Leaving Proton Mail: Tuta or Infomaniak, which to choose?

Two European services stand out for subscribers who want to leave Proton Mail without leaving Europe: Germany's Tuta and Switzerland's Infomaniak. The search follows a 404 Media investigation published on 29 October, which describes how Proton CEO Andy Yen pushes teams to code with AI, even if that shortens security testing. Proton's chief technology officer says 90% of the code written at the company in October came from AI.

Tuta: strong privacy, narrow scope

Tuta, formerly Tutanota, is an open-source German service that claims more than 10 million accounts. It encrypts end to end the body, subject line, attachments, contacts and calendar. Since 2024 it has also used its own protocol, TutaCrypt, designed to withstand quantum computers.

The trade-offs are real. Tuta does not support IMAP or POP, so you need its own apps or a Thunderbird extension. It offers only mail and calendar, with no VPN or password manager, and its Tuta Drive storage is still in closed beta. The company has about thirty employees and falls under German and European law.

The free plan gives 1 GB and one address. Revolutionary costs 36 euros a year for 20 GB, 15 aliases and up to three custom domains. Legend costs 96 euros a year for 500 GB. Proton Mail Plus costs 4.99 euros a month for 15 GB.

Infomaniak: a fuller suite, weaker privacy

Infomaniak, a Swiss host founded in 1994, has over 200 staff and runs three data centres in Switzerland. Mail is part of kSuite, with kDrive storage, a calendar, kMeet video calls and OnlyOffice. It works over IMAP with Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail.

On privacy it trails Proton. OpenPGP encryption must be enabled manually for each message, and private keys stay on Infomaniak's servers. Metadata is not protected, and the company has said it would comply with a revision of Swiss law requiring it to share such data with authorities. It also built in its own Swiss-hosted AI assistant, Euria. The free plan offers 20 GB of mail and 15 GB on kDrive; My kSuite+ costs 19 euros a year.

How to move

Use Proton's command-line Mail Export Tool to save messages as EML files, then import them into Tuta's desktop app, or into Infomaniak through an IMAP client such as Thunderbird. Export contacts as vCard. Custom domains need a DNS change and a paid plan. Paying Proton users can keep the account for a month or two with automatic forwarding. Mailbox.org and Mailfence are other European options.