If you're interested in an open source, (including the server) self hostable, E2EE and federated/p2p storage, sharing and app protocol (including calendar, docs etc) who doesn't have VC investors, check out Peergos:
We treat the server as an adversary. So everything is chunked an encrypted so the server can't see file data, filenames, file sizes, whether something is a file or dir, who has access to a file, who your friend are etc. Everything is signed so servers can't tamper with your data either.
We also use a p2p and self-authenticated protocol so it is easy to migrate servers whilst keeping your identity, friends and data.
I can highly recommend this system. Have been using it for years now, since it was alpha - for sensitive data and for any other data, instead of things like Dropbox or G-drive. Convenient, easy, safe. Thanks!
Why would Notion shut down the email provider product? I understand sunsetting drive and rolling pages and calendar into Notion and Cron, respectively. But it would be pretty awesome if Notion had an email service. There’s nothing out there that’s as easy as Google Workspace (not even Proton’s suite—I use it personally) and I’d use Notion-plus-Skiff-and-Cron over Google Workspace any day. Huge miss…
For the same reason that Skiff is being acquihired: it has simply proven to not be a viable business.
The reason Notion acquires and kills this product is not because it is in any way an interesting product or company to them but because it has investors that need bailing out that are also Notion investors. Notion gets some nice people in their team and some of them might even stay.
This is a very common practice in silicon valley. VC funded companies fail all the time. Instead of letting them go bankrupt, investors and founders swap shares and walk away with an "exit" in their pocket. Everybody wins.
I know how shitty exits work, trust me. I don’t know why Notion wouldn’t want to tack on email to their product suite. email may not work in isolation in exactly the way Skiff was doing it, but it’s not expensive to operate and it does work as a part of suite of business productivity tooling.
The only thing I can come up with is that the tech doesn't drop in as is because of the encryption so if they have to rebuild it under Notion’s brand do a clean cut and reboot targeting Notion’s market.
Candidly, the ability to profit off of email as a service is probably not a challenge that many businesses are up to. Deliverability is a massive pain in the ass. Unless you have the team and are well established, starting up or re-badging a mail service would be a nightmare.
This really appears to be lost on HN and I have no idea why. It’s such a weird blindspot. I only see it said it displayed as extreme cynicism toward Google and Microsoft by people trying to run their own personal mail server, who after some polite prodding almost never seem to be doing bare minimum ‘best practices’ for getting their mail delivered.
Running mail isn't hard if you know a few bits about how things work. As a matter of fact, if correctly set, it can be left running for years without significant time investment. But I'm getting the impression that anything that can't be set in 2 clicks is hard for a particular HN crowd.
My guess is that this is still acquiring the email tech, but Notion has no interest in end-to-end encryption. They don't care for the customer base, since those are all with Skiff (partially) for the E2EE stuff.
I'd bet they'll either unravel the E2EE from Skiff's software to relaunch it under their brad, or use their newly acquired expertise to build a Notion Email service from the ground up.
> With the Notion acquisition, what happens to my Skiff accounts?
And then 5 paragraphs with corporate blabber, a 6th with the important instructions (or a link to it; telling you it's not that bad to loose your account) and a 7nd with corporate blabber.
I too was THIS close to going all-in on Skiff last week, leaving Outlook.com for more privacy, but contact sync with phone was a major annoyance. Thankfully in hindsight.
FYI I didn't log into my tuta account for a while and they deleted it completely. No way I can recover the data and personal connections I made using it.
Also Discord was like "yeah you may have your Discord credentials, but we need you to check your email before you can log in again anyway." So I lost my Discord account, too.
But I started using this new thing called Skiff and . . . Oh.
I will be switching over to Tuta. Their new subscriptions let you setup unlimited aliases if you are using a custom domain. So, I'll be able to keep all my same email addresses and still have strong encryption.
> We’re extremely excited to accelerate our mission by joining forces with Notion’s world-class team. We sincerely hope that the Skiff community will join us for this next stage of our journey.
This is why it's very important to have your email under a domain you own, rather than the email hoster's domain. That way your addresses remain portable and you can seamlessly switch providers if they go under.
Mailbox.org as a mail provider has not been metioned here, so i will do it now.
That's it - i will not point out the features here as you can look it up yourself. Just the relevancy for this topic: berlin based company with a CEO that is highly skilled, involved in protocol standartization and very much into privacy topics and free software. i am also pretty much sure they will stay arou d for years to come, as they don't sell you into bs statements nobody can hold onto and are just rock solid business. fits my bill..
I do not like to do advertisement for anyone and really think calling out for some company is a no-go. Except one that has its product open source to full extend. But this does not apply here - its a central service you simply have to trust..
EMail is different. As you can, but shall but better not host that mess yourself. So that's the excuse for me doing advertisement here as a one-time exception..
Some time ago they changed web login to have the username/account to be the full mail adress. That was a little more to type and only a small decrease of comfort. They had a reason for that and it was communicated.
Anyway, I shiftet to use mail clients because of that. I am lazy af.
Later i added also TOTP as 2fa and noticed also the unusual approach for the web login. I think first part is your password, followed by the 2fa generated code. keepassDX does that fine btw., as you just have to paste the totp code after your password, wich is also selectable with the magikeyboard.
But since i already do not use weblogin nowadays except to check on my payments, this is not a showstopper for me. Otherwise i would also discourage the penalty on comfort here. I also see the clear advantage, as that they care about security seriously even when this may scare away some customers. Maybe they adapt to FIDO passkey soon or speak openly against it when they see some downside to securety. My usecase is not affected by this anyway as the one-time setup of a mailclient is the lazy way to have this solved.
I'm really pleased with Purelymail so far. It's very minimalistic, reliable (I can't remember if I've ever had any sort of downtime at all!), and dirt cheap: $10/yr if you're on simple pricing, and usually even less if you pay for usage (my usual monthly bill is around 50¢, give or take, so something like $6/yr).
Purelymail appears to be entirely run by exactly one person [0]. That's not really an acceptable risk for something as critical as email. If he loses interest in the project, or gets busy with his day job or other life responsibilities, your email will be effectively shut down in an instant.
Someone had recommended me Skiff, but I stayed away from it and opted for Proton, given that they have been around for a while and Skiff smelled like VC money too much. I guess it was the right choice.
At this point, a criteria I try to follow when I have to choose whether or not to rely on a tool is: is it funded by VC? If so, steer clear.
That's a similar line of thought I followed when migrating away from Gmail last year.
I was considering Skiff or Fastmail. Skiff was just over a year old with over $10 million in VC funding. Fastmail is 20+ years old and is funded by their own subscription fees.
I was concerned Skiff would be looking for a buyer eventually and things would change for the worse. Definitely didn't expect a full shutdown though.
May I suggest something to think over, what about -- “Can I walk out of this, and migrate elsewhere and how complex/hard will be that migration?” instead of the blanket VC-Funded or not. My thoughts.
That's fair, although IMO it's additionally fair to be skeptical of making a long-term commitment to products/services that aren't funded in ways that permit long-term product planning and reasonably-paced development based on that plan.
You’re right. I should discriminate between the seriousness of the tool. A non-essential service can be easily replaced when eventually they enshittify it. Email is an essential one, and reliability is the most important factor.
They should put a message on login site and a banner inside inbox because from just glancing over "We are excited to share that Skiff is joining Notion." placed over barely readable gray text on white background user could assume nothing has changed and mail service will be still provided.
I did created an account just few months ago with the intention to use it on few remaining sites where I was registered under local mail service that got filled with ads since takeover (which also bring 2FA but you have to use a dedicated app and nothing else works). Well, what a pity - another round for tuta, proton or seznam. They had this "rewards" system a'la dropbox where you could get additional space.
Readit News
https://peergos.org
Tech book - https://book.peergos.org
Source - https://github.com/peergos/peergos
Sign up to our server - https://peergos.net/?signup=true
We also use a p2p and self-authenticated protocol so it is easy to migrate servers whilst keeping your identity, friends and data.
The reason Notion acquires and kills this product is not because it is in any way an interesting product or company to them but because it has investors that need bailing out that are also Notion investors. Notion gets some nice people in their team and some of them might even stay.
This is a very common practice in silicon valley. VC funded companies fail all the time. Instead of letting them go bankrupt, investors and founders swap shares and walk away with an "exit" in their pocket. Everybody wins.
The only thing I can come up with is that the tech doesn't drop in as is because of the encryption so if they have to rebuild it under Notion’s brand do a clean cut and reboot targeting Notion’s market.
Running mail is hard.
Running mail is hard.
Candidly, the ability to profit off of email as a service is probably not a challenge that many businesses are up to. Deliverability is a massive pain in the ass. Unless you have the team and are well established, starting up or re-badging a mail service would be a nightmare.
Good email is expensive for a (bad) reason.
I'd bet they'll either unravel the E2EE from Skiff's software to relaunch it under their brad, or use their newly acquired expertise to build a Notion Email service from the ground up.
And then 5 paragraphs with corporate blabber, a 6th with the important instructions (or a link to it; telling you it's not that bad to loose your account) and a 7nd with corporate blabber.
They really got bought from corporate.
I’m really upset about this, I was about to go all in on Skiff after being burnt by ProtonMail.
Glad I didn’t. Feel really bad for those who did.
Also Discord was like "yeah you may have your Discord credentials, but we need you to check your email before you can log in again anyway." So I lost my Discord account, too.
But I started using this new thing called Skiff and . . . Oh.
Yet another entry for https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
That's it - i will not point out the features here as you can look it up yourself. Just the relevancy for this topic: berlin based company with a CEO that is highly skilled, involved in protocol standartization and very much into privacy topics and free software. i am also pretty much sure they will stay arou d for years to come, as they don't sell you into bs statements nobody can hold onto and are just rock solid business. fits my bill..
I do not like to do advertisement for anyone and really think calling out for some company is a no-go. Except one that has its product open source to full extend. But this does not apply here - its a central service you simply have to trust.. EMail is different. As you can, but shall but better not host that mess yourself. So that's the excuse for me doing advertisement here as a one-time exception..
They prepend a 4 digit PIN-code before the actual 2fa code - which of course is not compatible with password managers. It all feels so... clumsy.
Other than that, it seems like a great service (i'm testing the trial version.)
[1] https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/account-article/how-to-use...
https://purelymail.com/
[0] https://purelymail.com/about
Someone had recommended me Skiff, but I stayed away from it and opted for Proton, given that they have been around for a while and Skiff smelled like VC money too much. I guess it was the right choice.
At this point, a criteria I try to follow when I have to choose whether or not to rely on a tool is: is it funded by VC? If so, steer clear.
I was considering Skiff or Fastmail. Skiff was just over a year old with over $10 million in VC funding. Fastmail is 20+ years old and is funded by their own subscription fees.
I was concerned Skiff would be looking for a buyer eventually and things would change for the worse. Definitely didn't expect a full shutdown though.
I did created an account just few months ago with the intention to use it on few remaining sites where I was registered under local mail service that got filled with ads since takeover (which also bring 2FA but you have to use a dedicated app and nothing else works). Well, what a pity - another round for tuta, proton or seznam. They had this "rewards" system a'la dropbox where you could get additional space.