It was fun while it lasted. The recent addition of PGP support was very welcome, and I thought that such support might have been a sign that they were in it for the long-term with the email product, but I thought wrong.
Dear Skiff Community,
We are excited to share that Skiff is joining Notion.
Skiff's mission is to bring freedom to the internet by helping people collaborate and communicate with freedom and privacy. We see a deep alignment with Notion’s vision to build a connected workspace and enable everyone to build tools that reflect their values.
We’re extremely excited to accelerate our mission by joining forces with Notion’s world-class team. We sincerely hope that the Skiff community will join us for this next stage of our journey. We’re pursuing big plans for making all of our online lives freer and more empowered, and these plans will carry forward directly the ambitions we’ve strived for alongside the Skiff community.
As we begin to shift focus to our shared efforts with Notion, we will be closing down Skiff's product suite after a 6-month sunset period We are deeply appreciative of the trust users have extended to us, and we are committed to honoring that trust by ensuring that all data on Skiff is easily exportable. For the next 6 months, Skiff services will continue to operate without disruption, and users can freely duplicate, migrate, or export data. You can now also set up a forwarding address to redirect mail to any other provider.
Our commitment to privacy and security is unchanged. All user data remains end-to-end encrypted, and Skiff products will never monetize your data. Accounts and data on Skiff will not be converted into Notion accounts.
We encourage you to export your data and migrate custom domains within the next 6 months. We’ve prepared this guide to make that process as easy as possible. For any other questions, our support team is readily available via the in-app “Send feedback” option or at [email protected].
The Skiff community has lifted, inspired, and energized us at every step. We are humbled by your support and we apologize for any disappointment or inconvenience this change may cause you. We remain as committed as ever to bringing about the vision for a better internet that brought us together. Thank you for being part of the Skiff family, and we look forward to continuing to serve you with our future efforts.
Sincerely, Skiff Team
It's probably about as likely that other email service providers will shut down (or at least make the service they provide worse) unexpectedly.
A more sustainable solution would be to make it easier to self-host similar services and giving your contacts more help with transitioning to more privacy-respecting solutions.
I'm personally not very worried about proton.me or tuta.com shutting down without giving me much time to replace them, but it's a possibility I keep in mind as it would be inconvenient if that happened, and I can do a little bit to make it less inconvenient if it does happen (e.g. by registering alternate email addresses with any person or company who wants to talk to me).