The default settings of email were overdue for a change

Ordinary mail travels like a postcard. Every server it passes through can, in principle, read it, and the only thing standing between the contents and a stranger is a promise in a privacy policy. Mailfence exists to put that postcard into an envelope. It is an encrypted mail service based in Belgium and run independently for many years, and it builds on the OpenPGP standard to provide end-to-end encryption and digital signatures. Once the sender has encrypted a message, only the recipient holding the matching private key can read it, and the signature proves the mail was not altered on the way and that its origin can be verified.

That second half is the part people forget. Encryption hides the content, but it says nothing about who wrote the message, and in ordinary mail a forged sender address is trivial. A signature is what restores that certainty, and having both in the same client is the reason the arrangement is worth the trouble at all.

More than encryption: a whole private office

Encrypted mailboxes on their own are not rare. What separates Mailfence is that it arrives as a suite: calendar, contacts, documents and notes belong to the same account as the mailbox. Teams can also use group encrypted mail for collaboration, with keys shared inside the group so that messages are transparent to colleagues and encrypted to everyone outside. That fits law firms, consultancies and journalists, places where people need to work together and to keep the material closed at the same time.

The data sits in Belgium and falls under the European GDPR, which is a different kind of promise from a company statement: it is an obligation someone can be held to. The business model is equally plain. There is no advertising, no tracking and no profiling, and the revenue comes entirely from subscriptions, which means the customer is the one being served rather than the one being measured.

Who it suits

There is a free tier, so encrypted sending and receiving can be tried before any decision about paying. The paid plans unlock more storage, aliases and a custom domain, which are exactly the things a person outgrows a free account for.

It is friendly enough for a newcomer. OpenPGP keys can be generated and managed inside the browser, with no command line anywhere in the process, which removes the step that used to end most attempts at PGP. At the same time the keys remain under your control, and advanced users can export them and keep their own copy. That combination, easy by default and open when you want it, is rarer than it sounds.

For anyone who wants mail that stays under control, an origin that can be proven and a business that survives inspection, a service that has been running for years is a calmer bet than the newest product to appear and the next one to vanish.

There is a second reason the default setting matters. Mail is not only in transit; it also lies on the provider s disks for years, and a provider able to read it represents a permanent exposure rather than a risk of a moment. Encrypting at the source is the only arrangement in which the stored copy is already unreadable to the party storing it.

That is why the strength of the cryptography and the age of the operator have to be judged together. Keys expire, get revoked and are remade, and an operator that disappears leaves a pile of files nothing can open any more. Years of independent operation are not a line on a CV here, they are part of the security.

Mailfence shows that a private mailbox does not have to choose between secure and usable. PGP encryption is made to work out of the box, the suite covers everyday office work, and the way it earns money stands up to being looked at. The troublesome nine tenths of mail encryption have already been done for you.