified).

Add a new alias and specify the email address you’d like to use.

Using a custom domain helps you own your identity online. On Skiff Mail, custom domains and aliases can also help organize your inbox and protect your identity.

All incoming mail is automatically end-to-end encrypted - including email subject, content, and headers - meaning only you can access your data.

Emails are sorted into alias inboxes, helping you manage different accounts and email addresses.

You can add unlimited aliases on your custom domain!

On Skiff Mail, you can also share your domain with more users, making sure you and your team all benefit from privacy-first collaboration and communication:

To share another team member, visit the “Organization” settings page 

https://app.skiff.com/mail?settingTab=organization

Click “Add members” and provision or share a new organization member

You can then add a custom domain alias for any provisioned member

Or, for any existing member, click on their user profile from the Organization settings page and manually add an additional alias

Sometimes, one custom domain isn’t enough. On Skiff’s paid plans, you can add up to 15 custom domains and unlimited aliases to every domain!

Go to “Settings and select “Plans.”

Upgrade to your desired plan, or see our 

Start adding more custom domains, more users, and more aliases!

Have questions or need further assistance? Contact Skiff at support@skiff.org, or in our online 

Custom domains, now free

Today, we're announcing an all new Skiff Mail mobile app. With an order of magnitude better performance, an entirely new user interface, and full offline support, the new mobile apps make it easier than ever to stay in touch on the go.

In this blog, we will walk through all changes to the Skiff Mail mobile apps and how to upgrade. We’ll cover how you can navigate the new interface, how to set up Skiff Mail on your phone, and how offline mode works. We’ll also offer a few previews on upcoming features soon to be released.

Downloading or updating the app is incredibly easy. Follow 

 to download or update the Android app on the Google Play Store, or open 

 to download or update your app on the Apple App Store. Once you download or update the app, you can either create a new Skiff account or sign in with any existing account. If you are already signed in, you may need to log out and log in to complete the update process.

To download the other Skiff apps, including Pages, Drive, Calendar, and the macOS desktop app, visit 

The new Skiff Mail, mobile apps are between five and 20 times faster to open, navigate through your inbox, and read emails. This massive performance improvement was achieved with an entire technical rebuild of the mobile app. Now, your local device efficiently caches information about your inbox, enabling you much more efficiently, read and manage your emails.

The new app supports a powerful and fully functional offline mode. For skiff users, who may not always have an Internet connection, have lower Internet speeds, or are simply trying to minimize data usage, offline mode is a critical feature, and is now available to everyone.

You can even keep using the app offline, including reading, emails, replying, labels, or sending messages to different folders. All the updates you make, while offline will later be synced to your web inbox.

We still have a lot more progress to make on the new mobile apps. This includes supporting multiple accounts, a highly requested feature, and even more performance improvements. Please keep in touch with us if you have any questions or feature requests; our team is available on 

Yes. Any account can access and use the new Skiff Mail mobile app

How can you download the new Mail mobile app?

You can download the new Skiff Mail mobile app for iOS and android by visiting 

We will be adding APK downloads to our website soon, you can contact support@skiff.org for an APK file to download.

New Skiff Mail mobile apps launch

 in May 2022, hundreds of thousands of new users have tried our privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted email product. As users start the journey to private email, we've heard countless requests for better features to manage, organize, and sort your incoming emails.

We're excited to announce that mail filters - one of the most powerful ways of staying organized - are released. Filters enable you to automatically keep your inbox, sorted, organized by labels or folders, and tidy from spam or unwanted messages. Whether you've been experiencing annoying, inbound, spam, or frequent repeated messages from a single sender, set up a Mail filter to never be bothered again or to keep track of your most important communications.

To start, navigate to the Skiff Mail app on a desktop web browser, or on the desktop app. You can view your Mail filters from the Skiff Mail, mobile apps, but only create them on the web. Next, open settings from the left sidebar. Then, choose the filters option on the left.

To start, click the “Create new filter” button.

You'll then be able to give your mail filter a name, like “move emails to spam,” "recruiting, emails,” or “sort, custom domain email.”

You can then add filter conditions. Click add condition and choose from a “from” address condition or a “to” address condition, with more coming soon.

Then, choose a set of actions for your mail filter. This includes applying a label, moving mail into a folder, marking it, as read, or unread, or marking it as spam, inbox, or trash.

Mail filters are a powerful feature that are available on every skiff plan, including the free tier. However, the free tier is limited to only two mail filters.

On the Essential, Pro, and Business tiers, you can access 

. Each paid plan also offers numerous additional features, including extra email, aliases, more folders and labels, custom domains, and additional storage space.

Check out our video tutorial on how to create filters 

Are mail filters available on the free plan?

Yes! Every Skiff user can use mail filters for free. However, on the free plan, you will be limited to two mail filters scroll up to see the different plans that are available, including the business plan, which offers how many deadmau5 filtering for any of your aliases, folders, and labels.

Yes. Any Skiff Mail mobile app user can navigate to settings and view mail filters. However, the mobile filter settings are currently limited to view only; you are required to navigate to the desktop or web app to set up new email filters.

What kind of actions can you perform in mail filters?

Mail filters are a powerful tool for keeping your inbox organized. You can easily use mail filters to mark mail as read, apply labels, move, mail to folders, or move them into your spam, trash, or archive inboxes.

Mail filters released

 in The Wall Street Journal: “Encryption Bans… What Is This, Russia?”

With Skiff blocked by Russia, we have been even more dedicated to our mission to make collaboration and communication more private and free. However, with this goal, we are alarmed by the amount of legislation and proposals to limit encryption in the U.S., E.U., Australia, and U.K.

In our article, we explore recent pushes to limit encryption in these countries, and how they threaten basic democratic values. Limiting or rejecting end-to-end encryption restricts basic freedoms and rights that we expect in democratic states that defend individual rights to freedom of speech, writing, and expression.

Read more in the link here, and join our communities on 

Skiff in the WSJ on encryption

Migrating mail from Gmail or Google Workspace to Skiff can be done with only one click. From your Skiff Mail 

, click “Import mail.” You’ll be presented with multiple options, including:

Direct import from Gmail/Google Workspace

For the simplest option, we recommend choosing the Gmail/Google Workspace sign in option to sign in to your Google account and automatically import mail into your Skiff inbox. This will also continuously sync future mail, so any new emails received in your Google Workspace account will be imported into Skiff.

Mbox and EML file imports may be useful if you are either permanently closing your Google account, or if you are only looking to import a few emails. 

 - Google’s automated service for exporting data - produces Mbox files containing large numbers of emails. EML files are created when you download a single email from Gmail. So, if you are using Google Takeout or importing a few emails, the file import options could make sense.

Migrating your domain to Skiff Mail can be done in minutes. Once you’re on a Skiff Pro or Skiff Business 

, you will have access to custom domains in your Skiff Mail account. Visit the custom domains 

 and click “Transfer domain.” Then, after entering your domain name, you’ll be provided with DNS records to add to your domain (MX record, TXT records, and CNAME records). Once these records are added, your domain will be verified, and you can use it to send and receive email on Skiff.

Paid plans allow you to transfer multiple domains that can be shared with your team members. All workspace members will have access to a separate Skiff Mail inbox that can be provisioned with custom domain aliases, such as sales@domain.com, or marketing@skiff.com.

If you want to set up your Skiff Workspace with a new domain, you can purchase a domain through 

, which will automatically provision all needed DNS records. You can also set up the needed DNS records on your new domain from any other registrar (GoDaddy, Google Domains, Namecheap, etc.) after buying a new domain name.

Skiff is built for working together with your team, family, or company. To invite other users to your workspace, follow the instructions below:

Type in the email address to send invites for your colleagues to join

Once they receive an invite, your colleagues will have to create an account inside your workspace

You can add a custom domain from the custom domain settings 

Admins can configure custom domains for other users from the settings page here: https://app.skiff.com/dashboard?settingTab=organization

Migrating from Google Drive and Google Docs

Migrating your data from Google Docs or Google Drive can also be done very easily. From the Skiff Drive or Skiff Pages settings page, click import, or visit 

. You’ll be presented with three options:

File import and folder import are best used if you want to upload files locally stored on your computer or mobile device.

If you choose the Google import option, you can sign into your Google account and select the files, folders, or docs that you want to import into Skiff. From there, Skiff will end-to-end encrypt your data and import it into Skiff Pages and Drive.

Migrating from Google Calendar to Skiff Calendar

Currently, migrating to Skiff Calendar requires uploading an ICS file containing your calendar events. To export an ICS file from Google Calendar, follow these steps:

Click the gear icon inside Google Calendar, then click “Settings”

Navigate to the “Import & Export” tab on the left

Within seconds, a ZIP file will be downloaded with separate ICS files for each calendar

Now, any of these ICS files can be imported into Skiff Calendar. Follow these steps:

Click import, and select an ICS file from any exported calendar

That’s it! Your calendar will be uploaded into Skiff, bringing you one step closer to privacy.

Can you collaborate in real-time on Skiff Pages?

Skiff Team