When we first published Tutanota on March 24th 2014, it was a very basic mail client. Yet, people put up with its basic set of features because they loved the fact that - for the first time since the invention of PGP - end-to-end encrypted emails could be sent easily to any person in the world.
Since then, we have added lots of features to Tutanota, and we have a lot more in our pipeline, such as fully redesigned apps, a secure password reset, an encrypted calendar, and much more. Check out our past and present to-do list here.
Our motto is Mail. Done. Right. Because we value your right to privacy.
Tutanota is the secure mail service that focuses on security and privacy. The recent Facebook scandal has proven once more that we can’t trust huge corporations with our data. With its built-in end-to-end encryption, Tutanota makes sure that no one can abuse your data.
We have zero access to your encrypted mails and contacts, which means we can never scan your data. Our business model does not rely on selling your data or posting annoying advertisements into your mailbox. Tutanota is a true privacy-friendly mail service because we ourselves value our right to privacy. We believe that it is our duty as citizens living in a free democracy to stop mass surveillance, and we do so with encryption.
Turning a secure email service into a success is hard
Since we have started building Tutanota, we have seen encryption projects come and go. For instance, after the Snowden revelations back in 2013 Google promised to add end-to-end encryption to Gmail. But Gmail’s encryption project is long dead, and was probably only a marketing move to begin with. Other encrypted mail services, such as Lavaboom shut down.
Turning a secure email service into a success is hard because you have to invest a lot of time and effort before you can make money with the product you’ve built. We believe that we were only able to make Tutanota a success because of our passion for privacy. To us, giving up was never an option.
After the publication of our first Premium features, we realized that our users have turned Tutanota into a lasting success. This success was only possible with the support of our users, who are not just fighting for privacy along with us, but who are also signing up to the Premium version in steadily growing numbers.
Today, four years after publishing the first beta version of Tutanota, we are glad - and a bit proud - that we were able to make our dream come true: We have built a secure email service that today is being used by millions of people around the world. Together we are stopping mass surveillance.
Open source project with vibrant community
The Tutanota web client as well as the Tutanota apps for Android and iOS are fully open source so that the community can review our code, build their own apps locally, or simply inform us about bugs so that we can quickly fix them.
From its early days, Tutanota has been published as open source, licensed under GPLv3. Only with open source software third parties can verify that we remain true to our goal: Protecting the privacy of our users by offering the most secure email service. Now we plan to release the Tutanota app on F-Droid to make our open source email service fully independent from Google.
We are very happy about the incredible support we receive from the global privacy and open source community. For instance, our new client would not look half as nice if it weren’t for Mike Finch, who offered to re-design our Tutanota client just because of his passion for privacy. And there are lots of other ways our users can and do support Tutanota.
This support motivates us to work even harder to make Tutanota the easiest to use secure email out there. As we do not - unlike major mail services like Gmail and Yahoo - scan or sell your data, we rely on the support of privacy-fans, who are willing to pay for their mail service with money. And we are very proud and happy that we have such an awesome community that does just that.
Recommended as a privacy-friendly alternative
To this day, Tutanota has received lots of praise by our users writing Tutanota reviews, by bloggers and journalists, and by students analyzing privacy-friendly apps.
All reviews recommend Tutanota because it offers an easy-to-use encrypted email service that makes sure that the user’s data cannot be abused.
This focus on security and privacy has helped us to develop Tutanota into a great mail service in the past four years. We will keep this focus when further improving Tutanota. As we grow our team steadily, you can be sure that we will add extensive and disruptive features to Tutanota in the coming four years. You can easily speed up our development by upgrading to Premium.
Fight with us for our right to privacy!
Further reading: If you are already using Tutanota, you are most likely interested in our guide on how to leave Google behind.