Email Providers

Finding an ethical and green email provider

Whether you’re looking to switch to a more ethical provider, uncover the hidden costs of free email, or support companies with strong ethical values, this guide will help you navigate the complex world of email ethics with confidence.

Email is an essential part of daily life for many of us, but how much do we know about the practices behind the platforms we use? We evaluate a range of companies with our brand-new research into digital privacy, alongside tax transparency, environmental policy, and company ethos.

Google's Gmail accounts for over a quarter of global users, making their practices especially significant. But its Apple iCloud that dominates the email market, even though it is limited to those with Apple devices. Apple has over 50% of the global email market, reflecting its vast customer base and widespread usage.

Which email providers are in the guide?

As well as the tech giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft (Outlook), we highlight a range of privacy-focused alternatives: Kolab Now, Mailbox, Posteo, Proton Mail, Runbox, and Tuta (formerly Tutanota), as well as the not-for-profit GreenNet, and the co-operatively managed mail.coop which has taken over Your Coop customers. 

Email is also available to customers of the broadband providers TalkTalk and Green ISP, which are reviewed in our broadband guide.

With ratings ranging from below 10 (out of 100) to over 80, there is scope to find a more ethical greener email provider. 

Google's lobbying and privacy washing

In the world of email providers, privacy has become the ultimate buzzword – a badge of honour used to attract users increasingly wary of surveillance and data misuse. Yet, for some of the biggest players in the game, this is more about optics than ethics.

Google, a dominant force in email through Gmail, has spent years lobbying aggressively against privacy protections, all while presenting itself as a champion of user privacy.

Google lobbies against privacy laws

Google’s efforts to disrupt European privacy laws, particularly the ePrivacy Regulation, have been relentless. This regulation, designed to complement the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), aims to strengthen privacy in electronic communications. For companies like Google, which profit from targeted advertising, the stakes are high. Public records reveal that Google has consistently been one of the biggest spenders on EU lobbying, pouring millions into influencing lawmakers to water down these protections.

Documents and leaked meeting records in 2022 exposed Google's strategy of undermining the ePrivacy regulations. This includes pushing for loopholes that would allow continued tracking of users across websites without explicit consent.

Such tactics not only delay progress but often weaken the final versions of these regulations, leaving consumers more vulnerable to the very surveillance these laws are meant to curb.

Google and scanning of emails 

Google’s lobbying efforts stand in stark contrast to its public messaging. The company invests heavily in “privacy washing”: in 2023, it promoted its secure services, while at the same time continuing to collect and monetise user data. Gmail, for example, promotes features like encrypted email transfers between its servers, yet the content of your emails is still accessible to Google.

While Google claims no data collected from scanning emails is used for advertising, it nevertheless continues to scan and record this information.

Google’s privacy policies often bury crucial details in legal jargon, using vague terms that grant the company significant leeway to process personal data. Users are rarely given the full picture of how their data fuels Google’s advertising empire.

Bruce Schneier, a renowned security technologist, aptly puts it: “Data is the pollution problem of the information age, and protecting privacy is the environmental challenge.”

Rating email providers on digital privacy

We rated email providers based on their privacy measures, including the email encryption tools they offer, their country of jurisdiction for UK customer data, and their general data-sharing practices which accounted for half the points available. 

The stark contrast between scores in the top and bottom halves of our table reflects both the varying levels of privacy protection and a gulf between companies that harvest user data as part of their profit models and those who do not.

Encryption

When you send an email, it travels through multiple servers across the internet, much like how a letter passes through various post offices. It moves from your email provider to the recipient's provider, where it waits to be downloaded. At each stage of this journey, different parties might gain access to its content.

The most effective way to protect your email's privacy is through encryption – this means translating your email into code that is unreadable to anyone who might be spying. While email providers typically encrypt messages during transmission and storage, they can still access the contents themselves. Only end-to-end encryption keeps your message scrambled from sender to recipient, ensuring that no one in between – including the email providers – can read it.

Technically, it should be possible to enable end-to-end encryption on emails sent via any provider using additional software. However, recognising that many people may lack the technical knowledge or time to do this, we award points to those companies that make encryption easier by providing built-in tools.

Country of jurisdiction

The level of privacy offered by a digital service is heavily influenced by the laws of the country in which it operates.

To reflect this, we have categorised countries into three groups based on their privacy protections:

1. Highest privacy category: This includes EU countries and those recognised as 'GDPR adequate' by the European Commission. Under GDPR rules, companies in these countries must give users comprehensive control over their personal data and promptly report data breaches. They are also restricted from transferring user data to other jurisdictions.

Five Eyes

The Five Eyes alliance — comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — has faced criticism since Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations about its extensive surveillance and data-sharing practices. Despite the presence of strong domestic privacy laws in some member countries, this sharing arrangement can potentially undermine these protections. For this reason, we do not classify Five Eyes nations in our highest privacy category.

2. Lowest privacy category: This includes countries labelled as 'Not Free' in Freedom House's Freedom on the Net Report. These nations typically require providers to grant authorities broad access to user data, often without judicial oversight. For example, Russia's Yarovaya law mandates that providers store messages for six months and allow authorities extensive access, while China's National Security Law requires companies to provide authorities unrestricted access to data.

3. Middle category: This includes all other countries that do not fall under either the highest or lowest ratings. 

Data sharing and advertising

While major email providers have generally stopped directly scanning email contents (for example, Google ended this practice in 2017), large tech companies that offer "free" email services still collect extensive data about user behaviour – including search history, location data, device information, and interactions with their platforms. They use this data to build detailed user profiles to share with third-party advertisers. Although this data is typically anonymised, there is a risk that attackers can 're-identify' individuals from anonymised datasets.

This concern has grown with the rise of AI tools adept at analysing these datasets. Furthermore, this targeting can fuel fraudulent and exploitative practices – ranging from scams targeting vulnerable groups to biased housing ads, voter suppression, and employment discrimination. We have rated companies based on the level of data sharing (across their platforms, not specifically email) outlined in their privacy policies:

• Essential Sharing: Limited to basic service operations and legal requirements.
• Limited Sharing: Essential sharing plus anonymised tracking for analytics.
• Broad Sharing: Sharing with advertising networks and data brokers for targeted marketing.

Which email providers offer which privacy features?

We looked at what each email provider offered in terms of privacy features and have listed them here by type of feature.

Privacy and security breaches

Apple, Google, and Microsoft lost points for criticisms found relating to digital privacy. 

These included massive data breaches and tracking of internet users while on private browsing mode by Google; Apple advertising its iMessages as end-to-end encrypted but turning on iCloud back up for customers by default, which stores encryption keys and can be accessed with a search warrant; and privacy concerns around Microsoft’s Recall tool.

Real privacy for real change 

For activists and campaigners, secure communication is not just a preference – it’s essential.

Organising protests, sharing sensitive information, and challenging powerful institutions often require platforms that guarantee privacy.

Without it, the risk of surveillance and data exploitation becomes a direct threat.

This is a global issue, which includes the UK, where harsher sentencing for protest-related activities means activists now face significant prison time for actions previously considered minor offences – such as peaceful protest or disruptive campaigning. If emails and communications are accessible to third parties – whether corporations or state actors – they may inadvertently provide evidence that could be used against protestors.

In the age of Trump and Musk, privacy rights are eroding under the guise of national security. For people of colour, undocumented migrants, and other marginalised groups, the stakes are even higher.

Surveillance disproportionately targets communities already facing systemic discrimination, putting them at greater risk of arrest or deportation. Privacy isn’t just about protecting personal data – it’s about safeguarding the right to exist and organise without fear.

Google’s lobbying to undermine privacy protections exacerbates this vulnerability. By resisting stronger regulations, the company helps maintain an environment where surveillance thrives, placing campaigners and other targeted groups at heightened risk. The irony of Google marketing itself as a privacy-conscious provider while actively making privacy harder to achieve is not lost on those who rely on secure platforms to push for social change.

Green email providers? 

We rated companies on their climate policies, environmental reporting and what energy they use to power their business.

Three smaller companies scored full marks in our climate rating: Green Net, Posteo, and Runbox. 

They all specified that they primarily used wind or hydropower to power their servers and provided further detail on their internal operations. Posteo offered its employees additional holiday time in order to use trains instead of planes, as well as offering a free public transport ticket and bicycle repair. It also specified the banks it used, which financed ecological and social projects.

Apple’s reporting of actions to cut emissions was considered thorough, but it did not present its full emissions in its headline figures, and had received criticisms for claiming some of its products were “carbon neutral”.

Tuta and Mailbox said their servers ran on renewable or “eco-friendly” energy but were not clear if these were just green tariffs based on offsets. 

Mail.coop said it was currently using a data centre that buys ‘green-tariff energy’, and it hoped to move to a new centre in 2025 and be able to give more details on emissions.

Several companies gave no detail on their energy use: Proton Mail, Kolab Now, and tech giant Yahoo. 

The rising emissions of Google and Microsoft 

Google (Gmail) gave lots of detail about its approach to carbon management, but did not have an adequate emissions reduction target, and more importantly, had received several criticisms for facilitating climate disinformation. For example, Google systematically failed to enforce its climate disinformation policy on YouTube videos, which gained millions of views.

Google has also been criticised for the fact its emissions climbed nearly 50% in five years due to its work with AI. Our article on AI and ethics has more information on this.

Microsoft had also received major criticisms, again over escalating emissions for AI, and also for supplying digital infrastructure to the fossil fuel extraction industry.

Does email use a lot of energy?

It can be hard to keep up with the number of emails we receive. Maybe your inbox is forever growing, and you wonder if clearing it out would result in less energy being used to store it. There is a counter argument that the energy used to power your device in order for you to manually delete emails could actually have a greater carbon impact.

However, there are other good reasons to keep your inbox under control of course, and not just to declutter. You may also want to cut your inbox down to avoid paying more for storage, especially if switching from a free account to a more ethical paid option.

Email accounts for about 1% of internet traffic, while video streaming may be upwards of 60%. According to a 2024 report by the European Commission, internet traffic increased five-fold between 2015 and 2022, and data centre workloads more than quadrupled. But, due to energy efficiency improvements, the amount of energy used grew at a much slower pace. It did still grow though, and particularly for some companies due to AI, as we covered in our climate rating.

In terms of individual action, as we have written before in our broadband guide, an even bigger issue than what you do on the internet is what you do it on.

A smartphone uses less energy than a laptop, which uses about five times less than a desktop computer. And, as covered in our guides to these devices, the biggest portion of the emissions come from manufacturing them. So, both cutting down the time devices are on, and refraining from buying new devices will be far more effective ways to reduce energy use, than sending fewer emails or clearing your inbox.

Although email is only a small part of our emissions, we still recommend choosing a company that is taking energy use seriously and scored best for climate. 

Google vs Microsoft: which is worst?

We compared Google vs Microsoft (Outlook) as email providers to see how they compared.

It's fair to say neither is very good at all! 

Tax conduct of tech companies

This rating assesses the transparency and responsibility of email providers in tax practices. The top eight companies in our table achieved a 100/100 score.

As with many of our tech guides, it's an all or nothing situation on tax and tech. 

GreenNet, Kolab Now, mail.coop, Mailbox, Posteo, Proton Mail, Runbox, and Tuta had no subsidiaries in tax havens and faced no tax criticisms. They all scored 100/100 in this rating.

In stark contrast, Apple (iCloud), Google (Gmail), Microsoft (Outlook), and Yahoo Mail scored 0/100 for tax.

These companies had high-risk subsidiaries in tax havens like Ireland, Bermuda, and the Netherlands, offering no adequate explanation. 

Microsoft's Irish subsidiary, holding over $100bn in investments, paid zero tax in 2020. In the same year, Microsoft and Google faced criticism from Action Aid for failing to pay sufficient taxes in lower-income countries, depriving these nations of critical revenue that could have been used to address the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For consumers, this raises the question: do you want your inbox managed by those leading with transparency or those operating in the shadows of tax havens and undermining public services?

Global email market

The global email market is dominated by big tech.

Apple has the majority share of email, even though it's only available on Apple devices. This is followed by Gmail (Google), then Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo. All the rest make up just under 10%. 

• Apple iCloud = 55.4%
• Gmail = 25.9%
• Microsoft Outlook = 6.7%
• Yahoo = 2.2%
• Others = 9.8%

See below for pie chart representation.

Company ethos

The company ethos rating rewards cooperative ownership, provision of social or environmental alternatives, and fair pay ratios. It penalises excessive director pay, membership in controversial lobby groups, and ties to contentious industries.

Several providers stood out for strong ethical commitments. 

Mail.coop achieved 100/100, thanks to its co-operative ownership and commitment to pay equity. 

GreenNet also received 100/100, for its not-for-profit structure, commitment to pay equity, and support for environmental and social change.

Privacy-focused Proton Mail, Runbox, and Tuta were also recognised for partial employee ownership or a positive approach to pay ratios.

At the other end of the spectrum, the tech giants failed to impress, with no ethical ethos. 

Apple (iCloud), Google (Gmail), Microsoft (Outlook), and Yahoo Mail all scored a dismal 0/100. 

These companies were penalised for problematic lobbying group memberships, ties to contentious sectors like fossil fuels and excessive director pay. For example, Microsoft's CEO earned a staggering $79.1m in 2024, while its connections to the defence industry further reduced its score.

The diversity in scores highlights a growing divide between ethically-conscious providers and mainstream tech giants – with their insatiable appetite for eye-watering salaries, no matter the cost to people and planet. 

Workers' rights in the tech industry 

GreenNet and Posteo scored highest in the workers rating partly because smaller email providers without physical supply chains start with 30 marks to reflect their simpler structures. They also gained additional points for labour policies: GreenNet operates with non-hierarchical, co-operative principles, and Posteo offers flexible hours, permanent contracts, and daily organic-vegetarian lunches for staff. Heinlein (Mailbox) earned marks for naming some suppliers.

Tech giants failing workers

The Guardian reported in 2021 that “Google has been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem.”

In April 2024, the Alphabet Workers Union CWA condemned Google’s “decision to roll back its labor standards requirements for the U.S. vendors and staffing firms that account for roughly a third of the company’s domestic workforce. The subcontractors and temporary workers that make up Google’s extended workforce will no longer be entitled to a $15 an hour minimum wage, health insurance or other fundamental benefits.”

Microsoft has been criticised for unfair treatment of employees taking family, disability, or pregnancy leave, while Apple faced scrutiny for harsh conditions at its Chinese contract manufacturers, disproportionately affecting internal migrant workers, who number around 300 million in China.

The cost of ethical email

Many of us are used to accessing email for free, but in many cases, we are giving companies valuable data in the process. As we discussed in the privacy section, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all collect data about user behaviour so that adverts can be targeted at you as you explore the internet.

The companies that don’t monetise your data operate instead by charging a fee for their email service. Some also manage to offer a free account, often with less storage space or other features.

Free options (all have paid options too)

• Large providers: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo
• Smaller providers: Proton Mail, Tuta

Almost free options

• Mailbox: from €1/month (with 30-day free trial)
• Posteo: from €1/month (can cancel in first month for full refund)

Paid options

• GreenNet: £5/month including mailing list capability, or £6/month including a website. Both include customer service by phone and are charged per year.
• Kolab Now: from £4.40/month (with 30-day free trial)
• mail.coop: from £2/month including dedicated customer support and charged per year.
• Runbox: from €1.66/month (with 30-day free trial then charged €19.95/year)

(All prices correct as of January 2025.)

3 tips to cut your inbox down to size

You might need to reduce your storage to avoid paying more than necessary. 

These instructions are for Gmail but you may find similar options with other providers.

1. Find emails with large attachments and choose to download or delete.

> How: In the search bar, click the logo at the end and, for Size, type in “10 MB”

2. Unsubscribe from mailing lists you never read … and then delete all emails from those mailing lists

> How: In the search bar, type “unsubscribe” to find emails with this option. Most you can hover over and click unsubscribe. Then, right click on the email and choose “‘Find emails from …” Tick the select box on the top left above the list to select them all, then click the bin icon.

3. If you’re feeling brave, delete all unread emails over a year old.

> How: In the search bar, Type “is:unread”, then under the “Any time” dropdown menu select “Older than a year”, tick the select box on the top left above the list to select them all, then click the bin icon.

Additional research by Yalda Keshavarzi and additional privacy ratings research by Tom Bryson.