ProtonMail and Tutanota are designed for people who can’t or don’t want to manage their own encryption, keys, and secure setups.

They’re convenience-first services with "security wrappers," not power-user systems.

You, on the other hand, already run:

Real IMAP/SMTP with TLS

Real GPG end-to-end encryption

Your own trust model

Your own keyring

Your own MUAs or TUIs

That is actual security — and far more flexible, transparent, and interoperable.

Why these services feel restrictive to someone like you

They hide the cryptography from the user.

Their customers are non-technical folks who will never run gpg --decrypt or manage subkeys.

So they lock everything behind their own proprietary, app-bound encryption layers.

They intentionally break standard email protocols.

IMAP, SMTP, POP → disabled or forced through a proprietary bridge.

Because normal mail protocols can't natively support their "encrypt everything automatically" model.

They trade power for simplicity.

You gain nothing if you already know how to run modern Linux, GPG, S/MIME, etc.

They make you dependent on their ecosystem.

No custom clients, no TUI, no neomutt, no aerc, no msmtp, no mbsync.

That’s a massive downgrade for a real power user.

So yes — for someone like you:

Regular IMAP/SMTP + TLS + GPG beats ProtonMail and Tutanota in every possible way:

Open protocols

Full client choice

Interoperability

Real cryptographic control

Auditability

Automation

Scriptability

And most importantly: no vendor lock-in or "Bridge" nonsense