If you're interested in an open source, (including the server) self hostable, E2EE and federated/p2p storage, sharing and app protocol (including calendar, docs etc) who doesn't have VC investors, check out Peergos:<p><a href="https://peergos.org" rel="nofollow">https://peergos.org</a><p>Tech book - <a href="https://book.peergos.org" rel="nofollow">https://book.peergos.org</a><p>Source - <a href="https://github.com/peergos/peergos">https://github.com/peergos/peergos</a><p>Sign up to our server - <a href="https://peergos.net/?signup=true" rel="nofollow">https://peergos.net/?signup=true</a>
Why would Notion shut down the email provider product? I understand sunsetting drive and rolling pages and calendar into Notion and Cron, respectively. But it would be pretty awesome if Notion had an email service. There’s nothing out there that’s as easy as Google Workspace (not even Proton’s suite—I use it personally) and I’d use Notion-plus-Skiff-and-Cron over Google Workspace any day. Huge miss…
> With the Notion acquisition, what happens to my Skiff accounts?<p>And then 5 paragraphs with corporate blabber, a 6th with the important instructions (or a link to it; telling you it's not that bad to loose your account) and a 7nd with corporate blabber.<p>They really got bought from corporate.
<a href="https://skiff.com/data-migration" rel="nofollow">https://skiff.com/data-migration</a><p>I’m really upset about this, I was about to go all in on Skiff after being burnt by ProtonMail.<p>Glad I didn’t. Feel really bad for those who did.
This is why it's very important to have your email under a domain you own, rather than the email hoster's domain. That way your addresses remain portable and you can seamlessly switch providers if they go under.
Mailbox.org as a mail provider has not been metioned here, so i will do it now.<p>That's it - i will not point out the features here as you can look it up yourself. Just the relevancy for this topic: berlin based company with a CEO that is highly skilled, involved in protocol standartization and very much into privacy topics and free software. i am also pretty much sure they will stay arou d for years to come, as they don't sell you into bs statements nobody can hold onto and are just rock solid business. fits my bill..<p>I do not like to do advertisement for anyone and really think calling out for some company is a no-go. Except one that has its product open source to full extend. But this does not apply here - its a central service you simply have to trust..
EMail is different. As you can, but shall but better not host that mess yourself. So that's the excuse for me doing advertisement here as a one-time exception..
They’re just closing it, wow.<p>Someone had recommended me Skiff, but I stayed away from it and opted for Proton, given that they have been around for a while and Skiff smelled like VC money too much. I guess it was the right choice.<p>At this point, a criteria I try to follow when I have to choose whether or not to rely on a tool is: is it funded by VC? If so, steer clear.
They should put a message on login site and a banner inside inbox because from just glancing over "We are excited to share that Skiff is joining Notion." placed over barely readable gray text on white background user could assume nothing has changed and mail service will be still provided.<p>I did created an account just few months ago with the intention to use it on few remaining sites where I was registered under local mail service that got filled with ads since takeover (which also bring 2FA but you have to use a dedicated app and nothing else works). Well, what a pity - another round for tuta, proton or seznam. They had this "rewards" system a'la dropbox where you could get additional space.
I wonder how Notion/Skiff screwed up so royally with this acquisition. Almost 100% of the comments in this thread are related to the shutdown of the email service. This is, of course, the primary value of Skiff. How could anyone in the management chain <i>possibly</i> have signed off on an acquisition of all assets <i>except</i> the email provider?
Why would Notion shut down the email provider product? I understand sunsetting drive and rolling pages and calendar into Notion and Cron, respectively. But it would be pretty awesome if Notion had an email service. There’s nothing out there that’s as easy as Google Workspace and I’d use Notion plus email and calendar over google workspace any day. Huge miss…
I’m still miffed that Dropbox killed Mailbox.<p>I’m a big fan of Notion but these hires/acquu-hires are a deathknell indicator. It means they’ve hit that point where the ideas have stopped flowing but the money hasn’t, so they start using the money instead of their own creative juices. It’s a shame because there’s still so many places Notion could improve.
Why do companies try to compete in this space? The margins are thin and the giants have vast offerings.<p>The only thing I see winning against Google and Microsoft is some hybrid, open source local + cloud suite of tools. Something better than Thunderbird, more like Obsidian. A combination of native and cloud, working well across all platforms, integrated with a full suite of other productivity/office tools, but most importantly open source. Because I don't want to trust my data to some other tool that will just dry up and disappear.<p>That's a steep gradient to climb. Really steep.
And...this is why E2E encryption isn't enough to protect your data. E2E encryption + self-hosting + user-controlled keys is the way. For docs & stuff switched to Anytype a while ago, I think there are others that at least offer encryption + self-hosting: Affine, Joplin, Obsidian.
Wow, I was looking around for a cheap email provider lately for a secondary account and Skiff seemed to be the only one to offer everything I was looking for on their free plan. Almost seemed to good to be true - so I concluded it probably was and went with a more expensive but trusted option. Glad I did.<p>I'm at the stage where for anything important I will be very reluctant to choose software that hasn't been around and well known for a long time. I can't recall the name of that idea that the longer something has survived, the longer it can be expected to survive in the future but it's definitely applicable to software.
Sorry for the newb question, I have a custom domain and have set up MX records, etc., to point to skiff.<p>Does anyone know how to switch these out to point to another provider, e.g., purelymail/fastmail/proton, without downtime? I mean I would not like to miss emails during the transfer. Is that even possible?
Their product wasn't that great anyway - <a href="https://www.grepular.com/Skiff_Emails_Various_Privacy_Failures" rel="nofollow">https://www.grepular.com/Skiff_Emails_Various_Privacy_Failur...</a>
What happened to Skiff can happen to any service as long as it has servers. That’s the nature of centralized technology. In a decentralized providerless ecosystem you can buy a company but you cannot buy the ecosystem. So decisions like this can never affect the end user. Decentralized network belongs to users, along with their privacy.
> "As we begin to shift focus to our shared efforts with Notion, we will be closing down Skiff's product suite after a 6-month sunset period"<p>I had high hopes for Skiff, but once again it became yet another incredible journey and an entire VC grift racing to an acquisition only for it to be shut down just like the majority of VC fuelled startups who probably ran out of money.<p>The end users are always left holding the bag and continue to lose in the process of anything VC funded these days.
Wish the team well, scrambling to get my mail out of the service now. Heads up to folks trying to bring their mail to Proton: the ProtonMail Import-Export tool can't seem to bring in any mail from the Skiff MBOX export.<p>Glancing at the file, it appears to be an original MBOX format export, that is "From " with no quoting, etc. That's rough.
Is hard to beat a pay as you go email provider with no limits on the number of users and domains you can have -> purelymail.com<p>It's the cheapest option i found, i pay less than 10 $ a year.<p>It works perfectly on Thunderbird. With CalDAV and CardDAV support you have a standard protocol for your contacts and calendar; very portable.
Wow, I have accounts there as early as when they started and last year was almost going to pull the trigger and migrate there, glad I never did, which is a reminder for everyone to use your own domain so all your email/s are valid even if you change the service.
Man. In addition to Skiff users, I feel really bad for the people working there, too. Imagine spending years of your life on one product, working hard every day to make it as good as it can be... all for it just to go “poof” one day so some executives and investors can get rich.<p>Might have been the plan all along, even. Sad