Tuta: Encrypted Private Email Reviews

by Anonymous User 23579

Tuta will literally steal your location without asking for it. How? If you have the Compass Calibration location service enabled under Settings-Privacy-Location Services-System Services (at the very bottom), then Tuta will access your location upon launch. This is evident by the location arrow that appears in the status bar (if you have the setting enabled) when Tuta is launched. Not sure why an encrypted email app needs to know anyone’s location, and more importantly why it steals it behind users’ backs instead of using the standard location permissions API and asking the user if they allow access to location. Very sneaky and underhanded. Not sure I trust Tuta with my supposedly encrypted emails any more. Shame on Tutanota and shame on Apple for allowing any app to access user location without asking for permission first using the compass calibration location setting.

by Whatisthedeal?!

I have had tutanota for a month. Unable to add contact name next to my saved email contacts - I’ve tried a few times and clicked “Save” when logged into desktop and through Tuta . I am now unable to delete my drafts, too, when logged into the desktop tutanota mail (I have the paid version), and I am a little nervous about that, and the fact I’m unable to save any contact names. I have plenty of storage. I switched my entire business over to this email client after over a decade with Gmail- I didn’t even transfer anything over. Tutanota saved all my contacts names fine before until recently, but now they’re gone, including the inability to delete drafts when I click the trash can icon to delete.. What is the deal here?!?! I have updated everything and brand new everything- please fix this. I would’ve rated 5 stars before, but now I don’t know what is happening. Thanks -

by Monokrome

This is honestly the worst iOS app.

First, the search doesn’t work properly even on the latest iPhone or iPad Pro. It hasn’t worked properly for over a year. Searching requires an “indexing” process, which is represented by a UI which doesn’t tell you how far things are and doesn’t make you aware that it tends to freeze without warning. I’ve let it “index” for a week to no avail, just to be sure it was broken.

Next, there’s no way to export your mail from them. So, if you want to make a backup then that’s too bad for you. If their service goes down, your emails are 100% gone. Unfortunately, it does go down and has happened a few times this year already.

Tuta constantly freezes, presenting an error that an “Unknown Error Occurred”. This doesn’t close Tuta , but your actions will fail to work until you restart it manually. At which time, it often fails again.

Ignoring all of these complaints, this mail app provides a lesser mail experience than any competitor I’ve seen. The UI is essentially a poorly built, janky web app which fails repeatedly and doesn’t feel trustworthy.

If their UI is of this quality, then I imagine their security is broken somewhere in the same way.

by LuckyLuki

I established a couple of email address boxes and started to transfer emails to them from other boxes I planned to shut down as well as made them default to some sites and accounts. About 4 days later TUTANOTA locked me out of both of them and absolutely nothing I did would allow me to log back in. The lockout sequence or my credentials did not work. I repeatedly emailed and pleaded with the developer over a period of about a week but TUTANOTA did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help me recover my data from these accounts. Furthermore I cannot switch email notification to my sites to other email account as in order to switch you must have access to the emails link sent to tutanota email ; which I cannot access. A complete failure and a waste if time . I cannot recommend this service

by Shad0wChaser

Switched to Tutanota for privacy and encryption. That part seems to work well. Unfortunately, coming from Outlook, I feel like I lost 5 years of app improvement and innovation. The client is missing basic features that enhance user experience. I’ve seen 5-6 updates so far and none of them add in these features. For example, swiping right does not go back to the email list, instead you have to go to the very top left and press the back arrow—annoying when you have a tall phone. Another example is pinch to zoom. There’s no flexibility in content size or ability to pan around. I could point out other things but you get the point. Hope to see it improve soon.

by Greenheart777

I normally don’t write reviews but i felt that it was time to share my voice on Tutanota. First of all, I do love the fact that it’s a secure email however there are some flaws. First, I’d like to point out that when I get email on Tutanota, Tuta shows a number 1 on my iPhone regardless if I have 1 email or 20. I would love to see this issue get fixed.

Secondly, when you are on the Tutanota app, if you slide an email to the left, it should allow you to delete it. Sometimes when I slide emails that I no longer want to the left, it “bounces” back and I have to try again until the email deletes. This is rather annoying.

Thirdly, there is no option to “search your email”. For better organizing and storage, it would be truly helpful to search your messages by sender, message phrases, etc, especially when you are paying Tutanota to have an entire gigabyte of email, which to some people is a lot of mail.

Fourthly, in the spam folder, i have to move some emails to the inbox. Tutanota does not give me an option that I have seen to declare them as a “safe email” or “not spam”.

I really like having a secure email and I do like Tutanota. I just know that they could seriously improve their service, get rid of the bugs and add some good features to make things easier on their customers and users. That is why I gave Tutanota 3 stars.

by Wilbert R

Great app but you should think about “offline” features, I can’t check already downloaded emails if I’m not online, I can’t even check my calendar! Regarding calendar, it’s a bit basic, for example, if I want to create a recurring event on the 2nd Tuesday every month, is not possible, it only allows to repeat events on the same day each month.
Is there any specific reason why calendar and contacts don’t sync with my iPhone contacts and the default calendar app? That would be great! because I won’t have two separate lists of contacts and calendars: the local ones and the ones in the Tutanota app.

by GeekyGirl007

I really love Tuta BUT there is one thing I absolutely dislike about it - the delete function. You have to swipe, hold and then release for it to delete. I understand this may be a safety measure to ensure you don’t delete anything accidentally but it’s very clunky and unnecessary. I could just as easily go recover it from trash and would rather do so. I have to attempt to delete an email 3-5 times before it actually does, I swipe and hold and it constantly just slides out from under my finger even if I’m trying to hold it in place so that I have to keep trying until it finally deletes. I spend more time trying to delete emails than anything else. I absolutely HATE the delete function. If not for that I’d rate 5 stars for sure.

by Rottenweiler

I’m not a heavy email user but was looking for a secure way to handle my day to day and this has been my favorite thing that I’ve found. I love how everything is direct. The calendar is not complicated so no digging when you want to delete events, the email is as basic as it gets and I love it. The only reason I’m not 5 starring is because Tuta lacks the ability to pinch zoom. This is really necessary when some company’s send email with fixed fonts instead of making the html in the email dynamic or just for those of us with crappy eye sight. It seems that everything looks fine other than those little occasions. Great work.

by Nutella_98

Tuta doesn’t know that I have already read an email and reports that I have a new email, when I actually don’t.

I log in to my account using the browser on a desktop machine. While I am logged in, I receive a new email. I read it an delete it. However, I also receive a notification on my tablet that I have a new mail. I login on my tablet and there is no sign of a new email. Well, apparently Tuta doesn’t update the fact that I have already read the email on my desktop machine. And of course third time's a charm because my iPhone is also reporting the "new" email that I have already read on my desktop.

by Tomas 789

I like Tutanota also taked premium for try, but some must have feature are missing in app:
In iOS share menu tutanota not exists, so I could not easy send a photo, document or any file from apps, I need save file before in iOS folder and after only open the Tutanota and attach the file, too many steps. Most others email apps appeared in iOS share menu, also protonmail. This feature I called must have for email app! Also miss offline mode, but at least this in roadmap already. I probably will continue to use premium but we need the features!

by Timothy H Long

I’ve had a great experience with Tutanota (Email Client) and with their support team when I had a couple of questions. They offered me a private/secure way to use my email and that’s what I got when I switched. My email is way less cluttered with junk from ads etc. Do they have a ton of features compared to their competitors (Google, Microsoft, etc)? No, but they also haven’t been around near as long as their competitors, have a much smaller customer base currently, and they’re definitely improving things and adding new features so you can get the same experience but with the ability to keep your privacy. I’m very pleased with my experience so far!

by Space Mav Erick

I love Tuta . I even paid for the extra storage and features for the email all together. The best thing about it is privacy. Im glad there’s a company out there that respects someone’s privacy and strives to maintain that policy. The only downsides are just the way the settings are formatted in Tuta . It’s different from others so takes some getting used to. Also, im not sure if i just havent found it, but is there a way to preview emails in the lock screen? All i see is that I got an email so i have to unlock my phone and go into Tuta just to see who the email is from. Otherwise, great app, great company.

by Blossomny

This is great email app, I am using a paid version. Please add/fix the following:
1. Please keep images visible once I click “Show” button. The images become hidden again once I navigate to the next email. It would be great if there will be an option to enable/disable them by default (even it is not secure).
2. Please add a Notification screen with the following options:
- Sounds: Messages > change a notification sound in email to any other desirable tones (similar to Signal app).
- Notification content: Show > Email subject (on or off). I know this is not part of security, but I would like have an option to see what this email is about.
3. I would love to see a better design a future, similar to Proton mail, which is easy to navigate and edit things.
Overall, keep up a good work!

by PL1111

I have been using Tutanota for about a month on my iPhone and iPad. I discovered a desktop version on their website a week or so ago and have been using that on my Windows 10 machine. I have had a few questions that I have addressed to the developers.
I am only using the email, not the calendar so can’t comment on that but so far the email has been great from my point of view, and the developers have been responsive. I am quite happy with it.

by Brendanperry05

Here’s what I like:
- reliable email, calendar, contacts
- clean UI (with dark mode)
- secure and encrypted
- amazing pricing (way better than proton)
- desktop apps
- web access
- open source
- clear timeline of future features
- fast and communicative dev team

Here’s what needs some work:
- notifications don’t give any information, I believe this is already in the works to be updated
- sometimes I have to close Tuta and reopen it to see my new emails

Here’s what I’d like to see:
- reminders. Similar to Apple’s reminders app but build into the calendar tab so you can add reminders under the categories you already set for the calendar. This is the biggest thing I’d like to see added.

Tutanota is a great service with a great team. I chose them over proton mail because of the feature set and pricing. I’d recommend it although it’s not perfect. Keep up the great work dev team, I look forward to more great updates soon!

by Sanotehu

Love the Desktop and Mobile Clients. Do exactly what they’re supposed to. I never have issues sending or receiving emails. Enjoy the automatic E2EE with other Tutanota users. It’s awesome that they have search functionality for your encrypted emails, subject and body and all.

Things I wish they had/supported:

- More themes + Light and Dark theme that change according to the system setting. Signal is an E2EE IM and they manage to do this.
- Support for PGP encryption (some encryption is better than none to me). - Separate app for their calendar. I wish I could just open an app and use a synced, E2EE calendar. Same goes for a separate contact list app.
- Their notifications could be more descriptive, again Signal manages to do this.
- Wish I could use it as a default email app too :(

They just added biometric/pin lock/unlock to the apps so I’m looking forward to the development of their service!

by Hypoponera

I love this email service. The interface is very clean and simplistic, which is sort of calming to me (very unusual for an email inbox!). It’s incredible that they are willing to offer both a generous free plan without ads or tracking (meaning they are losing, not making, money on each person who signs up) and an extremely low-cost paid tier (only €12 per year). I feel like they aren’t appreciated enough for this contribution. Anyway, I haven’t spent much time with the iPhone app yet because I do most of my email on desktop, but I really like it so far!

by PippyL0ngst0cking

Yeah, yeah--I've experienced some of the little glitches in this (free for "regular" version) email service, but I've no doubt this very impressive company--I read much about Tutanota--will (or probably already had) fixed them.

Most important, I used Protonmail (perhaps Tutanota's best-known encrypted email provider) for quite a while--until I learned that Protonmail received a $2 million investment by a large U.S. company that seeks a "strong *ownership* stake" in the smaller companies it funds.

And as we know, Edward Snowden clued us in about US-owned companies being coerced into providing "backdoors"/intentionally compromising their own encryption measures, to allow government surveillance.

So, not being able to trust Protonmail any longer, I switched to Tutanota, which has never accepted (to my, or it seems anyone else's) knowledge such alarming start-up funding.

I find Tutanota's service exceptional, and I like it's pleasant/modern/~minimalist interface. I even entrust Tutanota with my domain/business email account. It's simply a great, trustworthy encrypted-email company that is responsive to user feedback and support queries.

by Cordiel

I really don’t understand how ProtonMail gets all the good press. I’ve used both for a few years now and vastly prefer tutanota. It’s at least as secure. It’s been open source much longer. They don’t even use cookies. The free version gives you much more stuff, but if you want to support them the price is much more reasonable. And if you need more space that’s reasonable, too.
It’s true they don’t have a whole suite of stuff available, but for email and calendar this is fine.
I’m hoping that soon we’ll be able to make this the default mail client, which is next on my wish list.
I hope more people find out how easy it is to have secure email.