My contract comes up for renewal in early summer and I'd like to compare some of the other reputable players in the email space. I've been with Fastmail 3 years and I suspect the email hosting landscape has evolved since.

I looked at Google Apps for Work, but with 8x domains I don't want to pay for 8x accounts on the non-email apps when 1x is enough.

I looked at Outlook 365, and I'm sort of neutral about the whole thing price- and performance-wise.

I had shortlisted, and almost decided on, ProtonMail until I heard about the DDoS and the ransom payment.

I'd like to pay for a service that offers:

* IMAP over SSL * a good track record of security * a good track record of reliability * wildcard email (i.e., @example.com drops into alice@example.com) some reassurance that they won't instantly cave if/when the feds come knocking * minimal extra fluff that I likely won't use

I prefer to keep domains, web hosting and email at different places, so Gandi and self-hosting with Digital Ocean is out. I have no interest in running my own server. I've done that before, and it was a bag of hurt.

I'm still leaning toward ProtonMail. Whether that's a good or bad idea is up for debate.

I am interested and grateful for your feedback on:

* what you use - would you recommend it? * is ProtonMail worth pursuing?

Thank you in advance.