Quote:
Originally Posted by TenFour
One of the things that worries me is how many services have come and gone. Even ones that seemed from a distance to be popular. I wonder if their funding is sufficient to get them to where they are generating real profits? https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/30/sk...ed-workspaces/ |
Yes, no company is immune to this potential fate, especially new companies, which have a higher failure rate, so I agree there's a risk. I have no idea how solid they are with funding right now, burning through their venture capital, or where they are re: their profitability goals, but from the outside looking in, I decided to take the risk and support them as a customer. So far, so good. I've come to believe we need a US-based alternative to Proton and Tutanota, despite the inferior US jurisdiction. So I'm hoping they succeed. Best way to help them succeed is taking a chance and paying for some services.
One never knows which companies will succeed or fail though. You win some, you lose some. Considering the "privacy" market seems to be picking up steam, I think Skiff is as good a potential winner as any out there. Proton surpassed 100 million users recently. I'd say there's a market for this kind of stuff. As of today at least, I'd put Skiff right up there in the upper class of privacy services, and I've used or tested pretty much all of them on the market, including ones that have already come and gone.
The primary downside (to me) of Skiff is really the jurisdiction, which is one of the worst jurisdictions for privacy laws of the major democracies. However, despite that, and given Skiff's approach, including open source components and white papers, and publicly known track record so far, I think they are making a case for themselves as a good option in the privacy market. Thank goodness they haven't had a "Hushmail" moment yet, that I know of. So that's good news. Even Proton has some questionable moments in the past. And if you compare them to Tutanota, which is subject to German laws, you never know when some awful new invasive German law will be passed, despite the advantages of the GDPR. That's all a big discussion right there, but even the disadvantage of being based in the US doesn't by itself necessarily disqualify Skiff as a decent privacy option IMO.
Obviously, someone who needs the next level of privacy won't be using most of these "privacy" services anyway, they'll be managing their own keys, etc...
As with any service that claims privacy and encryption, you have to trust the company. And your threshold of trust might be different than mine. Skiff is still new in that regard, and they haven't been on the market long enough to prove they can go through fire yet IMO, at least for critical privacy requirements. So I would hesitate to put mission critical stuff in there. BUT to be fair on the other hand, they haven't done something to my knowledge to betray reasonable expectations of trust either. And if you compare them to Google or MS, I think it's clear Skiff is a big upgrade in terms of privacy. So for those users just looking to get out of the telemetry-profile-generating ecosystems of Google or MS, Skiff meets those needs well. At least from what I can tell so far.
Anyway, bottom line is that of the major "privacy" players, I think Skiff has quickly become one of the upper tier services IMO, barring some unknown scandal. And as such, I think they're worth spending some money on. Anyone who cares about privacy issues should at least consider them as an option.
And even re: pure functionality, they are making a good case for themselves there too. With each update, their apps are getting more and more capable, where they've released features now in some ways that surpass both Proton and Tutanota.
But going back to your point, I agree there's always a risk. So if you decide to subscribe, I definitely suggest using your own domain name, and then, like with anything new and shiny, be mentally prepared to exit if they go downhill.
There's really only one feature that they are missing before I commit more email to them BTW, and that is they don't have a total bulk email export feature yet. (At least as of the last time I checked! Who knows, they might have just introduced it, and I missed it! That's how fast they are at releasing features!)
As of the last time I checked, yes, you can export emails in batches, which is very tedious, but not your whole account. So should the need arise to dump them quickly, it will be a pain in the neck to export all the email. I do believe they will add that though, at the rate they are going, probably within the next 6-12 months IMO. But that, to me, is a critical feature before I put more email into their system. Other than that, the feature set is really pretty good, especially when you compare it to their privacy-oriented competitors.
Anyway, didn't mean to go on so long!
It's been a while since I posted something in this forum!