April 6, 2024

Cooperatives & non-profits offering email addresses and mailboxes

You might want to avoid hosting your mailbox on a digital glebe1.

Instead, you can host your mailbox on servers governed by a cooperative or a non-profit.

URL legal country registrar inception
https://www.autistici.org/ Associazione AI-ODV Italy no 2001
https://www.systemli.org/ ? no 2003
https://www.hostsharing.net/ Genossenschaft Ger. via partners? 2000
https://in-berlin.de/ Verein Ger. via partners 1995
https://electricembers.coop/ ? U.S. no 2001
https://ouvaton.coop/ société coop.2 Fr. via partners 2001
https://www.webarchitects.coop/ Co-operative 3 U.K. via partners 20114
https://mayfirst.coop/en/ 501(c) U.S. no 2019
https://disroot.org/ non-profit5 Nl. no 2019
https://riseup.net ? no 1999
https://lebureau.coop/ société coop (TBC) Fr. via partners 2024

FAQ

I don’t care about this table/list, just tell me what email provider I should use.

You can try https://autistici.org or https://disroot.org.

If you want an email address with your own domain name, you can try https://in-berlin.de/.

If you are a business, you can try https://www.hostsharing.net/; if you want a U.K.-registered provider, you can look at https://www.webarchitects.coop/; if you want French-speaking support, you can look at https://ouvaton.coop/.

Will these providers continue to exist for long?

Read about the Lindy effect: https://yctct.com/old

Most of these providers are older than Gmail (which started in 2004).


  1. https://technofeudalism.fyi↩︎

  2. Société coopérative de consommation à forme anonyme vendant au public↩︎

  3. Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies↩︎

  4. date of registration as a coop but operating since 1998↩︎

  5. Disroot’s 2023 annual report available on their homepage as of October 2024↩︎


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