Email providers host your inbox, calendar and contacts on their address or your own domain. European buyers choose them for EU or Swiss law, business models paid by subscriptions rather than advertising, and in some cases end-to-end encryption. The strongest European options are Proton (Switzerland) for teams that want encrypted email and files in one plan, Tuta (Germany) for individuals and small teams who put privacy first and mailbox.org (Germany) for small businesses moving email off Google or Microsoft.
Best first. Headcount and founding year come from LeadWave's database; prices, hosting and G2 ratings from each company's own pages and G2, checked in November 2026.
| Alternative | Headquarters | Founded | Employees | G2 rating | Free plan | Paid plans from | Your data | Open source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 Proton | Geneva, Switzerland | 2014 | 635 | — | Yes | $3.99/user/month | In Europe | No |
2 Tuta | Hanover, Germany | 2011 | — | 4.6 (18 reviews) | Yes | €3/user/month | In Europe | No |
3 mailbox.org | Berlin, Germany | — | — | — | No | €1/user/month | — | No |
4 Infomaniak | Geneva, Switzerland | — | — | — | Yes | Free | In Europe | No |
5 Posteo | Berlin, Germany | — | — | — | No | €1/month | In Europe | No |
6 Mailfence | Brussels, Belgium | 2013 | — | 4.7 (5 reviews) | Yes | €2.50/month | — | No |
7 StartMail | Netherlands | 2012 | — | — | No | $4.99/month | — | No |
8 Runbox | Oslo, Norway | 2000 | — | — | No | €19.95/year | — | No |
9 OVHcloud | Roubaix, France | 1999 | — | 3.2 (74 reviews) | No | €1.59/user/month | In Europe | No |
10 Soverin | Netherlands | — | — | — | No | €3.25/month | — | No |
11 Twake Workplace | Issy-les-Moulineaux, France | — | — | — | No | — | Self-hosted | Yes |
Each page ranks the European options for that tool's users and says how each one compares.
Encrypted email, files, documents and video meetings
Swiss company behind Proton Mail, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Meet. Mail, files and documents are end-to-end encrypted. Business plans bundle the apps as Proton Workspace.
End-to-end encrypted email and calendar
Encrypted email and calendar from Tutao GmbH in Hanover, formerly called Tutanota. Subject lines and contacts are encrypted too. Free and paid personal plans, plus business plans with custom domains.
German business email with office and video add-ons
Email, calendar and contacts run by Heinlein Hosting in Berlin. The Standard plan adds cloud storage, online office editing and video meetings. Ad-free and paid only.
Swiss email, cloud storage, chat and video meetings
Swiss hosting company whose kSuite bundles email, kDrive storage with online document editing, kChat messaging and kMeet video calls. Runs in its own data centres in Switzerland.
Ad-free email account for one euro a month
Independent email provider in Berlin, funded only by customer fees. One flat price per account, with 2 GB of storage, calendar and address book. Runs on green energy.
Encrypted email with calendar and documents
Email service from ContactOffice Group in Brussels with OpenPGP encryption, calendar, contacts and document storage. A free plan and paid plans with custom domains.
Private email with unlimited aliases
Dutch email service started by the founders of the Startpage search engine, but separately owned. Unlimited aliases, PGP encryption and custom domains. Paid only, with a 7-day trial.
Norwegian email service with custom domains
Email provider run from Oslo since 2000 and owned mostly by its staff and board. Works with standard email apps over IMAP. Paid plans only, billed yearly or every three years.
Business email hosting from a French cloud provider
French cloud and hosting company. Sells Email Pro mailboxes and hosted Microsoft Exchange alongside domains and servers. Email Pro data is hosted in France.
Paid Dutch email service without tracking
Small Dutch email provider funded by subscriptions instead of data. Sells mailboxes to consumers and businesses, and through hosting partners.
Open-source mail, chat, drive and calendar
Open-source workplace suite from the French company Linagora, with Twake Mail, Twake Chat, Twake Drive and a calendar. Available as a cloud service or installed on your own servers.
A company counts as European if it's headquartered in Europe: the EU, the EEA, Switzerland, the UK, or elsewhere in geographic Europe, never Russia or Belarus. Headquarters means where it's run from, not a registered office. Companies founded in Europe but headquartered elsewhere today are listed separately, and a non-European owner is always named.
Each company was checked against its own legal notice, pricing page and data-processing terms, and its G2 page. The order weighs how fully each one replaces the US leaders, its track record and its ratings. No company paid to be listed or ranked.
Proton (Switzerland) for teams that want encrypted email and files in one plan, Tuta (Germany) for individuals and small teams who put privacy first and mailbox.org (Germany) for small businesses moving email off Google or Microsoft. Each is headquartered in Europe; the table compares their hosting, prices and G2 ratings.
Proton, Tuta, Infomaniak and Mailfence have a free plan with no time limit.
Proton, Tuta, Infomaniak, Posteo and OVHcloud store customer data in Europe by default. Being European doesn't make a tool GDPR compliant on its own: check its data processing agreement too.
Yes: Twake Workplace, which you can also host on your own servers.
Proton Mail, Tuta and Mailfence have free plans with limited storage, and Infomaniak offers a free personal account. mailbox.org, Posteo, StartMail, Runbox and Soverin are paid only, from about €1 to €5 a month.
Mail is encrypted on your device so the provider can't read it. Proton and Tuta do this automatically between their own users, while Mailfence and StartMail use OpenPGP. Mail to ordinary addresses elsewhere is usually protected only in transit.
Yes, on paid plans at most providers, including Proton, Tuta, mailbox.org, Infomaniak, Mailfence, StartMail, Runbox and OVHcloud. Check the plan first: entry plans sometimes limit the number of domains or aliases.
