Privacy and encryption are two important features that users have begun to consider in all software and services. It does not matter if you can prove it, but most courier services are followed in one way or another. They may not read your email, but they certainly profile you based on keywords. So, today, we are talking about Mailfence. It is a private and secure messaging service that wants to make sure your emails remain confidential.
Before you begin, Mailfence offers a free and paid email service. In this post, we talk about the free service.
Mailfence offers a private and secure messaging service
The free plan provides 500 MB for e-mails, 500 MB for documents, 1000 calendar events, a mailfence group, and two-factor authentication. Here is the list of features you need to know:
- Privacy and Security
- Mailfence Group
- User interface
- Editing documents and sharing files
- Calendar of events with polling function
1) Confidentiality and security
Here is the complete list of features available for all models. This is the base on which the service was built. What I liked was that they maintained an up-to-date transparency and a warranty report. The Belgian courts only bind them.
- No follow-up and advertising
- No third-party access to your data
- Encrypted emails using end-to-end encryption AES-256 / OpenPGP (E2EE)
- Digital signatures
- Strict laws on privacy and transparency.
- Integrated key store
- Two-factor authentication
What is important is the way e-mails and messages are transmitted. All communications go through their servers via SSL / TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption. Your sent email remains secure as long as the receiving server supports TLS.
2) Mailfence Secure Group
This is a nice feature that allows you to create a group with other Mailfence users, then share emails safely, documents, calendar events, contacts, discussion with group members, etc. You can create a group in the free version.
You can configure how each member can handle the data. The default rights of group members are that they can see all the folders and data sharing, but they can not add or delete anything. This is useful when you want to share with multiple people without creating anything noise.
3) user interface
The web interface is pretty good and offers all the basic features that can be expected. You have access to emails, documents, an agenda at the top, an Outlook inbox, a contact book, and more. During my brief test period, the interface is perfectly built and should suit almost everyone. It also supports tags if it is used to manage emails and documents.
4) Editing documents and sharing files
It supports most office documents, such as .txt, .docx, .xlsx, .pptx. While their FAQ says you can create them, but I guess it's only when you pay for it. In free mode, you can edit text documents. Apart from this, basic file operations such as creating a copy, tagging a document, searching for files are available.
You can access these files on your offline computer. The service supports the virtual drive feature. You will get a unique URL that you can enter in the browser, then you will provide your user name, password. You can then add, delete and delete files from here.
If you use Dropbox, Google Drive, you can also connect to these services and attach files.
5) Calendar of events with survey function
Like any other email service, you get calendar events, but what sets it apart is the addition of the poll function. Once you have created an event, you can add multiple slots and let people vote. The one with the biggest vote becomes the final program. Of course, you can always change.
Mailfence Private and Secure Email Service are like an excellent service offering a free level to people who can live with the Web interface. If you are planning a job for which all conversations need to be secure, you can use this service without worry. Of course, you will have limitations with the free version, but you can still upgrade if it works for you. You can check it out at Mailfence.com.
Demo version
The company also offers a demo version that you can use to explore all the features. This is important for those who do not want to leave their email id to another service. You can try their demo version by entering "demoen" in the user name field and "demoen" in the password field.