this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Protonmail

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Using ProtonMail with a custom, previous imap-capable domain: what happens to the original inbox? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Transitioning to PM (and generally speaking, to Proton For Everything) from Gmail, I was following the manual when I realised that PM wanted to replace my privately-owned, with mailbox service included, mail address.

What I've been doing for 15 years was hide a gmail adress behind my own domain name (quality of apps, quantity of storage, general user friendliness...); people would still see me as [email protected], but I had the convenience of that google service while writing"as" me@me.

It also offered me a layer of safety, since downtime does happen, and hopping to the poor roundcube webmail interface of my hosting company allowed me to keep business as usual. Believe it or not, google has failed more often than that regional service provider. lol.

Now to the question: Am I right to understand PM will dutifully catch all emails to [email protected], the DNS settings will kill my old-school IMAP mailbox to push them towards [email protected], and I will have to commit to trust Proton 99.95% (their current SLA for customers like me)?

Will I loose that last line of defense, Roundcube Webmail straight from my private provider?

Thanks is advance. For obvious reasons, I'm not on twitter, reddit & all that.

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[–] drudoo 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m very confused what your previous setup was, but yes, proton has catch all for custom domains (fx [email protected] can be send to [email protected]) and as soon as you switch your DNS, your new emails will start to arrive in your proton mailbox. I had a custom domain with another provider for 10 years and I switched the dns and instantly I got all new emails in my proton account. Of course old emails aren’t transferred and will stay with your old provider.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! Am guessing you're able to write as [email protected] from [email protected] then?

The way gmail handle this is crude, but effective: you give it your hosting company' provided mailbox details (address, port, username, PW) and it "impersonates" you.

It is super-convenient since the login data is provided by the hosting company, you just fill out a setup form in gmail. And your OG mailbox is still right there, untouched unless needed.

I stopped the transition process when I realised I didn't know what I was doing, blindly adding custom entries in my DNS host setup... Well I guess going back is just deleting the custom entries I added for Proton, and restoring the original ones.

[–] drudoo 1 points 1 year ago

There’s no impersonation. You don’t “write as [email protected] from [email protected]”. You write as [email protected] from [email protected].

After you login to proton and starts to write an email, you can select which mail-address to send it from. It is send directly with that address.

Your proton login should be seen as a login and not an email account. When you are logged in, you can use several different emails to send from.

Gmail’s way is not the proton way.

If you switch over your dns, then you can control everything with proton. You will be able to do what you want, it’s just a better way of doing it than using Gmail.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yes, that's how it works. If you change the DNS settings it will send everything straight to proton.

Ofcourse you could also do auto-forwarding. But as far as I know this disables the possibility to send from me@me.

It's annoying, isn't it? :-/

I've also noticed that if you want to send from anotherme@me you have to create an identity with that name first, which cannot be done through the app (you need to log in through the browser first). I typically register at services like servicename@me and when I email them they are always confused that I am sending mail from me@me (sometimes they refuse service because they expect me to send from servicename@me) so I have to go through the hassle of creating an identity.

Sure there's reasons for protonmail to work this way - but it's very annoying. I guess there's always a trade-off between security and convenience.