Tutanota to offer premium e2e encrypted email free to non-profits

Freemium, open source encrypted email service, Tutanota, which is based in Germany, is offering to “donate” (as it puts it) the business version of its end-to-end encrypted email service to non-profits — so they either don’t have to pay for the service, or can tap into it at a half-price discount.

“We are donating Tutanota because we believe the world can change and must change, particularly when it comes to the problem of mass surveillance. With this donation we want to do our part and make a difference to change the Internet for the better,” says co-founder Matthias Pfau.

“We at Tutanota see ourselves as Freedom Fighters. We believe in human rights such as our right to privacy and freedom of speech. But as these rights are being cut by governments around the world, we need to fight back.”

Tutanota does already offer a free service for private individuals, with 1GB of storage. But its premium product offers various paid tiers, starting from €1.20 per month, which includes things like extra storage, extra aliases, the ability to host at your own domain, additional power-user features, and so on.

The donation offer, which Tutanota notes is being run in conjunction with two partner organizations which will be collecting a “small administration fee” to cover their costs (so it’s not 100 per cent gratis) —  is currently available to non-profits in Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Pfau says more countries will follow — including the UK and Poland. While he notes that non-profits located elsewhere can still get the business account with a 50 per cent discount.

Also worth noting: Non-profits taking up either offer can only get 50 user accounts (so larger organizations are going to fall outside this offer).

The free offer also includes 100 aliases and 1 GB of storage.

On the latter, Pfau says more storage can be added if needed — thought non-profits will need to pay for any expansion.

“Storage has to be added at the normal prices as we ourselves have to pay for the servers. However we keep prices for this as low as possible, and organizations can add the required storage package that is then shared among all users,” he adds.

Tutanota, which started back in 2011, now has more than two million users, and “tens of thousands” of paying customers, according to Pfau — with its best markets being in Europe and the US.