Tuta vs. StartMail: How These Secure Email Services Really Compare

If you’re considering switching away from Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo, you probably already know that free email isn’t really free. Your inbox gets scanned. Your data gets monetized. Your privacy gets compromised. That’s where privacy-first providers come in. Companies like StartMail and Tuta (formerly Tutanota) are designed to keep your communications secure and free from surveillance.

But while they share the same goal, they take different paths to get there. We've put together this comparison so that you can understand those differences and choose the provider that works best for your needs.

Plans, Pricing, and What You Get (Bang for Your Buck)

Unlike “free” email providers, neither company makes money by collecting or selling your personal data. Neither one tracks you, profiles you, or serves you ads, either. Instead, both companies make their money charging a subscription fee to you, the user. To someone who isn’t used to paying for an email address, this might sound a bit strange. However, these companies still need to pay their engineers, support staff, and other teams that contribute to your user experience. And since you, the user, are the way that they do that, you remain their first priority when it comes to the product and the company. We don’t work for advertisers or shareholders…we work for you.

So what makes us different? StartMail is a premium, paid-only service. As a subscriber, you get every feature, plus a 7-day free trial to try it all out. Meanwhile, Tuta uses a freemium model, offering a very basic free plan with very limited storage and features, and then unlocking features and support with multiple paid tiers.

StartMail Pricing:

• Personal Plan: $4.99/month - 20 GB storage, 1 custom domain, unlimited aliases
• Business Plan: $6.99/month - 30 GB storage, unlimited custom domains, unlimited aliases
• 25% discount on additional user subscriptions
• 7-day free trial available

Tuta Pricing:

• Free Plan: 1 GB storage, 3 labels, no aliases or custom domains
• Revolutionary Personal Plan: €3 (about $3.50)/month - 20 GB storage, 3 custom domains, 15 extra email addresses
• Legend Personal Plan: €8 (about $9.40)/month - 500 GB storage, 10 custom domains, 30 extra email addresses
• Essential Business Plan: €6 (about $7)/month per user, plus taxes - 50 GB storage, 3 custom domains, 15 extra email addresses
• Advanced Business Plan: €8 (about $9.40)/month per user, plus taxes - 500 GB storage, 10 custom domains, 30 extra email addresses
• Unlimited Business Plan: €12 (about $14)/month per user, plus taxes - 1000 GB storage, Unlimited custom domains, 30 extra email addresses
• No discount on additional user subscriptions

Additional Users & Flexibility:

If you’re managing multiple projects, a family, or a team, StartMail offers flexibility with unlimited custom domains on Business plans and a 25% discount for additional users.

Tuta offers a “family option” for personal plans with “multi-user support” where users can have their own addresses and inbox in addition to a “shared inbox” with 20 GB of shared storage. They also support business accounts with additional emails, and custom domain counts that depend on the plan. However, customers must pay full price for each additional user as well as full price for any “shared” family inboxes. In other words, if you’re looking to outfit your family or business with private email, expect those costs to rise quickly.

Feature	StartMail	Tuta
Price	$4.99 / $6.99 (billed annually)	Free / €3 (~$3.5) / €6 (~$7) / €8 (~$9.30) / €12 (~$14) (billed annually)
Free Trial	✅ 7 days	✅ Free plan (very limited)
Unlimited Aliases	✅ All plans	⚠️ 15–30 Tuta-domain aliases*
Custom Domain Support	✅ 1–Unlimited	✅ Limited by plan
Additional users	✔️ 25% discount	❌ Full price

* See "Email Aliases" section for details

Features and Usability

Encryption:

Both providers use encryption to protect your messages, but the standards differ. StartMail uses OpenPGP, an open standard trusted for decades. That means encrypted email works with any PGP user after a quick public-key exchange. If you need an extra layer of security, you can use IMAP to connect your StartMail email to an email client with added security to achieve full end-to-end encryption. You can also send password-protected encrypted emails to anyone, even if they don’t use PGP. Here is how password-protected email works.

Tuta uses its own hybrid system (TutaCrypt) with post-quantum key exchange (CRYSTALS-Kyber) + X25519, and it encrypts subject lines. If you’re not sure what any of those terms mean, don’t worry. You only need to know that it’s very strong, but there is a catch. If you’re sending a message to another Tuta email address, full end-to-end encryption is automatic. If you’re sending a message to an email outside Tuta, you have to share a password with them once to get the full benefit of their encryption.

When it comes to security, you’re in great hands either way. The important thing to remember is that security measures work best when you actually use them, so pick whichever service offers a workflow that fits you best.

Email Aliases:

Aliases (known to some as "Hide My Email") make it easy to protect your real email address. It allows you to create a separate, “disposable” email address that you give out instead of your real one. You’ll still receive emails that get sent to that address, but each alias will make it easier for you to sort those messages and filter out junk if necessary. For example, you might use shop@yourdomain.com for online purchases, news@yourdomain.com for newsletters, and finance@yourdomain.com for banking. Also, if you’re shopping on a website that offers a new customer discount, you can generate a new alias every time you make a purchase and redeem that discount every time! If any of these addresses gets compromised for any reason, you can disable it immediately without affecting your main inbox.

At StartMail, we believe that aliases are one of the most vital privacy tools out there. That’s why we offer unlimited aliases. No limits. You never have to worry about compromising too many email addresses. We also strive to make it easy to utilize this function, which is why you can auto-generate an email alias at the touch of a button.

Tuta unfortunately does place some limits on the number of aliases you can generate. Depending on which paid plan you have, you can create 15–30 aliases. If you’re utilizing their custom domain feature, you do have the ability to create unlimited custom emails. This remains the only way that you can truly generate unlimited addresses, though, and each one needs to be generated manually.

Custom Domains:

Custom domains give you control over your email identity. For starters, it looks professional. It also frees you from the default domain of your email provider, so no one has to know that you’re using a private email provider. If you’re a small business, you could use support@yourcompany.com and billing@yourcompany.com…your branding stays consistent and your communication remains consistent, recognizable, and credible. For families, you can create addresses for each member. No matter how you use it you own the domain, which means that you can take it and your email with you if you ever decide to switch providers.

With StartMail, you get one custom domain with a Personal plan, and unlimited domains with a Business plan. Again, we strive to keep things simple. Custom domains are available on Tuta’s paid tiers, with caps placed on the number of domains for most plans (either 3 or 10, depending on the tier). If you want unlimited domains, then you’ll have to purchase their Unlimited Business Plan.

Email Migration & Ease of Use:

StartMail supports IMAP/SMTP, making it easy to import old emails and addresses and continue using your preferred email apps. With our ShuttleCloud tool you can easily copy over your contacts and messages and even receive emails from your previous email for up to 30 days! No manual forwarding or messy exporting, although we do offer tools to help with that if you need. Learn more about the StartMail email and contact migration tool.

Tuta does not support IMAP by design, but finally started offering email import to high tier subscribers earlier this year. The thing is, the feature is still in Beta and has not been rolled out to all subscribers yet. It’s also only available through their own proprietary email client app. So unless you’re willing to shell out bigger bucks, you can expect to have to migrate to Tuta manually, which may prove too big a barrier for some people who are already hesitant about switching.

Email Client Access (Mobile & Desktop Apps):

An email client is an app you can use to check, manage, and send your emails and usually comes pre-loaded onto your device. Say you have an address with Gmail. Some people choose to use a webmail portal to access their email, which involves actually navigating to the site “gmail.com”. Others prefer to configure their email address to an app like Outlook, Apple Mail, and others. These are all email clients, and they can help personalize your email workflow to whatever works best for your devices and workflow.

StartMail gives you full flexibility with IMAP/SMTP support, so you can use any email client you like, from Apple Mail to Thunderbird to even Outlook. Simply put, if you’re already using an email app that you like, you won’t have to switch. We want to make it as easy for you as possible to switch to private email, because we believe that the best privacy tools are the ones that people actually use. Tuta takes a more closed approach. As we mentioned previously, Tuta does not support IMAP. In other words, you don’t get a choice in what email app you use with your Tuta account. Instead, you have to use their open source email client app. It’s also only available on desktop or laptop.

Support:

Sometimes, things go wrong and you need help figuring out how to fix it. With StartMail, all users get access to email support from real life humans, no matter which plan you're on. Yes, even if you’re just trying us out for free. Tuta handles support differently. Their free plan is limited to support via forums and help center articles. Only their paid subscribers have access to direct support from their support team.

Feature	StartMail	Proton Mail
End-to-End Encryption	✅ Available	✅ Available
OpenPGP Support	✅ Yes	❌ No
Unlimited Aliases	✅ All plans	❌ 15–30*
Custom Domains	✅ 1–Unlimited (based on plan)	✅ 3–Unlimited (based on plan)
Email Migration	✅ ShuttleCloud	⚠️ Limited by plan, in Beta
IMAP Support (Email Apps)	✅ Built-in	❌ None
Email Support	✅ All users	⚠️ Paid only

* See "Email Aliases" section for details

Ecosystem & App Availability

Tuta includes email, calendar, and contact management inside its own platform. While having all of that information in one place may sound convenient, they unfortunately only have a desktop app. So if you’re checking or managing any of those things via your mobile device, which is something that most users do at least partially… it can only be done via their web portal.

StartMail focuses purely on private email; we don’t offer a calendar at present. If you prefer using webmail to access your account, we include a built-in contacts manager to help keep you organized. If you prefer using an app, either on desktop or mobile, we’ve designed our system to integrate as easily as possible. That way, you can continue using whatever email, calendar, and other apps you prefer without having to make any huge changes to your workflow.

Data Ownership & Company Background

StartMail is based in the Netherlands. Your email and data are protected under Dutch privacy laws and the EU’s GDPR, which is currently one of the strongest data privacy laws in the world. StartMail’s infrastructure also runs on company-owned servers located in Dutch data centers, which keeps your data under consistent, strong protection. Compare this to other companies that utilize rented servers and other infrastructure to run their services, and you can see how easily a privacy threat can manifest. Tuta is based in Germany. They also operate under EU privacy law and run their own infrastructure in ISO 27001-certified German data centers.

In other words, both services take great care to safeguard your data at every step of the process: from the physical servers and data servers that keep and manage your data to the countries and laws that govern them.

Final Thought: Which is right for you?

Both StartMail and Tuta are solid choices if you want more privacy than mainstream email services offer. The better option for you depends on how you plan to use your email.

Tuta could be the option if you:

• Prefer an all-in-one ecosystem for email, calendar, and contacts
• Do all or most of your email messaging and management on a desktop or laptop
• Are fine with using their apps exclusively
• Don’t think you’ll need more than 15–30 aliases

StartMail could be the better option if you:

• Want unlimited aliases to hide your email and control spam
• Prefer the freedom to use any email app you want
• Prefer a smooth, guided migration from your old service
• Need subscriptions for multiple users

If you have suggestions for other providers you'd like us to compare, you can reach out on our socials (X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, or Mastodon) or contact our support team. Take back your inbox and experience private email with StartMail. And if you still need convincing, try us free for 7 days!