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ioneja · 11 Jan 2022, 08:50 PM

Welcome to the forum! Great question. The primary reason to pay for email in 2022 is indeed privacy, but there are other reasons too.

Here are various reasons... I might have missed a few:

1) No tracking, no ads, no aggregate personal profile connected to or generated from your email. The counter argument always seems to be that if you are emailing people at google/gmail anyway, then google still knows what's in those emails obviously. So it's true that you're still generating a profile to some degree with google by emailing other people who have gmail addresses, BUT not everyone uses gmail, not everyone you receive email from uses gmail, *especially* services that you use such as financial institutions, online stores, service providers, etc. (which is a huge aspect of the profile being generated). And so you're therefore taking more control of what they are collecting and how it's aggregated. i.e.: Google won't have access to your Amazon receipts, your bank alerts, your social media alerts, your service provider info, etc... In any case, using a paid provider keeps a *lot* of personal information out of the hands of the profiling big tech algorithms.... and so the saying that "if you are not paying for the product, you ARE the product" is still largely true in this case, even if you still email a lot of your friends who use gmail.

2) When you do exchange emails with friends/family/colleagues outside of gmail, google in this case won't see any of that exchange, and for those of your friends/family/colleagues on the *same* paid email service, those emails won't even go outside the servers of that email provider (depending on the provider, but that's usually the case).

3) Many paid email providers give you dozens or hundreds or even unlimited aliases. This is hugely useful for managing different accounts and controlling who sees what email address. This increases your potential for privacy, security at other services you use, anonymity to some degree, and separating other profile aggregators, and increases your control of spam by allowing you to see who is selling your address and easily blocking them.

4) Some paid email providers have varying levels of additional encryption features that add an extra layer of protection to your email... this is a big topic on its own with many nuances of what/how/when the encryption takes place, and how useful that is for your use case scenarios and threat levels, but it's a major reason why some people use paid service providers. See other threads for encryption info.

5) Some email providers have vastly superior jurisdictions where their email servers are located. This may not be important to most people in 99% of situations, but it matters to some people and is worth paying for those services in better jurisdictions. Once you understand what your government (and by comparison various governments around the world) can and can't do with your email even just on principle alone, this might also become a point of consideration for you.

6) Email is only one aspect of the services you're using that are being tracked by providers like Google built into their email service... for example, your calendars, contacts, files, documents, notes, etc.! So all the above can apply to those other services that you use connected to your gmail account too! Coupled with location info in your smartphone, IP address tracking, etc., google (or fill-in-the-blank big tech provider you use the most) knows far more about you than you may realize. So you can further reduce your footprint since many paid email providers also have calendars, contacts, notes, files, etc... so again, taking those services outside of google further reduces your profile in google, in this example.

7) Some paid email providers have all sorts of great additional features that are worth the price of subscription by themselves -- some allow super easy management of domains, DNS, simple website hosting, WebDAV features, aliases (already mentioned), advanced filtering, screening, productivity, other collaboration tools, various cool privacy tools, etc., etc...

8) Customer service... some paid providers are good at customer service... you'll actually get a response back by a real human in a reasonable period of time. Imagine that. I know of several people who have lost control of their gmail accounts or have been hacked. It's a myth that google is great at handling those situations. The effort and time to get control back if they've been hacked is significant. Having a paid account with superior, responsive customer service can be a life saver.

9) All the above, coupled with using other good privacy/security practices, using a good password manager with good passwords, using two-factor authentication, limiting your social media exposure, using other services such as VPNs, etc., can significantly improve your safety profile on the Internet, and reduce your risk to other security concerns such as being the victim of targeted phishing, account hacking, identity theft, etc...

10) By paying for email services, you're also supporting a different business model instead of the profile-aggregating ad-based big tech companies... and you get what you pay for... you pay for the product instead of being the product.

11) Email is still very important in our daily lives. Your digital life is connected to it, but your real life too -- your financial accounts, your personal services, your shopping receipts, your job applications, your personal/family info that you don't choose to share in social media... why trust all that to a free service? All companies have to make money somehow, and it makes sense to pay for an email service that is in the business of email alone, not an email service that is actually an ad-revenue profiling company, right?

12) Yes, while it's true the "gmail" email address will likely be around for a long time, just buy a domain name and then you can have service portability and move away from a paid email service provider if you're not happy with them or they go out of business in the future.

Anyway, best of luck, and again, welcome to the forum. This is a great place to get questions answered, there are lots of experienced folks here.

11 Jan 2022, 08:50 PM	#4
ioneja Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 713	Welcome to the forum! Great question. The primary reason to pay for email in 2022 is indeed privacy, but there are other reasons too. Here are various reasons... I might have missed a few: 1) No tracking, no ads, no aggregate personal profile connected to or generated from your email. The counter argument always seems to be that if you are emailing people at google/gmail anyway, then google still knows what's in those emails obviously. So it's true that you're still generating a profile to some degree with google by emailing other people who have gmail addresses, BUT not everyone uses gmail, not everyone you receive email from uses gmail, especially services that you use such as financial institutions, online stores, service providers, etc. (which is a huge aspect of the profile being generated). And so you're therefore taking more control of what they are collecting and how it's aggregated. i.e.: Google won't have access to your Amazon receipts, your bank alerts, your social media alerts, your service provider info, etc... In any case, using a paid provider keeps a lot of personal information out of the hands of the profiling big tech algorithms.... and so the saying that "if you are not paying for the product, you ARE the product" is still largely true in this case, even if you still email a lot of your friends who use gmail. 2) When you do exchange emails with friends/family/colleagues outside of gmail, google in this case won't see any of that exchange, and for those of your friends/family/colleagues on the same paid email service, those emails won't even go outside the servers of that email provider (depending on the provider, but that's usually the case). 3) Many paid email providers give you dozens or hundreds or even unlimited aliases. This is hugely useful for managing different accounts and controlling who sees what email address. This increases your potential for privacy, security at other services you use, anonymity to some degree, and separating other profile aggregators, and increases your control of spam by allowing you to see who is selling your address and easily blocking them. 4) Some paid email providers have varying levels of additional encryption features that add an extra layer of protection to your email... this is a big topic on its own with many nuances of what/how/when the encryption takes place, and how useful that is for your use case scenarios and threat levels, but it's a major reason why some people use paid service providers. See other threads for encryption info. 5) Some email providers have vastly superior jurisdictions where their email servers are located. This may not be important to most people in 99% of situations, but it matters to some people and is worth paying for those services in better jurisdictions. Once you understand what your government (and by comparison various governments around the world) can and can't do with your email even just on principle alone, this might also become a point of consideration for you. 6) Email is only one aspect of the services you're using that are being tracked by providers like Google built into their email service... for example, your calendars, contacts, files, documents, notes, etc.! So all the above can apply to those other services that you use connected to your gmail account too! Coupled with location info in your smartphone, IP address tracking, etc., google (or fill-in-the-blank big tech provider you use the most) knows far more about you than you may realize. So you can further reduce your footprint since many paid email providers also have calendars, contacts, notes, files, etc... so again, taking those services outside of google further reduces your profile in google, in this example. 7) Some paid email providers have all sorts of great additional features that are worth the price of subscription by themselves -- some allow super easy management of domains, DNS, simple website hosting, WebDAV features, aliases (already mentioned), advanced filtering, screening, productivity, other collaboration tools, various cool privacy tools, etc., etc... 8) Customer service... some paid providers are good at customer service... you'll actually get a response back by a real human in a reasonable period of time. Imagine that. I know of several people who have lost control of their gmail accounts or have been hacked. It's a myth that google is great at handling those situations. The effort and time to get control back if they've been hacked is significant. Having a paid account with superior, responsive customer service can be a life saver. 9) All the above, coupled with using other good privacy/security practices, using a good password manager with good passwords, using two-factor authentication, limiting your social media exposure, using other services such as VPNs, etc., can significantly improve your safety profile on the Internet, and reduce your risk to other security concerns such as being the victim of targeted phishing, account hacking, identity theft, etc... 10) By paying for email services, you're also supporting a different business model instead of the profile-aggregating ad-based big tech companies... and you get what you pay for... you pay for the product instead of being the product. 11) Email is still very important in our daily lives. Your digital life is connected to it, but your real life too -- your financial accounts, your personal services, your shopping receipts, your job applications, your personal/family info that you don't choose to share in social media... why trust all that to a free service? All companies have to make money somehow, and it makes sense to pay for an email service that is in the business of email alone, not an email service that is actually an ad-revenue profiling company, right? 12) Yes, while it's true the "gmail" email address will likely be around for a long time, just buy a domain name and then you can have service portability and move away from a paid email service provider if you're not happy with them or they go out of business in the future. Anyway, best of luck, and again, welcome to the forum. This is a great place to get questions answered, there are lots of experienced folks here.