Email is never private, even with encrypted email, headers give away metadata. HOWEVER, Tuta & Proton are not scanning your emails to market shit to you and train AI. That's the main advantage.

Mail transport these days is usually encrypted over the wire, but once it lands at the receiving server (i.e. gmail) it is stored in the clear, or at least in a way that the host can read it.

I have private email for two reasons: using my own domain, and to promote it in general. Sure, everyone else is on Google/MS right now, but as they continue to enshittify things, maybe more people will want to move away from that. And the more people do that now, the faster/easier it will be for others.

GPG and mailbox.org or anothet "just" email service

I wouldn't say you have gained nothing. The amount of data provided to google or microsoft when using their email is significantly more. For example, your app or client is checking email all of the time, giving them telemetry on your location and activity, all your devices, 24/7. Google logs and analyzes all of your interactions with Gmail's web pages, how long you have certain emails open for, what you don't bother to open, what you tag as important, etc.

Much of the one-way email you sign up for from companies and organizations come from smaller outfits like sendgrid or their own infrastructure, so you are cutting google out of information about your associations and interests.

Also, in regards to that 90%, you can either be part of the problem for all your contacts, or part of the solution. The network effect is huge.

IMAP + GPG

Proton does offer what is essentially a self-contained PGP portal. You send anyone an email and they get a "hey, this is me, open the message below" thing and then a link to a message that's hosted on Proton servers. So your Granny doesn't need to set up a public/private key pair, you can just send the encrypted portal option.

No idea of Tuta or others do this.

Plus, no matter who you chose, you personally aren't feeding the Google algo. You can do what I do, which is you leave all the hyper data hungry services in the data eating world, just feeding on each other alone. Then you have real conversations over email or fediverse.

Note that ProtonMail actually supports automatic encryption to email accounts that publish their public keys in a Web Key Directory, which I’ve set up for mine. When you type such an email address in the To field, it’ll turn into a special color with a lock symbol.

Likewise, ProtonMail also exposed a WKD so people can send encrypted emails to ProtonMail accounts. I don’t know of any mail clients that support this though (I used the command line to pull keys)

Tuta lets you encrypt a message for the sender only, with a passphrase.
They'll have to follow a link but still...

I think Proton mail is worth it just to diversify off Google but I don't lend much faith in how effective privacy will be with email. The free service is enough for that. If I wanted more faith in encrypted communications, encrypted chat applications. I sub to proton for drive and VPN. ProtonPass has all the email aliases for throwaway websites

I pay the amount of maybe 10 $ a year for having my own domain hosted at a mail-hotel, and that means I control my own e-mail. I think it's worth it. There more who switch, the better.

the thing with proton is you don't really know that they're private and they pretty much always collaborate with the police and their android vpn app collects some data that it doesn't need to. I would suggest you:

1. don't use email, that's the ideal solution
2. use a provider like cock.li and send messages encrypted with pgp. this isn't ideal, pgp leaks a lot of data and cock.li gets sinkholed by most email providers.
3. use proton and encrypt emails with pgp, you have not much privacy but it's less worse than microsoft and not much convenience loss, except that proton doesn't allow email clients(at least if you don't pay), I don't know about ms).

Assuming that you trust what Proton says, when they receive a (possibly unencrypted) message they re-encrypt it with your key as soon as possible and they don’t log the content. So, after that point, they (or anyone else) can’t read the email contents. If it was also encrypted in transit, then there’s only a small window inside their email processing system where the plaintext was passed from one encryption to the other. It’s only decrypted again in your browser or proton mail app with the key that only you have. It’s not bulletproof, but it’s better than most providers.

Makes me feel like I'm doing the best I reasonably can, even if it's of limited effect. Also, built-in aliasing service.

There is an advantage of using a provider that suports MTA STS. This is Strict Transport Security and forces at least transport encryption.

There is an advantage to use a provider you pay for too and at least claims not to read your email.

It is also nice if they can host your domain and have good delivery.

Edit: I meant MTA STS not SMTP STS.