Six real options for a business inbox, compared honestly, including the ways they beat us. This guide is published by Email.eu; the bias is disclosed, the facts are dated.
If you want a free personal inbox to replace @gmail.com, most of this list, us included, is the wrong shape: these are paid, per-user products for a company on its own domain. And no provider on earth can move an @gmail.com address itself, because it belongs to Google. What moves is your mail, your contacts, your calendar and your years of archive, onto a domain you own, so that the next switch is yours to make rather than your provider’s.
Gmail is excellent software, and the reason companies leave is rarely the inbox. Google stopped scanning Workspace mail for ads years ago and commits that customer data is not used to train its generative AI models without permission; the objection in 2026 isn’t ad-scanning any more. It’s jurisdiction: a US provider stays reachable under the US CLOUD Act wherever the data physically sits, so an EU region changes the latency, not the law. It’s lock-in: Gmail is welded to Drive, Meet, Calendar and Google sign-in, and “just the mailbox” was never just the mailbox. And it’s price, with another Workspace increase landing this year.
Four questions separate the options below. Is the operator under EU jurisdiction, or merely hosting in a US company’s EU region? Does it speak open protocols, so any client works and leaving stays possible? Is it only mail, or does it also replace what Gmail was quietly holding for you? And who actually does the work of migrating you?
Mail on Stalwart with the Bulwark webmail: JMAP, IMAP and SMTP, unlimited aliases and catch-all on your own domain, DKIM, SPF, DMARC and ARC enforced so legitimate mail lands, server-side Sieve filters, fast full-text search across years of archive, and on Business, encryption at rest with OpenPGP or S/MIME keys you hold, so even we cannot read it. Behind the same login sits the rest of the workspace: calendar, drive, docs, sheets, slides, wiki, chat and meetings. One Dutch company (Remails B.V.), hosted on OVHcloud in Paris, with an EU-only supplier chain down to payment processing.
The honest caveats, since this is our own guide: we are the youngest product here, our certifications are a published roadmap rather than framed certificates (ISO 27001 targeted 2026), and our editors are web-based, with no desktop Office apps. What nobody else on this list does: we migrate you by hand, mirroring Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or any IMAP server, usually over a weekend.
Best for: Companies that want the inbox and everything Gmail was welded to replaced as one finished product, with a human on the phone during the switch.
Watch out for: Young product; compliance certifications still on the roadmap. We publish exactly where each one stands. · Detailed comparison →
The strongest end-to-end encryption here, by design and by default: a zero-access architecture means even Proton cannot read your mail.
The encryption has structural costs. IMAP works only through their Bridge app, installed on every machine, and there is no CalDAV. Switzerland is also a third country under GDPR: strong privacy law, but not EU jurisdiction, which matters for some procurement.
Best for: Teams whose threat model puts maximum encryption above everything else.
Watch out for: Bridge-only IMAP, no CalDAV, Swiss rather than EU jurisdiction. · Detailed comparison →
German, and encrypted further than most: subject lines and the calendar are sealed too, not just message bodies. If end-to-end encryption is the whole reason you are leaving Gmail, Tuta takes it further than we do.
The trade is severe and worth stating plainly: no IMAP, no SMTP, no POP3, no CalDAV. A proprietary protocol and Tuta’s own apps, full stop. Every mail client you already own stops working, and “you can always leave” is thinner than it sounds when nothing standard can read your mailbox.
Best for: Teams that want German end-to-end encryption and will genuinely only ever use Tuta’s own apps.
Watch out for: No standard protocols at all; client choice and portability are the price of the encryption.
Berlin-based, standards-respecting mail with an Open-Xchange office suite around it, running exclusively in German data centres, with ISO 27001 and BSI C5 certifications already in hand, which is more than most of this list, us very much included, can say today.
Read the business pricing carefully: the famous €1 is the per-user Light tier, and business customers also pick a service package on top (Silver at €25 a month for up to 50 mailboxes, rising from there). It is still inexpensive, but a five-person team is not paying €5 a month. It is also mail-first: modest storage, and the collaboration tools are functional rather than polished.
Best for: Small teams and associations that want certified, affordable German email above all.
Watch out for: Per-user price sits on top of a monthly service package; collaboration is the supporting act, not the headline.
Probably the best pure mail application on this list: fast, excellent import tooling, and they co-authored JMAP, the modern protocol we run ourselves. If the question were only “which inbox is best,” this would be a serious answer.
But it is an Australian company under Australian law, including the 2018 Assistance and Access Act, and no part of that is EU jurisdiction. If sovereignty is why you are leaving Gmail, Fastmail does not answer the question you are asking, it just asks it about a different country.
Best for: Teams that want the best inbox and have no EU-jurisdiction requirement.
Watch out for: Not EU; Australian assistance-and-access regime.
Worth naming honestly, because it is what we do: our mail runs on Stalwart, which is open source, and you can run it yourself. Full control, no per-seat licence, nothing between you and your mail.
Understand what you are taking on. Mail is the one workload that punishes hobby-grade operations: you now own deliverability, IP reputation, blocklist appeals, spam filtering, backups, patching and the 3am page. One blocklist entry and your invoices stop arriving. For organisations with real IT capacity, that control is the point. For everyone else, it is a second job.
Best for: Organisations with in-house IT and a reason to hold the keys themselves.
Watch out for: Deliverability and on-call are yours now.
Prices are the providers’ published entry rates for business use as of July 2026(Proton and Fastmail in USD; Tuta, Proton and Fastmail on annual billing; mailbox.org Light tier, which sits on top of a service package from €25 / month). Check each provider for current figures. All names are trademarks of their respective owners, none of which endorse Email.eu. Spotted an error? Tell us at hello@email.eu and we’ll fix it.
We’d rather you hear this from us than discover it in week two.
Google’s is the best in the world, trained on a share of global mail volume nobody else has. Ours is good, Stalwart with DKIM, SPF, DMARC and ARC enforced, per-user Sieve rules and reputation-based blocking. We won’t pretend it’s Google’s.
Every SaaS product on earth ships a Gmail integration. Fewer ship ours. Open protocols mean most things can be wired up, but one click from a marketplace isn’t the experience yet.
We don’t put a model in your mailbox. For some buyers that’s a real loss. For the ones who come to us, it’s the entire point.
We connect directly to Google Workspace, or to any IMAP server, or take an MBOX export out of Google Takeout. Mail, contacts and calendars come across, and years of archive land searchable.
One thing we’ll flag before you ask: Gmail’s labels don’t map cleanly onto folders, because a Gmail message can carry several labels at once and a folder can only hold it once. We’ll show you exactly where that lands before we cut over.
Your domain’s MX records flip when you’re ready and not before. We run both systems in parallel until the switch is boring. Most cutovers finish over a weekend, done with you by our team in Groningen, and it’s included. See how our email works, or the full Google Workspace comparison.
No, and no provider can: @gmail.com belongs to Google. What moves is your mail, contacts, calendar and full archive, onto a domain you own. You can keep forwarding from the old address while people update their address books, then let it go. Companies leaving Gmail are usually moving to their own domain anyway, which is the point: an address you own can follow you to the next provider too.
Yes. We import directly from Google Workspace, over IMAP, or from an MBOX export out of Google Takeout. Folders come across and years of mail are searchable as soon as they land.
Yes. We speak JMAP, IMAP and SMTP, so any standard client connects, or use the Bulwark webmail in the browser. Nothing about your mail is trapped in our app.
Google offers a data processing addendum and EU data regions, commits that Workspace content is not used for advertising, and says customer data is not used to train its generative AI models without permission. Plenty of European companies run Workspace lawfully. The unresolved part isn’t the paperwork; it’s that a US provider remains reachable under the US CLOUD Act wherever the data physically sits. Whether that residual risk is acceptable is a decision for your organisation. An EU operator removes the question instead of papering over it.
No. No ad-scanning, no model training on your content, ever. On Business, mail is sealed at rest with OpenPGP or S/MIME keys you hold, so we couldn’t read it even if we wanted to.
No. Mail, calendar, drive, docs, sheets, slides, wiki, chat and video meetings, behind one login, operated as one product.
Hand-onboarded by our team in Groningen. Migration tooling included, cancel anytime.