# Rootshell email service

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Rootshell email service and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended as an independent, non-corporate end-to-end encrypted email service that passed an email privacy tester. Critics say emails are decrypted on the server, undermining the E2EE claim.

## Why people recommend it

- Passed an email privacy test (1 comments): "You defeated https://www.emailprivacytester.com straight off. Which is more than most new email services." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48389553))
- Independent, non-corporate email provider (1 comments): "the more stand alone non corporate email providers the better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388530))

## What people warn about

- Sign-up and web errors (4 comments): "Why is the error message so short to the point where I (the user) don’t know what to do next?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48389956)) "It doesn’t work, upon registering, you get “key bundle missing - please try again”" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392813)) "Your DANE is broken. Try any of a number of freely available online validators." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48389832))
- Server-side decryption undermines E2EE claim (3 comments): "emails are returned from the server in plain text. This means that the emails are decrypted on the server, which defeats the entire purpose of E2EE" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48390515)) "The E2EE claim is BS, unless qualified by saying that the platform supports GPG-encrypted emails only." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48394234)) "Is it the kind where they say the Server is an “end” and therefore that makes it E2E?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392339))
- Security claims hard to verify (2 comments): "it wouldn't pass a code review, let alone security audit" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392736)) "this process is impossible to know for sure" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48443697))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Fastmail](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fastmail.md): 388 recommend
- [Proton Mail](https://hackerapproved.com/p/proton-mail.md): 196 recommend
- [Tuta Mail](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tuta.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Rootshell email service", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rootshell/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).