Skiff Mail Alternatives After the Shutdown and Forwarding Cut-Off

Skiff Mail is gone. The privacy-focused email and productivity suite was bought by Notion, wound down soon after, and the automatic forwarding that softened the blow has since been switched off. If you are only now discovering that mail sent to your old Skiff address seems to vanish, you are not imagining it — the grace period ended, and there is no longer anything at the other end.

This guide is the recovery plan. It covers what happened and when, whether any of your old mail can still be reached, what to do about the dead address, and the best Skiff Mail alternatives after the shutdown to land on. Because Skiff sold itself on end-to-end encryption, the honest top picks here are the encrypted providers that actually replace what you lost — not our own product, which does a different job and is covered plainly further down.

What happened to Skiff Mail?#

Skiff was an end-to-end encrypted email service with an attached suite — Pages, Drive, and Calendar. Notion acquired it on 9 February 2024, and the mail service was scheduled to wind down over the following months rather than close overnight.

The core services mostly shut down on 9 August 2024, six months after the acquisition. Automatic forwarding of mail sent to Skiff addresses then continued for a further six months, until 9 February 2025, after which Skiff addresses stopped receiving anything at all. All data stored on Skiff — email, files, contacts, and calendar events — was removed once that window closed.

The important takeaway for anyone reading this in 2026: every one of those dates is in the past. Forwarding has been off for more than a year, so this is no longer a "migrate before the deadline" situation. It is a clean-up: point the world at a new address and rebuild anything you did not export in time.

Is Skiff Mail forwarding still working, and can I recover mail sent to my old address?#

No. Automatic forwarding ended on 9 February 2025. Mail sent to a Skiff address today is not delivered anywhere and is not queued for you — it simply does not reach a working mailbox, and there is no Skiff inbox left to hold it.

You also cannot recover it from Skiff. Once the service closed, the stored data was deleted, so there is no archive to log back into and no support desk to restore it. If you exported your mailbox before the cut-off, you already hold that copy as files you can import into a new provider. If you did not, that mail is gone, and the only route to a specific old message is asking the person who has a copy — the sender or another recipient — to resend it.

So the practical fix is not technical, it is administrative: get a new mailbox, then work through the senders that still have your Skiff address and update them. The next sections cover where to land and how to prioritise that clean-up.

The short answer: where to move#

If encryption was the reason you chose Skiff, the closest replacement is Proton Mail. It gives you a zero-access, end-to-end encrypted mailbox with the same kind of surrounding suite Skiff had — Calendar, Drive, and more — plus a free tier and a built-in import tool to pull mail in from another account. For most former Skiff users, that is the least-compromise landing spot.

If you want the mailbox itself to be as encrypted as possible and are happy to keep the feature set lean, Tuta (formerly Tutanota) is the other strong pick: end-to-end encrypted, built on its own protocol rather than standard IMAP, with a free tier and an encrypted calendar.

Those two are the honest top picks for replacing an encrypted mailbox, because that is the specific thing Skiff was. Further down we cover standards-based privacy providers for people who valued Skiff's polish more than its cryptography, and — with full disclosure — where our own product, AI Emaily, does and does not fit.

How we compared#

This is a capability comparison, not a hands-on lab test — we did not re-run every provider's onboarding for this piece. Instead we compared on documented, checkable dimensions, which is also what you should re-verify on each vendor's own page before you commit, since plans and features change.

The dimensions that actually matter for a Skiff refugee are narrower than a generic "best email" list, because you are replacing a specific product with a specific promise.

• Encryption model — true zero-access end-to-end encryption (only you hold the keys) versus standards-based privacy (no ads or profiling, but the provider can technically access mail).
• The surrounding suite — Skiff bundled Calendar, Drive, and documents, so a like-for-like move often means a suite, not just a mailbox.
• Import path — whether the provider can pull in an exported archive or connect to an old account, which matters if you saved a Skiff export before February 2025.
• Packaging shape — free tier, paid-only with a trial, custom-domain support — described in shape rather than price, because pricing moves and you should confirm it live.
• Platform coverage — web, desktop, iOS, and Android, since Skiff ran everywhere and you probably want the same.

Comparison table#

Proton Mail — the closest thing to Skiff's whole suite#

Proton Mail is the natural home for most former Skiff users, because it matches the shape of what you lost. It is end-to-end encrypted with zero-access encryption, meaning Proton cannot read the mail in your inbox, and it comes with a surrounding ecosystem — Calendar, Drive, a password manager, a VPN, and documents — the same suite logic Skiff followed.

Practically, it also has the smoothest on-ramp. Proton keeps a permanent free plan, so you can stand up a mailbox without paying, and its Easy Switch import tool can connect an existing account and pull mail across, which is useful if you routed Skiff to another inbox before the shutdown or are consolidating from a stopgap address. Custom domains and more storage sit on the paid tiers.

The trade-off is the one inherent to any zero-access provider: features that need the server to read your mail are limited by design, and you manage another account and key model. For a Skiff user, that is a familiar bargain rather than a new one. Confirm current plans and import options on Proton's own page before you migrate.

Tuta — the most-encrypted mailbox, kept simple#

Tuta (renamed from Tutanota) is the other true end-to-end encrypted replacement. It encrypts more of each message than PGP-based systems do and uses its own encryption protocol rather than standard IMAP, which is the source of both its strength and its main limitation.

The strength is coverage: Tuta's model protects the mailbox contents and extends to an encrypted, zero-knowledge calendar and contacts, and it keeps a free tier. The limitation is compatibility — because it does not speak standard IMAP, you generally use Tuta through its own apps rather than a third-party client, and importing or exporting works differently from a conventional provider.

Choose Tuta if maximum encryption with a lean, focused feature set is the priority and you do not need a broad productivity suite around the mail. It is a smaller ecosystem than Proton by design. As always, verify the current plans, platform apps, and import behaviour on Tuta's site before committing your primary address to it.

Fastmail — for people who valued Skiff's polish more than its cryptography#

Not every Skiff user was there for zero-access encryption; plenty chose it for the clean, fast, ad-free experience. If that describes you, Fastmail is worth a serious look. It is a privacy-respecting, standards-based provider — no ads, no profiling — with genuinely good web, desktop, and mobile apps and strong support for custom domains and masked aliases.

The honest caveat is that Fastmail is not end-to-end encrypted. It secures mail in transit and at rest, but the provider can technically access your mailbox, which is a different promise from Skiff's. In exchange you get full IMAP and JMAP compatibility, so it works with almost any email client, and a polished migration experience.

Fastmail is paid-only with a trial rather than a free tier. Pick it if usability, standards, and custom-domain email matter more to you than cryptographic zero-access. Check the current trial length and plans on Fastmail's own page.

Mailbox.org and Posteo — standards-based European privacy#

If you want privacy grounded in open standards rather than a proprietary encrypted model, two German providers stand out. Mailbox.org is a paid, standards-based service with a Guard feature that adds PGP encryption on top, plus a calendar, cloud storage, and office documents — a suite-shaped option for people who prefer PGP and interoperability to a walled encrypted client.

Posteo is the minimalist, privacy-and-sustainability choice: paid-only, low-cost, standards-based, with encryption of your mailbox at rest and a strong stance on data minimisation. Notably, Posteo deliberately does not offer custom domains, so it suits a personal address rather than a branded one.

Both speak standard IMAP and SMTP, so they work with the client of your choice and make importing an exported Skiff archive straightforward. Neither is zero-access end-to-end encrypted by default, so weigh that against Proton or Tuta if cryptographic secrecy is non-negotiable. Verify plans and features on each provider's site.

Where AI Emaily fits — and where it does not#

One clear disclosure first: we build AI Emaily, so treat this section as us being straight about a boundary rather than nominating ourselves as a Skiff replacement. AI Emaily is not an encrypted email provider. It does not host mailboxes, and it is not a zero-access, end-to-end encrypted service like Skiff, Proton, or Tuta. If a private mailbox is what you need, pick one of those, not us.

What AI Emaily is: an AI email client that connects on top of an existing mailbox — Gmail, Outlook, or any IMAP account, including Proton by way of its Bridge — and adds triage, drafting in a voice you configure, and an approval-first agent that never sends without you. So it is the layer you would add after you have chosen where to land, not the place you land.

There is an honest tension worth naming here, because it is exactly why we are not on the encrypted-provider list. An AI assistant has to read your mail to summarise, triage, and draft on it, which is fundamentally at odds with a zero-access model where only you can read anything. AI Emaily reflects that by not training any model on your mail and keeping actions gated behind your approval with an undo and audit trail — but it is still an AI processing your messages, not zero-access encryption. If you moved to Proton or Tuta for cryptographic privacy, that is the right call, and AI on top is a separate decision, not a replacement for it.

How to choose for your situation#

The right move depends on which part of Skiff you will actually miss. Match your situation to one of these and you have your answer without over-thinking it.

1. 1

   You need zero-access encryption and the full suite

   Go to Proton Mail. It is the closest structural match to Skiff — encrypted mailbox plus Calendar, Drive, and more — with a free tier and an import tool.

2. 2

   You want maximum encryption, minimum clutter

   Choose Tuta. Broad encryption coverage and a simple feature set, at the cost of standard-protocol compatibility.

3. 3

   You were there for the experience, not the cryptography

   Choose Fastmail for polish and custom domains, or Mailbox.org and Posteo for standards-based European privacy. None are zero-access, so skip these if that is your hard line.

4. 4

   You have already moved and want AI on top

   Add AI Emaily to your new Gmail, Outlook, or IMAP inbox for triage and approval-first drafting. We build it, and it is a client layer, not an encrypted mailbox.

Cleaning up your old Skiff address#

Whichever provider you choose, the address change is the part that actually protects you from missing mail, since nothing forwards anymore. Work it in priority order rather than trying to remember every account at once.

1. 1

   Update security-critical accounts first

   Change the contact and recovery email on your bank, primary email provider, password manager, and any two-factor recovery that pointed at Skiff. A dead recovery address is a real lock-out risk.

2. 2

   Then the accounts you use monthly

   Utilities, subscriptions, work tools, and shopping accounts. Watch your new inbox for the confirmation emails these send when you change the address on file.

3. 3

   Tell the people who email you

   A short note to important contacts with your new address prevents the slow trickle of messages that used to forward and now silently fail.

4. 4

   Import any Skiff export you saved

   If you exported your mailbox or files before 9 February 2025, import that archive into your new provider so your history lives in one place. If you did not export in time, that history is not recoverable from Skiff.