My Technology Tools

Email & Privacy

• Protonmail – I moved everything from Gmail to Proton last year and I couldn’t be happier with the switch. Emails are stored end-to-end encrypted and nobody except me is able to read what’s in my mailbox, not even employees at the company (unlike Google). I’m using the Proton Unlimited, which enables me to send and receive emails from three of my domains via Proton. You usually get the best deal by paying for 24 months in advance and switching the currency to USD. Proton also has an excellent VPN, which is included in my plan (just like Simplelogin Premium below).
• Simplelogin – A fantastic email aliasing service, which I like to use in combination with my Protonmail account. Great for when you don’t want to hand out your real email address. Instead, you’re able to create up to 10 email aliases like company.newsletter@slmail.me, which then forward emails to your actual inbox. The best part: You can reply to those emails via your inbox, while keeping your actual email hidden from the recipient (they see it as being sent from company.newsletter@slmail.me). And you can easily delete any of your aliases whenever you want, to never receive emails from that source again. The free plan offers up to 10 active aliases, while you can create unlimited ones (+ use your own domains) via a paid plan. I’m using a paid plan currently. Note: Simplelogin was acquired by Proton, so the Premium plan is now included in some of Proton’s paid subscriptions (eg. my Proton Unlimited).

Encryption, 2FA, Password Manager

Watch this video of mine about the importance of securing your accounts, encryption and privacy first.

• Bitwarden – The best password manager, hands down. It’s open source and offers everything you need in the free version.
• Cryptomator – Free, open source tool to create encrypted drives (eg. on OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox), so that you can be 100% sure nobody else (not even the cloud provider’s employees) can access your files in the cloud.
• YubiKey: The safest and my personal favorite two-factor authentication (2FA) method.

VPN

These are my three favorite VPNs. I currently have accounts to all of them, as I usually share my account with close friends and family members (bringing down the cost) and ProtonVPN was included at no extra cost in my Proton Unlimited subscription. You can see my detailed comparison and some of the reasons why you may want to use a VPN in the first place here.

• Proton VPN – Open source, zero logs (audited), based in Switzerland, great at unblocking Netflix, excellent speeds, included in Proton Unlimited
• Surfshark – Zero logs (audited), based in the Netherlands, decent at unblocking Netflix, excellent speeds, least expensive VPN on this list
• Mullvad – Open source, zero logs (audited), based in Sweden, not a good option for Netflix, excellent speeds. Sometimes cheaper via Amazon.

YouTube & Blogging

Every once in a while, someone reaches out to me to ask how they can start their own blog or YouTube channel. Here are the services I use:

• WordPress – I use this free CMS for my blog.
• NameHero – I moved my websites to NameHero in summer 2020 and I couldn’t be happier with the combination of speed, reliability and the quality of the support I received so far. I use the Plus Cloud Plan in the Netherlands (NL) Datacenter.
• TubeBuddy – I use a TubeBuddy license and the Chrome extension to help manage my videos (and SEO) on YouTube.

_{Some of these are affiliate links, which help support me, the website & YouTube channel. I only link to services I use and am convinced of myself, none of the links are sponsored.}