“Skiff – Private, encrypted, secure email – 10 GB free” was too good to be true: discontinued (“sunsetting”) at 2024-08-09
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/04/09
Skiff (email service) – Wikipedia already mentioned them as too good to be true for a while:
It launched in 2021 and was developed in San Francisco, California. In November 2023, it reached its own record of almost 2 million users (17 months since launch).
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In a 2023 article, PCMAG reviewed Skiff pointing that Skiff offers “End-to-end encryption for email, collaboration, and calendar”, making complements to the fact of its services being free and easy to use (while being available as Apps for macOS, Android, and iOS).
This was all in the midst of me trying to find another place for our mail than GMail, and I am considering Proton Mail (which is profitable and offers both paid and free plans).
I had heard about Skiff Mail, and was lucky to not have included them on the shortlist as mid February, the above Wikipedia articled was updated to contain these two sections:
Skiff was acquired by Notion on 9 February 2024. Users will have six months to migrate their data before the closure of their services.
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In February 2024, Notion acquired Skiff and it is no longer open for registration. All user data will be deleted 6 months after the purchase date, but emails will continue to forward to your new address until February 9th of 2025.
The irony is that even after this, these two Skiff mail web-pages still advertise their free service:
- [Wayback/Archive] Skiff – Private, encrypted, secure email – 10 GB free
We are excited to share that Skiff is joining Notion.
Nothing about it closing down, only about joining Notion. Oh, and a link to the below mentioned migration page. Which – from just the title – could be steps to migrate from Skiff to Notion. It isn’t.
- [Wayback/Archive] Pricing – Read more
Use Skiff for free with your whole team. Upgrade for 1 TB storage, custom domains, and advanced admin features.
Now that interest rates have hiked during and after the 2021–2023 inflation, tech startups are having a hard time, and even some bigger tech companies have. So if your email is anywhere near a start-up, then reconsider your position.
For Skiff mail you have until early August 2024 to get out and migrate away. Luckily, for that they have a page with tips: [Wayback/Archive] Skiff – Migrating your data:
All Skiff services, including Mail, Pages, Calendar and Drive, will be sunsetting August 9, 2024, as part of Skiff’s acquisition by Notion. Only automatic mail forwarding will continue to operate until February 9, 2025.
Be quick: 2+ million Skiff users are trying migrate away now as well.
You might want to look at alternatives listed for instance at [Wayback/Archive] Encrypted Private Email Recommendations – Privacy Guides.
Bad news results in bad vibes
Of course the Skiff acquisition wasn’t welcomed with applause. These links tell enough:
- [Wayback/Archive] Versleutelde mail- en cloudprovider Skiff stopt met diensten na overname – Security.NL
- [Wayback/Archive] Skiff get’s bought out by NOTION and will be deprecated in six months. : privacy (with some alternatives including Proton Mail)
- [Wayback/Archive] Skiff sold to Notion. All services will be sunset in 6 months : ProtonMail with a truckload of Proton Mail information (including their PGP support and that they have a background with CERN) and many unhappy Skiff users.
- [Wayback/Archive] Skiff sold to Notion : privacy many not so happy users, bit also alternatives.
- [Wayback/Archive] r/skiffmail Skiff Mail with many useful threads including alternatives and migrating away from Skiff Mail.
The positive side?
There might be one positive side: parts of the Skiff codebase was open source under [Wayback/Archive] Skiff World · GitHub.
Hopefully some of that code can be reused.
Another positive thing: look at the journey the Skiff domain made using its Wayback Machine archive web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.skiff.com. In a decade or so, it might have continued its journey with different content.
--jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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