Tutanota, recently rebranded as Tuta, occupies a specific space in the encrypted email market. It does less than ProtonMail. It costs less than ProtonMail. The technical architecture is different in ways that matter for a small subset of users. For everyone else, the choice between Tuta and Proton comes down to which company’s set of trade-offs you prefer to live with.
I switched my secondary email account to Tuta about eight months ago to actually use the product day-to-day rather than read about it. This is the long version of what I learned.
Who Tuta is
Tutao GmbH is a German company headquartered in Hannover, founded in 2011. The company is privately held, has not taken venture funding, and is structurally smaller than Proton AG (Tuta is roughly 30 employees, Proton is several hundred). The corporate structure is similar to Mullvad’s in that the company has resisted growth-at-all-costs pressure and remained focused on a narrow product.
The product was renamed from Tutanota to Tuta in 2024, partly as a branding refresh and partly because the original Latin-based name (tuta nota meaning “secure note”) was not landing with the international audience as well as a single-word brand. The transition has been gradual; you will see both names in older documentation.
Tuta operates entirely within the EU, with infrastructure in Germany. GDPR applies. The company has been transparent about its limited cooperation with German law enforcement, including publishing transparency reports on the small number of legal requests received per year.
What makes Tuta architecturally different from Proton
This is where the comparison gets technical and the choice gets personal.
ProtonMail uses PGP under the hood for encryption. The user-facing experience is end-to-end encrypted email between Proton users, and traditional unencrypted email when sending to non-Proton users (with optional password-protected encrypted email links for external recipients).
Tuta uses its own encryption protocol, not PGP. The encryption covers the email body, the subject line, and the attachments. ProtonMail does not encrypt subject lines (this is a PGP limitation). For users who consider the email subject line as sensitive metadata, Tuta’s approach is meaningfully more private.
Tuta does not support PGP. This is a deliberate choice. The company’s position is that PGP’s design has known weaknesses (no forward secrecy, complex key management, ciphertext malleability in some implementations) and that a modern protocol designed from scratch is preferable. The community position is mixed; some users specifically want PGP for interoperability with other PGP-using contacts, and Tuta is not the right product for them.
Tuta does not support IMAP or SMTP for clients. This is a controversial design choice. The company’s argument is that supporting standard protocols would mean storing your password (or a password-equivalent) in a way that they could access, breaking the end-to-end encryption claim. Their solution: you must use Tuta’s official clients (web, mobile apps, desktop apps). This means Tuta does not work with Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, or any other standard email client.
For some users, this is a deal-breaker. For others, the security argument is compelling enough to accept the constraint.
What is good about using Tuta day to day
The web client is genuinely fast. Tuta loads faster than ProtonMail’s web client in side-by-side testing on my main machine. The interface is clean, search is responsive, the unread count is accurate, and there is essentially no advertising or upsell clutter.
The mobile apps (iOS and Android) are functional and have improved noticeably over the past two years. Push notifications work without battery drain. Sync between devices is fast.
The price is competitive. Tuta’s individual paid plan is €3 per month (about $3.30) for the Revolutionary tier with 20 GB of storage and one custom domain. Proton’s equivalent (Mail Plus) is $4.99 per month for 15 GB. The difference is small but consistent.
Custom domain support works correctly. You verify your domain via DNS records, configure MX records to point at Tuta, and the subscription level determines how many email aliases you can have on that domain. The DNS configuration documentation is clear.
The encrypted calendar is built in to all paid plans, which is rare; most encrypted calendar offerings are separate products.
Two-factor authentication via TOTP and FIDO2 (YubiKey) works correctly.
The company communicates well during issues. When Tuta has had outages (and like every email provider, they have), the post-incident communication has been timely and substantive.
What is genuinely frustrating about Tuta
The lack of IMAP/SMTP is the single biggest practical issue. If you have a workflow that depends on a third-party email client, Tuta breaks that workflow. The migration cost is not just “set up a new email address” but “learn a new email client UI” and “give up the email client you have used for a decade.”
Search performance for older emails is below ProtonMail. Tuta’s search has improved but still feels noticeably slower than ProtonMail or Gmail when querying years of archived mail. For someone with a large existing inbox, this matters.
The mobile clients have rough edges. Specific bugs (notifications occasionally not arriving, attachments occasionally failing to preview) come and go between releases. The product is moving forward but is less polished than the larger competitors.
The free tier is more restrictive than ProtonMail’s. Free Tuta accounts get 1 GB storage (vs 1 GB on Proton Free), no custom domain, limited search, and various other constraints that push users toward paid tiers more aggressively.
The interoperability with non-Tuta users is limited. When you send an email from Tuta to a Gmail user, the email is unencrypted in transit (just like sending from any other provider to Gmail). Tuta to Tuta is end-to-end encrypted. Tuta to non-Tuta with the optional password-protected encrypted email feature is end-to-end encrypted but the recipient has to click a link and enter a password to read it, which most recipients find confusing.
The brand recognition is low. When you give people a Tuta email address, you spend more time explaining what it is than you do with a Gmail or even a ProtonMail address. This sounds trivial but it does compound over time.
How Tuta compares to ProtonMail directly
Tuta wins on:
- Subject line encryption (Proton does not encrypt subject lines)
- Price (slightly cheaper)
- German jurisdiction (some users prefer this over Swiss for various reasons)
- Web client performance (subjective but consistent in testing)
ProtonMail wins on:
- IMAP/SMTP support (Proton has Bridge, a desktop application that proxies IMAP/SMTP for paid users)
- PGP interop (you can communicate with PGP users elsewhere)
- Bundled product suite (Proton includes encrypted Drive, Calendar, Pass, VPN)
- Mobile app polish
- Brand recognition
- Search performance for large inboxes
For most users, ProtonMail’s bundled suite plus IMAP/SMTP support tilts the decision. For users who want maximum encryption coverage (including subject lines), do not need IMAP/SMTP, and value a smaller, more focused company, Tuta is the right choice.
Migration story
Migrating from Gmail to Tuta is harder than migrating from Gmail to ProtonMail. The reason: Proton has an “Easy Switch” tool that imports your Gmail history via IMAP and forwards new mail. Tuta has an import feature for individual EML files but no equivalent automated migration from Gmail.
Practical migration approach for Tuta:
- Sign up for Tuta and configure your custom domain (if you have one)
- Set up Gmail to forward incoming mail to your new Tuta address
- Update your contact email at every important account (banks, services) over the following months
- Use the EML import for any historical mail you actually need on the new account
- After 6-12 months when the long tail has drained, delete the Gmail account
Total time investment: similar to the Proton migration (months, not days). The first-week experience is rougher because of the lack of IMAP, but you adjust.
Who should buy Tuta
You value subject-line encryption and the slightly better price.
You are willing to commit to using Tuta’s clients exclusively (no Thunderbird, no Outlook, no Apple Mail).
You prefer a smaller, more focused company over a larger product suite.
You do not need PGP interop with existing contacts.
You like German jurisdiction over Swiss for whatever reason.
You do not need a bundled VPN, Drive, Calendar, etc.
Who should pick ProtonMail instead
You want IMAP/SMTP for any reason, including future-proofing your relationship with the email provider.
You will use multiple Proton products (the bundled price is genuinely competitive against piecing together separate services).
You communicate with people who use PGP and need interop.
You want a more polished mobile experience.
You want brand recognition for the email address (less explaining to non-tech recipients).
Who should not pick either
If you do not have a clear reason to leave Gmail or your current email, the migration cost is real and the benefit is quiet. Encrypted email is a net upgrade for privacy but it is not a transformative one. The bigger privacy win for most people is leaving Gmail at all; the choice between Proton and Tuta after that is small.
For anyone deciding right now: Proton if you want bundled and easier migration, Tuta if you want the smaller-company approach and the encrypted subject lines.
Tuta (formerly Tutanota) | ProtonMail
Related: The day I left Gmail, How to evaluate any privacy tool