Email addresses are the base of our digital identity. If somebody takes control of an email address, they usually take control of all accounts attached to it via the Password Reset functionality. In this sense, your email address is the most critical part of your digital identity.

Yet, most people are using Google Mail or other “free” service providers for their email, effectively giving up control over their email address. The one who pays is in charge and if you don’t pay for a product, you’re the product. Everything comes with a price. I’m willing to pay a little to break free from Big Tech. How about you?

The escape from big email providers needs two ingredients: A domain you own and a service provider you pay for their service.

Your own domain

Why do we need our own domain? A domain is a unique name in the Domain Name System (DNS). If you own a domain, you can choose which services are attached to it. For reference, the part behind the @ in an email address is the domain. The domain serves as trust anchor. If you don’t own the domain of your email address, you always risk that the owner abuses your identity.

Registering a domain is easy and takes 5 minutes. I chose Netcup as my domain registrar. The company is based in Europe, which is important for me. Netcup is also my nameserver.

Your own email

You need a mail server to send and receive email on your domain. It’s possible to operate one yourself, but that’s a lot of work. Luckily, there are a lot of SaaS providers that do the work for you. I chose Migadu for my email.

Migadu is a swiss company that hosts in France. They do so to fall under the strict european privacy laws (GDPR). Nice. They price by volume. I chose their smallest offer, which is 200 emails in and 20 out per day. Until today I’ve never exceeded 50 emails in and 5 out. So yeah, it’s enough for me.

How is this better?

Good question. I think it comes down to a conflict of interest: If you don’t pay for these services, the provider needs to make money of you using them. Usually, they sell your data. That’s not in your interest. The solution is so simple though: Pay. It’s cheap actually.

How much does it cost?

I pay 13€ / year for my domain and 16€ / year for my email. That’s ~30€ / year or ~2,50€ / month. A small price to pay for liberty, isn’t it?

Was is hard to setup?

Frankly, no! I work in IT, but still. Everything is so well documented and intuitive. Everybody with a little patience can do it.

Cool new features

Since I’m now the owner of my domain, I can have as many email addresses as I want. Migadu supports patterns, which means that I can have things like *flos-mailbox@lackner.work. This would make all mail sent to email addresses that end with flos-mailbox arrive in my inbox.

I’m using this to give every service it’s own email address. If one service leaks my data, I’ll block the address and create another one for this service. For now this has kept my inbox spotless clean without any spam.

Bonus: Email programs

I’m using the excellent FairEmail Android app to access my mail on my phone. It’s open-source. The developer put a lot of love in the details. The result is a rock solid mail client that just works. The author accepts donations, so I’ve payed for the app. I encourage you to do the same.

On desktop I’m using the Migadu webmail client. Honestly, it’s enough for me and works well.

Summary

My switch to an owned domain and european-only providers was a great success. I can only recommend it. I’m happy to finally be in control of my online identity. If you’re hesitating, this is your wake-up call. Just do it!!