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 | Mailbox | Mailing lists2 | registrar | Use w/ your own domain name | inception |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.autistici.org/ | Associazione AI-ODV | It. | yes | yes | no | no | 2001 |
| https://www.systemli.org/ | ? | Ger. | yes | yes | no | no | 2003 |
| https://www.hostsharing.net/ | Genossenschaft | Ger. | yes | yes | via partners? | yes | 2000 |
| https://in-berlin.de/ | Verein | Ger. | yes | yes | via partners | yes | 1995 |
| https://electricembers.coop/ | ? | U.S. | yes | ? | no | ? | 2001 |
| https://ouvaton.coop/ | société coop.3 | Fr. | yes | yes | via partners | yes | 2001 |
| https://www.webarchitects.coop/ | Co-operative 4 | U.K. | yes | yes | via partners | yes | 20115 |
| https://mayfirst.coop/en/ | 501(c) | U.S. | yes | ? | no | ? | 2019 |
| https://disroot.org/ | non-profit6 | Nl. | yes | no | no | yes | 2019 |
| https://riseup.net | ? | U.S.? | yes | yes | no | no | 1999 |
| https://lebureau.coop/ | société coop (TBC) | Fr. | no | no | via partners | - | 2024 |
| https://pub.solar/ | non-registered | Ger. | yes | yes | no | no | 20237 |
FAQ
What provider shall I 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).
Applications, digital territories or servers which usage proletarianise users↩︎
with Mailman or Sympa↩︎
Société coopérative de consommation à forme anonyme vendant au public↩︎
Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies↩︎
date of registration as a coop but operating since 1998↩︎
Disroot’s 2023 annual report available on their homepage as of October 2024↩︎
According to first commit↩︎
personal computing digital literacy wiki blog post publishing
