Tutanota vs Proton Mail vs Cloaked: which is the most secure email provider to keep your digital communications safe?
Whenever you think of sending a professional message to someone or a group of people, one of the first channels that probably comes to mind is "email." For context, Statistica reported that about 9.8 billion emails are sent daily in the US.
In addition to sending messages to peers and colleagues, we also need an email to sign up for certain services on the internet, such as social networking services, surveys, and online shopping services.
Each of these email activities comes with some risks, such as spam or data breaches. To avoid this, we need to use a secure email service.
In this article, we explore three email services—Proton Mail, Tutanota, and Cloaked—to see which of these services is the best one for secure email messaging.
Proton Mail, Tutanota, and Cloaked each have features that support secure email messaging. These features can range from email address creation to email message encryption.
Cloaked is an app that ensures your online data privacy by creating quasi-emails that you can use at any time and anywhere on the internet. These emails cannot be linked back to you, ensuring that you remain anonymous while browsing the web, communicating with a new person via email, or even signing up on websites and social media platforms.
For security, Cloaked is built on a zero-knowledge access architecture and enables end-to-end encryption for each account. Users also have a dedicated inbox in which to access and filter messages.
Of course, Cloaked isn’t only great for sending emails, it’s great for a lot more:
Proton Mail is a Switzerland-based email service app that supports email creation and communication via email. This app is open-source and it offers zero-access encryption and two-factor authentication to users.
Proton Mail also has a tracking protection feature that blocks tracking pixels and hides your IP addresses while you’re browsing the web.
Tutanota, now Tuta, is an open-source email service that offers encrypted emailing as part of its basic features. It also allows users to upgrade from their basic/free tier to a paid tier using crypto such as Monero, Bitcoin, and cash.
For security, Tuta supports end-to-end encrypted messaging that can usually only be decrypted on the receiver’s device (if they use Tuta).
Let’s explore the features of these email services in more detail, highlighting their offerings for email encryption, data security, data policies, ease of use, and many others.
The best email service should have end-to-end email encryption to ensure that emails sent are unreadable to third parties both while in transit and at rest. This feature also ensures that the email can only be decrypted on the recipient’s device.
Cloaked uses a zero-knowledge access architecture, ensuring that only users can access the information they store on their Cloaked account— not even Cloaked can access this information. It also has client-side encryption to ensure that information is encrypted right on the user’s device.
Also, your Cloaked email inbox can only be accessed using your Cloaked master password.
Proton Mail has end-to-end encryption for emails. However, end-to-end encryption is often complicated when the recipient of such mail is not a Proton user, requiring users to use the “password-protected email” feature.
This increases the risk of your emails being compromised, as you would need to send the password to the recipient via other means that may not be encrypted.
Tuta has end-to-end encryption for emails sent through the app as well as emails in the user's mailbox, and it also has two-factor authentication enabled. But, these emails would need to be decrypted with a password that the recipient should already have.
The downside is that if you don’t want to share a password with the recipient, Tuta will only encrypt the mail while it is in transmission.
Security history and current data policies are very important considerations to make when choosing an email service for secure online communication. You want to make sure that whatever email service you use has no track record of a data breach, and when they do, you want to see that the company navigated the breach excellently and improved its overall security architecture to prevent the recurrence of a breach in the future.
The best email service ensures that users’ data remains private, they have policies that ensure proper handling of user data, from ensuring that users' conversations aren’t tracked to ensuring that user data isn’t being used for profit.
Cloaked has never been involved in any security breaches, thanks to powerful security features. Plus, if there ever was a data breach, Cloak supports client-side encryption and user-unique databases and is built on a zero-knowledge access architecture, which means that no one can access your data except you.
Also, Cloaked’s policy on data handling and transfer ensures that your private information remains private to all third parties.
Recently, a vulnerability was discovered in the Proton Mail web app by Sonar Source, and it was found that this vulnerability could allow bad actors to write malicious codes that would leak user emails.
Tutanota hasn’t been hacked, but it faces external pressure from third parties who want to gain access to emails users send and receive via the app.
You want an email service that ensures that your emails remain private and inaccessible to third parties while in your inbox or being transmitted.
Cloaked has end-to-end encryption for emails sent through the app and this encryption is done right from your device. The same encryption is also done for other information that you store on the Cloaked app, such as the contact numbers of friends.
Your Cloaked email cannot be linked to you, providing an extra layer of protection. Cloaked is also built on a zero-knowledge access architecture, so no one can access anything you store on Cloaked–except for you.
Emails sent via Proton Mail to another Proton Mail user are encrypted end-to-end, but to send an email to a third party, you would use the password-protected email feature, which requires you to send a password to the recipient, which they would then use to access the email.
Tutanota uses AES 128-grade encryption to encrypt user mailboxes, calendars, and contact lists. There’s also 2FA authentication and a feature for phishing protection.
An email service that is easy to use and has a great interface not only improves the user experience on the app but also ensures that users can get the most service for their financial commitment, no matter how little.
Cloaked has an easy-to-use interactive interface that is easy to navigate. Users can easily find their email inbox, filter messages, and send emails to others securely, including those who do not use a cloaked account.
Cloaked also has other amazing privacy features, such as a password manager, one-time passcodes, password autofill, and secure file storage, which increases users' overall data security online.
According to user reviews, Proton Mail is easy to use. However, users need to pay for the premium version to access enough storage and mail speed.
Tutanota uses AES 128-grade encryption to encrypt user mailboxes, calendars, and contact lists. There’s also 2FA authentication and a feature for phishing protection.
An email service that is easy to use and has a great interface not only improves the user experience on the app but also ensures that users can get the most service for their financial commitment, no matter how little.
Cloaked has an easy-to-use interactive interface that is easy to navigate. Users can easily find their email inbox, filter messages, and send emails to others securely, including those who do not use a cloaked account.
Cloaked also has other amazing privacy features, such as a password manager, one-time passcodes, password autofill, and secure file storage, which increases users' overall data security online.
According to user reviews, Proton Mail is easy to use. However, users need to pay for the premium version to access enough storage and mail speed.
Tuta is described as easy to use by users, and it has other features like a contact book and calendar in addition to its mailbox.
Integrations with other apps and software enable users to get more out of their email service providers.
Cloaked doesn’t have integrations with third-party apps to limit its data breach exposure. However, it has all the features needed for email security, from a dedicated mailbox to a one-time passcode generator.
Proton Mail currently integrates with Rambox, Microsoft Outlook, Shopify, Authy, Proton Drive, and Canary Mail, among others.
Like Proton Mail, Tuta integrates with Rambox, Shift, Morgen, and Stack Reaction.
In addition to having end-to-end encryption, some email services have additional privacy features that ensure that they provide users with the highest level of security possible. These features range from zero-knowledge access to client-side encryption.
Cloaked has secure password management features for generating and storing passwords. It also has a digital identity feature for generating unique phone numbers, email addresses, and usernames for your online accounts. It also allows you to share sensitive account information via encrypted, password-protected links.
Explore all of Cloaked’s unique features.
Proton Mail provides users with access to a VPN and password manager–but for an additional fee.
Tuta is built on a zero-knowledge architecture, and it also allows users to sign into their Tutanota email accounts using biometrics.
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Ease of accessing customer service is key when using an email provider like Cloaked, Proton Mail, or Tutanota.
Cloaked has an email dedicated to providing support to its users and a responsive support team that provides timely responses to queries sent via email. For users who need a quick fix, there's an extensive list of frequently asked questions and answers on the app’s website.
Proton Mail has a list of popular queries on its website to guide users through finding a solution to any problems they may have. But it doesn't have a customer service number that users can call.
Like Proton Mail, Tuta users can get customer service support by filling out a form on the Tuta website. However, there are no phone numbers to call for a more personalized service.
Here are some questions about Proton Mail and Tutanota:
If we had to consider only Proton Mail and Tutanota, Proton Mail has more security features and a better UI. However, Cloaked has improved security features such as zero-knowledge access, a user-unique database, and client-side encryption.
Proton Mail has a limit on the number of emails you can send in a day, and users only get 500MB of cloud storage.
Sure, you can trust Tutanota. However, if you’re looking for an app with solid data security features for emailing–and beyond–then you need to seriously consider Cloaked. Cloaked has robust security features from military-grade encryption to user-unique databases to ensure that users’ information is safe from illegal/unauthorized access while on their phone or when it is being transmitted.
Learn more about Cloaked’s security stack.
Cloaked! With three different layers of encryption (client-side encryption, zero-knowledge access, and user-unique databases), two-factor authentication, user-held security keys, and user passwords, Cloaked is more secure than Proton Mail.
Tutanota makes no claim of anonymity.
Proton Mail, Tutanota, and Cloaked all enable secure sending and receiving of emails, but if you want an email service that does more than just send and receive emails securely, then you should try Cloaked.
Cloaked is more than just an email service. It’s also a full-stack password manager, gives you access to create unlimited quasi-phone numbers and email addresses, enables encrypted storage of other digital data, and more.
Keep your personal inbox free and clear of spam and never worry about giving out your personal info again.