I’m looking at Skiff’s services lately and it’s actually looking pretty good!
They offer E-mail, Pages (docs), Calendar and Drive.
(Almost) Everything is E2EE, see here.
Their E-mail service supports custom domains, unlimited aliases, easy migration, auto-reply, schedule and undo sends and more stuff. One thing to note is they also encrypt the e-mail subject, whereas (for example) Proton Mail does not.
They have Pages, which is something like docs+notes+wikis. They have teams, real-time collaboration, public link sharing and version history. I don’t really care much about this but it’s really nice to have.
They have Calendar, which I’m not really gonna get into because I’m not really into that stuff. You can check it here if you want.
And finally they have Drive. They offer 10 GB of storage for free, you can upload any file type with any size (well, of course within the limit), easy migration and the option to store your stuff on the IPFS which is really great.
Some of the features I mentioned are not free, you can see their pricing here. They have a free tier for (of course) nothing, an Essential tier for $3, A Pro tier for $8 and a Business tier for $12 dollars per user per month. These are yearly prices so keep that in mind.
Also, they are based in the US if that’s a privacy concern for you.
Now, I want to ask this question: Can Skiff be a Proton competitor? I’m… not so sure. They have only been around for about 3 years, but they are developing very fast. They are also active with their community on reddit and Discord, so that’s cool. My suggestion right now is to use both. You can use Proton’s Mail and Calendar and Skiff’s Drive for example. Proton has a VPN and a password manager and Skiff has Pages, so you can use all of those if you want.
I think Skiff has a bright future, if they make the right choices they will grow more.
This is kind of a half-review without testing I guess.
So what do you think about Skiff?
Is it just me that keeps seeing questions about Skiff that look more like adverts?
It… doesn’t feel… organic.
you know, i kinda over-saturated the positives of skiff now that i read this thing again, it feels like an advert. But I am in no way affliated with Skiff, I haven’t even signed up yet, I just listed their services and positives.
I should have signed up and tested it for a bit, that’s my bad, I apologize.
May I ask what motivated you to write extensively on a service you do not use?
How did you hear about them, and why did you feel the need to document this so extensively?
I wrote this because I liked their services (because of their features) and wanted to know the community’s opinion on them.
I don’t really remember how I found out about them, but I think it was an article or video.
I wouldn’t consider this thing I wrote “extensive”, other than the Proton competitor stuff, I just listed some stuff on their website and some of my opinions.
Anyone that promises encrypted mail is a liar. Until the email consortium or whatever they’re called offer encryption as standard, all email is sent as plain text.
It’s not lying, just deceptive at first glance. Like Proton, what’s promised is E2E encrypted between users of that same platform, which is often a really narrow slice of the total amount of emails. They are not claiming to encrypt external emails before sending them.
Proton can send e2ee emails to domains outside as well. It does this by sending a link to the password protected email hosted on its servers so it remains as e2ee and can’t be scanned on outside servers.
idk about Skiff, but Proton also tells to e2ee mails to/from outside if they‘re using PGP…
“One thing to note is they also encrypt the e-mail subject, whereas (for example) Proton Mail does not.” - protonmail does encrypt their mails if you send it to another protonmail address, and skiff is doing the exact same thing.
Proton Mail encrypts the content of the mails, not the subject. So even if it is a Proton Mail-to-Proton Mail conversation the subject is not encrypted. Skiff also encrypts the subject of the mail in a Skiff-to-skiff conversation.
proton-to-proton-mails are end-to-end-encrypted and so are password protected mails sent outside proton servers. i once had to reset the password of my kids protonmail and all the mails - including the subject - had become unreadable.
Hmm, I see, my bad.
They do encrypt the subject and recipient/sender’s e-mails but they are not e2ee.
Thanks for the correction.
I’ve been keeping my eye on them, I personally am not going to use them until they get some reputation both to know if they can be trusted, and to see if they won’t randomly disappear or shut down.
They refer to themselves as “Web3-native” and are affiliated with cryptocurrency stuff for anyone that this plays a factor into deciding to try them or not. Personally it makes me hesitant about them, but to each their own.
Are all their apps/backend open source? They have a github repo but it’s not very clear what’s open source or if its partial open source or what. I think it’s just their mail app and windows desktop app.
If that is this case, they’re asking their users to have a lot of trust in them.
I don’t think so. Their apps ar not even on fdroid which is a shame!
I use it for some random stuff nothing too personal. Unless they provide a free and open source app on fdroid and start caring more about real privacy than some crypto and other random stuff I won’t trust them much. Still it’s better than Goolag or Microshit.
Removed by mod
They don’t have any option to export mails, so when you start using them there is currently no way back :(
That’s a very big downside if you want to use them as your e-mail provider, yes.
I just find their name funny, it’s so close to meaning “gross” in Italian, I hope that won’t be a bad omen
Obvious ad???
If you really care about privacy, self-hosting is the only way to go. Gives you maximum control over your data and is not too difficult to set up.
Good luck self hosting email!
I wish I knew how to self host my own NextCloud server, and do necessary drive file transfers should I need to replace it.
