Dear all,

Apologies for the long wait in responding here. Eddie, I realize that you've been trying to get this topic on the table for quite some time now. Thank you for your patience and persistence in following up.

Referring back to an earlier discussion on this topic on the Board list, there seemed to be broad agreement that obtaining a mailbox for the Communication Team would be a normal operational expense, and that the cost involved was modest and acceptable. In that light, I'm fine with approving a budget of roughly 30 EUR/USD per year for a mailbox service, if that is what's needed to unblock your work and better support current and future activities.

Before moving ahead, I'd like to make sure we fully understand any technical or organizational implications of the switch:Finally, to be explicit: let's leave any discussion around sponsorship, partnerships, or logo placement out of scope for now. If the service is useful, we should simply purchase it and move on. We can always revisit broader collaboration questions separately, if and when that makes sense.

Kind regards,

Guus

On Sun, Feb 8, 2026 at 3:39 PM eevvoor <eevvoor@mailbox.org> wrote:
Sounds reasonable to me.
I have very good experience with mailbox for both my professional and my
private account.
Thx Eddie!

On 2/8/26 4:09 PM, E.M. wrote:
> TLDR: XSF Communication Team is asking to switch to mailbox.org for 30
> EUR per year.
>
> Dear all,
>
> We would like to find a new email address for the XSF Communication Team
> that supports all our growing needs. Protonmail no longer meets these
> needs for a long time, either for free or at a reasonable price (while
> still respecting their service).
>
> We need such an account because Protonmail asked for a paid subscription
> to use SMTP with e.g. Thunderbird (yes really). We are also limited in
> organizing emails and the inbox as this is also restricted in the free
> plan. Additionally, we are currently blocked to use Reddit and LinkedIn
> with SocialBu with our Protonmail.
>
> We are therefore looking for a decent host that also supports a good
> level of compliance, privacy under GDPR, and possibly comes with more
> capabilities at a reasonable price. We have created a service comparison
> table here: https://pad.nixnet.services/331YAjbUQOmAWa2Octx_DA?view
>
> Later on, we could also ask Mailbox.org if they could provide a standard
> account for free. As they even used to run an XMPP server, they might be
> willing to support an account. However, I am not sure how such a
> collaboration should look like.
>
> Firstly, we are blocked being fully operational and able to expand as we
> could at the moment and I would like to switch first. Then we can expand
> cooperation and maybe even sponsoring.
>
> On the other hand, switching to mailbox.org would provide us with
> additional organisational tooling that could benefit the XSF and the
> XMPP Community such as custom domains and other office tools they provide.
>
> Best regards,
> Eddie