FAQ

Yes, Tuta supports two-factor authentication with U2F and TOTP. Here are details on how to set up your second factor in Tuta.

Go to Settings → Email→ Scroll down to Email addresses → Click "Show" → Click on the plus symbol.

A pop-up opens where you can create the alias email address you want to add. Click on the arrow button to choose the domain for your alias. This can be any of the Tuta domains or of your custom email domains that you have added to your Tuta account. Alias email addresses with your custom domain do not count towards your limit; you create as many as you like.

Please note: It is technically not possible to delete alias email addresses created with a Tuta domain. These can only be deactivated. Deactivated aliases remain linked to your account in case you want to activate them again in the future.

Go here in Settings. You can choose the 'Default delivery': Encrypted ('Confidential') or not encrypted ('Not confidential'). You can also switch whether an email is encrypted or not when composing the email by clicking on the lock symbol. Emails to other Tuta users are always encrypted by default.

Yes. Tuta uses a preshared password for sending an encrypted message to an external recipient, i.e. to someone who does not use Tuta. Please check here to learn how to send encrypted emails to external recipients.

Or watch our quick YouTube tutorial.

Here we explain how to switch the default so that emails to external recipients are sent not encrypted and without a password.

Yes, when sending emails from Tuta to Tuta, all emails are encrypted automatically end-to-end on your device. You do not have to enter any passwords.

Check out our quick YouTube tutorial to see how it works.

Yes, Tuta Mail is forever free with 1 GB of free storage for private users. The actual free storage is much higher as we are compressing your emails.

After signing up for Tuta as your new email address, you can easily switch important conversations over from your previous provider. Simply forward all emails from your previous email account to Tuta. Here is an explanation of how you can activate this process in your old email account:

• Fastmail
• Gmail
• GMX
• Mailbox.org
• Outlook
• Posteo
• Protonmail
• Riseup
• Web.de
• Yahoo
• Zoho Mail

You can register for Tuta here. Upon registration you can choose whether you would like a free or paid account. Please check our pricing page for details on all available subscriptions.

If a captcha is presented during the registration process, please check here if you need help solving the captcha.

We have collected all the information you need when switching to...

... a free Tuta account

... a paid Tuta account

... a paid Tuta account with your own domain

... a business account with Tuta

... a business account with Tuta as an NPO or a school

Welcome to the encrypted side!

Contact synchronization can be activated from Settings > Contacts > Contacts synchronization.

When you activate contact synchronization, your Tuta contacts will be synced with the contacts app you have on your phone. The Tuta app will then:

• create a contacts list for the Tuta contacts on iOS
• create a contacts account for them on Android

Updating your contacts in the Tuta app will update them in the phone's app and vice versa.

Keep in mind:

• If you make any changes to the contact using the phone's default app while Tuta is running in the background, the changes will only be synced upon your next login.
• If you update a Tuta contact on a different device, like the web browser, the Tuta app will use the version of that contact which is on your phone and overwrite any updates.
• Activating contact synchronization will not automatically import your phone's contacts to your Tuta account. If you would like to do that, please see How can I import contacts?

There are multiple ways to import contacts to your Tuta account.

• Option 1: Go to Contacts in your Tuta account and click on the button with the three dots next to "All contacts"
• Option 2: If you receive an email with an attached contact (vCard file), you can click on it to import it directly within the app. You will see a preview of all contacts included in this vCard file before importing them.
• Option 3: If you want to import existing contacts from your phone:
  • Go to Settings > Contacts and click on the import button.
  • You will then see a preview of the different contact lists you have on your phone. Select the ones you would like to import.
  • Once done, you will again see a combined preview of all contacts to be imported.
  • If contacts synchronization is activated on your Tuta account, then the imported phone contacts will also be added to the list of contacts (called account on Android) created by the Tuta app on the phone. See Contacts synchronization

If you can't log in to your account you might be in one of these situations:

• You have made a typo in your email address or password:
  • Please double check your address and make sure that you have typed the full address and the correct domain name (for example youraddress@tutanota.com).
  • Make sure that the Caps Lock key is not active.
• You forgot your password or lost your second authentication factor (2FA): Please read How do I reset my password or second factor?
• The code from your authenticator App (TOTP) is incorrect: These codes are time-dependent. Please make sure that both Tuta and the authenticator App have the correct time and time zone settings. Some browsers or browser extensions block access to the system's time zone.
• Your recovery code is not accepted or is wrong: Please double check whether you are using the recovery key correctly. See How do I use the recovery code?
• Your account might have been deleted due to inactivity: In this case, you should see a corresponding message below the login form. Free accounts are deleted if you do not log in for a period longer than six months. We do not recycle Tuta addresses which means that the address is blocked for new registrations. You can still re-use the deleted address with a paid account, but only if you have the correct credentials for the deleted account. Please see How do I reactivate an account deleted due to inactivity?
• Your account was suddenly suspended due to another reason: Some accounts are disabled due to a violation of our Terms of Service or due to our spam detection. If you think that we have made a mistake, please contact us in English or German. Please include the email address of your suspended Tuta account and send us the error message you see below the login form.

Our secure password reset feature allows only you to reset your password. We have no influence on this process. You can read more about this here.

When you sign up for Tuta, you create an email account. This account initially has one user which is also an administrator. Free accounts only have one user. If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you can add users to your account. You manage the users (deactivate a user, change password) within your Tuta account with your administrator user. You may also allow multiple users to be administrators.

In the diagram, the '1' at the arrows means there is one item assigned. A user has one mailbox with one main email address, one (or more) calendar(s), and one address book. The '*' means multiple items may be assigned, e.g. an account has one or more users, a user may have multiple calendars and a mailbox has one main email address and may have multiple email aliases (paid feature) on top.

To learn how to set up a user or create an alias, watch this YouTube tutorial.

Yes, Tuta offers secure business email accounts with lots of whitelabel customizations. You can place the login for your employees directly on your website with a whitelabel domain. Learn here how to use Tuta in your organization or company with your custom email domain.

Here's a list of all whitelabel customizations for business use. Here are instructions on how to whitelabel Tuta for your business.

Yes, an encrypted calendar is integrated into the Tuta mail client.

Please check that the time zones of your devices are in sync, including daylight saving time.

If you are using Firefox/Tor Browser with resistFingerprinting option in about:config, this automatically resets the browser time zone to UTC, which then leads to sync issues.

Tuta was subject to an extensive penetration test by the SySS GmbH in November 2013. During the tests, the experts were not able to access the system or to retrieve any confidential data.

Yes, Tuta will include a whole set of collaboration options such as working together on task lists and documents in the future. You can already book this collaboration tool. Right now it is called 'sharing feature' as you can now share your encrypted calendars as well as email templates with other paid accounts. This is the first step, more collaboration options will be added in the future.

Watch this YouTube tutorial on how to share a calendar in Tuta.

Yes, you can customize the logo and colors in Tuta when you book whitelabel.

The date format for your mailbox as well as your calendar is picked either from your language settings in Tuta or from your system/browser settings. If you pick 'English' under 'Settings' -> 'Appearance', the American date format is displayed. If you pick 'Automatic' under languages, the date format of your browser/system is displayed. If you pick any other language, e.g. German, the date format of this language, e.g. German, is displayed.

Yes, right after registration of a business account you will find a data processing agreement directly in Tuta under Settings -> Subscription.

Yes, Tuta as an encrypted email service is perfectly suited for any business that would like to use a GDPR-compliant email service.

Yes, Tuta is a green email service that relies exclusively on renewable energy for all email systems.

The Tuta clients use REST services but there is no public documentation for that API or for a library, yet. Keep in mind that when user data is stored in or read from Tuta, it has to be encrypted/decrypted on the client. You may of course dig into the open source code of Tuta and integrate it with your product, but at this time we can not provide any support for this. We will add a public API documentation in the future.

Tuta is derived from Latin and means "secure, safe". 

Yes, all Tuta clients are published as open source under GPLv3. Check out our GitHub repository. We welcome you to review the code, to give us feedback, or to contribute!

Your friends deserve email security, too!

Invite your friends to Tuta and you both win freebies! If they subscribe to Tuta for one year, you will get credits for 25% of all payments they make within the first month, and they will get one additional free month (13 months instead of 12). Just go to Admin Settings -> Refer a friend and you'll find your personal referral link to share. There is no limit on how many new customers an existing customer can refer.

Please note

• Credits received via our referral program will be used for your invoices within Tuta. We will never pay out the referral credits nor do we allow transferring those credits to another customer.

• The Tuta referral program is only meant for inviting people you know. We may terminate contracts with people who spam or bulk mail their referral links.

We donate the business version of Tuta to non-profit organizations (NPOs), schools, and open source projects. Please find details on how your organization can secure your emails for free or with a discount.

Yes, Tuta supports extensive customization options for business use such as custom colors, custom logo, custom text in the message to external recipients and more. To customize Tuta, you need to book the Whitelabel feature.

After six months without any login activity, free Tuta accounts including all contained data are permanently deleted and cannot be restored.

If you still have the correct credentials for the deleted account, you can re-use the same address(es) with a new paid account by adding them either as extra addresses or users.

1. Create a paid account (or use any paid Tuta account you already have as the target account). It needs to be a different email address than the deleted one.

2. Try to log in to the deleted account.

3. If you enter the correct password, you should see a message below the login form with a "Help" link. Click on "Help".

   

4. Enter the address of your new paid account in the "Target account address" field.

   

5. If the lost account had a second authentication factor (2FA) enabled, enter the Recovery Code. Please make sure to check our guide on using the recovery code here. Otherwise you can leave this field empty.

6. Click OK.

7. Log in to your new account and add the old address(es) under Settings > Email > Email addresses.

If you encounter any issues with receiving emails to your old address, please make sure to wait up to an hour and try again. Otherwise, please read our guide "I have reactivated my deleted address but do not receive Emails."

Make sure that you have waited one hour before trying to receive emails to the reactivated address.

Make sure that you have added the address either as an extra email address or a user to your new account under Settings → Email → Email addresses or Settings → User management. If you are not sure, you can watch our short YouTube video on the difference between email aliases and users.

Unfortunately, some services put email addresses on a blacklist after receiving a bounced delivery report and do not send emails to them at all anymore. If you are trying to receive a password reset link or a login confirmation from an online service, your address might have been banned during the time when your account was inactive. In this case, we cannot do anything from our side. Please contact the service in question and have them check the status of your email address. This usually solves the issue.

The recovery code is a 64-character long string and consists of the characters a-f and 0-9 only. This means that there could be no confusion between similar looking letters and numbers like the letter "o" and the number zero "0" for example.

This string is separated into 16 ordered groups each consisting of 4 characters.

When entering the recovery code you have to include the spaces between every four characters and all letters must be entered in lower-case.

You can share a contact list with any Tuta user. Go to contacts and click the three dots next to your contact list's name. When sharing you can also specify one of three different access permissions to the list:

• Read
• Read and write
• Write and manage sharing

The recipient will receive a notification email and will be able to see and accept the invitation under the contact lists section in the contacts view.

Recipients of shared contact lists can change the display name of the list on their account.

Contact lists are lists of addresses that can be used in Tuta to easily and quickly include multiple recipients when sending emails, event invitations or even when sharing contacts.

The list can include existing contacts or other addresses and can be shared with other Tuta users.

Here you can read how to create and use contact lists or how to share contact lists.

Contact lists are available on all new paid plans. To create a contact list navigate to contacts and click on the plus button. On mobile devices, open the left side menu in order to see the contact lists section and the plus button.

An editor pop-up window will open where you can enter the name of the new contact list and optionally add entries below.

When you start typing an address you, will see suggestions from your existing contacts but you can also add addresses that are not yet in your address book.

You can add multiple addresses and click "Save" when done. If you later decide to rename or delete the list, simply click on the three dots button next to its name.

Once you have a list created, you can use it in any recipient field in Tuta. For example when sending an email or an event invitation. Just enter the name of the contact list in the address field.

Here you can read how to share contact lists.

Your recovery code can be viewed in your Tuta account, provided that you are logged in and know your password. Simply go to Settings > Login and click on the pencil icon next to Recovery code.

If you know your password but still cannot log in because of a lost second authentication factor, we can only help if you have one of our paid plans and have either your PayPal or credit card stored on your account. In this case please contact us in English or German. Unfortunately we cannot provide any help in the case of free Tuta accounts because we have no way of verifying your ownership of the account.

If you have lost your password, then there is unfortunately nothing we can do to reset it for you. If we are able to verify you with the payment data, we can allow you to merge the lost address with a new paid account. All data stored in the previous account will be lost.

Some accounts are automatically marked for approval upon sign-up to prevent abuse. This often affects IPs from VPN services or Tor as spammers try to bypass our anti-spam protection method by abusing these services. Please read here why the 48-hour wait is necessary to protect your privacy to the maximum with a truly anonymous email service.

During these 48 hours, emails cannot be sent or received. Please do not share your new email address before the blocking has been lifted automatically.

Tuta uses its own Captcha so that we do not have to depend on using Google Captcha. This enables us to offer an open source email service without any links to Google.

The Tuta Captcha shows a clock. You need to enter the displayed time with four numerals, including the colon in the middle. If the displayed time is 8.30 for example, you have to enter 08:30 or 20:30 exactly.

To delete your account, go to Settings - Subscription - Delete Account. You need to enter your password upon deletion.

Please note: Deleted Tuta accounts can't be restored. Deleted email addresses are blocked for registration and can't be used again.

Please check whether the sender was blocked by following this instruction.

Sometimes newly created email addresses are put on hold for 48 hours to prevent abuse. It is important that you do not share your email address until this block is lifted automatically. If you do use the email address to register elsewhere or sign up for newsletters before the block is lifted, this service will send you a confirmation email, which will bounce with a temporary error. This might lead to problems registering with this service, even in the future.

The same issue sometimes affects users whose Tuta email address has been blocked, for instance due to inactivity. Even after you reactivate your Tuta email address, this might lead to problems receiving emails from online services because they stopped sending to your address due to bounces. In that case, please contact the service in question and ask them to start sending to your address again.

Most websites and online services let you register with your chosen Tuta email address just fine. Unfortunately, we have received reports from users that some websites block Tuta email addresses for registrations. Please check these options to resolve this situation.

If you would like to inform us about abusive usage of one of our domains (tutanota.com, tutanota.de, tutamail.com, tuta.io, keemail.me, tuta.com), please contact us at abuse@tutao.de. Please forward the abusive message to us if appropriate.

If you are a Tuta user and have received a phishing email, you can report this email by clicking on the three-dot button to the right and then clicking on 'Report phishing'. Here are more details.

If you would like to report abusive usage originating from another provider's email address, you can find contact addresses at abuse.net.

Yes, you can downgrade back to free anytime. Before this, you need to disable all extra bookings. You can keep your main Tuta email address as a free account.

Check here to see how you can upgrade or downgrade.

Yes, the Tuta Transparency Report is updated every six months. You can check it here. It also includes a Warrant Canary.

You may opt in to share your Tuta usage data with us to help us test new features and find issues with existing functionality. This consent is optional and may be revoked at any time in settings.

We use usage tests only to improve Tuta. To evaluate usage tests, we will generate and store a random identifier on your device that is shared across all logged-in accounts. Since your usage data is about your interactions with the app, we do not collect any personally identifiable information.

Your anonymized usage data may be used for research purposes, but apart from this, we do not share your usage data with third parties.

Usage data usually takes the form of one of the following:

• Sequences of interactions
• Time required for certain actions
• Points at which a certain interaction is aborted