I've used ProtonMail, Tutanota, and a dozen throwaway services. All clearnet. All asking for something before you can use them.
Six months ago I switched to BRO MAIL (bro-mail.xyz) for all Tor-related communication. It's a hosted email service that lives entirely on a .onion address — Postfix + Dovecot + Roundcube, standard stack, just running inside Tor.
Registration
90 seconds. Username + password. No verification, no phone number.
Day-to-day use
Used it for forum registrations, dark web service signups, and correspondence with other Tor users. Also connected it to Thunderbird via IMAP over SOCKS5 — that setup worked without issues.
What actually works well
- Tor-to-Tor delivery (BRO MAIL to BRO MAIL) is fast and reliable
- IMAP in Thunderbird via Tor proxy — solid
- Registering for .onion services without exposing a clearnet email — exactly the use case
What's limited
- Clearnet deliverability (Gmail/Outlook) is inconsistent — some messages arrive, some go to spam. This is a known problem for small mail servers without reputation. Not a dealbreaker for my use case, but worth knowing
- No E2E encryption — messages stored on server. Use PGP on top if you need that
- No custom domain support
Uptime over 6 months
Two outages. One brief (under 1 hour), one around 3 hours. No message loss either time. Better than I expected for an independent service.
Comparison
| Network | Clearnet delivery | Privacy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| BRO MAIL | Tor-native | Inconsistent | Network-level anonymity |
| ProtonMail | Clearnet + Tor | Excellent | E2E encryption |
| Tutanota | Clearnet | Excellent | E2E encryption |
BRO MAIL isn't trying to replace ProtonMail. It's solving a different problem: email that never touches clearnet infrastructure. If that's your threat model, it's one of very few services that actually delivers it.
Still my main Tor contact after 6 months. 4/5.
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