Dropping G Suite

Google recently announced that they were extending AMP to email, and for me that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ve been gradually reducing the amount of Google services I use over the past few years: DuckDuckGo has mostly replaced Google Search, archive.org and Hathi have mostly replaced books.google.com, and for better or worse I use iOS instead of Android. I still use YouTube and that doesn’t have an obvious competitor, but I can at least choose to move away from my paid G Suite account as there are plenty of alternatives.

First, what do I want from a replacement service? The main thing is obviously email. I’m happy with iCloud calenders, and I don’t often use Google office products or Drive much any more. My list of needs and nice-to-haves came to:

There are a bunch of companies potentially selling this service, so after an hour or so I was able to put together this table. Where companies have multiple products I’ve picked the cheapest that fulfils as many of the criteria as possible.

Comparison of mail providers
Two-factor authentication IMAP access Webmail access Multiple domains EU hosting Renewable power 3Gb storage minimum Price per year
Fastmail ✗ (US and Amsterdam both, can’t choose only as of late 2018) ? 25Gb 400 SEK
Office 365 Business Sort of (Exchange’s webmail is pulling-teeth painful) Maybe, it looks like they can move you around ? 50Gb 1,264 SEK
Apple iCloud Mail ? 5Gb Free
Soverin ✓ (for webmail at least) 25Gb 384 SEK
Runbox ✗, but Norway is good enough 5Gb 294 SEK
Protonmail ✗, but Switzerland is good enough ? 5Gb 600 SEK
Posteo 3Gb 148 SEK
Tutanota 10Gb 236 SEK
Mailbox.org Certainly 1, maybe more? 5Gb 354 SEK
Migadu ✗, but Switzerland is good enough ? Unlimited 384 SEK

So who am I going to go with? I haven’t actually made the move yet, but Runbox is looking interesting as they tick all the boxes. The default suggestion is usually Fastmail but I’d rather have some EU presence and unfortunately they’re an Australian company with servers located in the US. Posteo look good but the lack of multiple domains is problematic. I probably would have been more interested in Soverin and Migadu, but an email account without two-factor authentication in 2018 is unforgivable; putting that aside they look like good services and I hope they add it soon.

Update: Soverin say they have 2fa for webmail.