DeGoogle Yourself

I've moved to infomaniak too (also using Thunderbird), though I've gone for the first tier of paid account which lets me use my own domain for my email address. Been super happy so far. Instead of firstname.lastname@gmail.com I now have firstname@lastname.uk. Which is better. Might cash up to the next tier which will let me have multiple email addresses so I can let the wife and kids share in the glory.

Only downside is iOS so far. I've got an iPhone 15 which is less than a year old so I won't be changing it anytime soon. Sadly Thunderbird doesn't have an iOS app so I'm using Apple's own mail app for the moment but I'd love to move to a European email app if there are any on iOS. My next phone probably won't be an iPhone. Or an Android.

Any suggestions for an iOS European FOSS email app?

In addition to an email provider I would also reccomend a service like https://addy.io/.

It creates email aliases that forward to your real email address. So you never have to give out you real mail address to any service. If you create a new mail address for every service you use you can easily deactivate it in case it gets spammed. Also you know that the service sold your data or got hacked if the mail gets spam.

Another benefit is that in case the CEOof your current email provider turns out to be a dick you can just go to another provider by changing the mail address where Addy.io forwards your other mails to.

free

That's the thing, the Google services are only free on paper, you're basically paying with your data.

Get yourself a reliable paid email provider. Many of them are 10-15 moneys per year.

I fully switched to fairphone 5 but with proton paid accounts last year.(that was before the hoo hah of their CEO tweets making the rounds). At that time Murena did not support custom domains and I needed that.

Now the E/is and murenas web apps (running with nextcloud, you can get their cloud instead of nextcloud self host, and use a local drove for backups, (that is what I do).

That can work really well. Look at their compatible phone list. I flahsed on am old Sony I had and ran parallel with fair phone on Google android and got comfortable moving things. Then flashed eos on fp5 and formatted Sony. Now another family member will repeat the process.

And for calls and things I am using jitsi and signal.

OK why is nobody suggesting Tuta?

I used the free version for about three years, till I needed a custom domain, so now I pay. Either way, I think its worth OP checking out.

https://tuta.com/

Android file manager

It is a part of core AOSP, you don't need to change it. And this may be controversial, but try Proton.

Proton or Tuta should suit your needs for email and calendar. Native apps are decent too.

For email provider Infomaniak provides as good of a service as google for free and their paid sub is 2 euros a month for 1TB of cloud storage. They've been a great alternative for me. Just need to find a calendar app you like if you want to use their calendar as it doesn't have a mobile app.

Edit: Also I suggest getting your own domain and using that email instead so switching is easier in the future. You can set up gmail to infomaniak forwarding in Gmail settings (reply if you need help with it)

I got myself kualdir.eu for 9 euros a year and infomaniak handles the rest. Got 2 inboxes and can add aliases if I want to use those. Can always transfer the domain elsewhere if I want to switch and don't have to worry about changing my email everywhere again.

Posteo is 1$/mo and has email, cal, contacts, works with fairemail and dav5x.

If you really can't do $12/yr, you're stuck with advert subsidized. I personally would stay with Gmail in this case and just not worry that much. Your email in 2025 is probably not that sensitive.

You are not going to get a free email service that respects your privacy, as others have said if it's free you are the product.

I went with fastmail over encrypted alternatives like proton and tuta because they don't support using IMAP to connect with your email client of choice (Thunderbird android/windows) and that convenience was more important to me than the encryption. Fastmail also has calendar and contacts which you can also connect to Thunderbird.

Also if you are going through the effort of changing email providers then now would be a good time to look into buying your own domain to use in order to decouple your address from the email provider.

I use proton, but I think the calendar is a paid option. Tuta seems to include the calendar in their free tier Side note, I used to selfhost my mails, but over time this became a pain and I would not recommend anymore

Why are you switching from Google? Is it privacy and data collection? Anything you switch to, will charge you, or sell your data. That's just how it works.

Free isn't a business model. Money needs to come from somewhere. If it's not coming from you, it'll be someone else.

There isn't a thing such as free. You pay with your data. I'm currently trying out the 7-day trial of StartMail. I use Tuta right now, but I see that StartMail offers disposable email beside their normal private email option. I can give you an update if you want after 7 days?

Honestly if you want privacy you gotta pay for it. I use proton and it's a great alternative to Google, but I pay for it.

I'm an early adopter of the Proton services, I always payed a subscription. The free plan could almost correspond to me, but as I can afford it I prefer to support them and free users 😁 one of the thing I love is Pass (password/key vault) and the 'Hide my email' function. The free plan let's you use every app : https://proton.me/pricing

Proton has a free tier for email, calendar, Drive, password manager. They may do other things too but those are the 4 that I use.

I would recommend against Proton, it's just a matter of time before their CEO starts tweeting again.

Calendar+contacts: use Baikal

As for email, I went with a cheap no frills service like migadu

There is no such thing as free lunch.