%% Use bold for emphasises and italics for quotes or phrases %% ## Sections %% ## What problem does it solve %% ### European email providers Access to _international_ services is currently shaped unilaterally, offering European customers limited choice and uninspiring future. However, not all is lost - there are some promising services in Europe, which might fully replace currently popular tools. One of such is 'Tutanota' [[#^1|(1)]], a German email provider. Here are some of the most important selling points behind Tuta(nota): - aliases (paid extra) - inbox rules and spam filters (including regex) - encryption - offline access - no-ads and no-scanning (allegedly) - no-log policy with servers in Europe (GDPR compliant) - open-source software - Linux (AppImage apps!) - custom domain support - calendar - TOTP and U2F authentication - plenty more (especially paid plans for small businesses) I recommend visiting Tutanota's (now rebranded to 'Tuta') blog, as while it is in every company's interest to be taking sides, Tuta is providing a rather fair comparison and even highlights competitors (I really mean it). Here are some of Tuta's comparisons: - [Gmail vs Tuta Mail](https://tuta.com/gmail-alternative) - [Outlook vs Tuta Mail](https://tuta.com/best-outlook-alternative) - [Yahoo vs Tuta Mail](https://tuta.com/best-yahoo-alternative) - [Zoho vs Tuta Mail](https://tuta.com/zoho-mail) - [GMX vs Tuta Mail](https://tuta.com/gmx) %% ## How does it solve it %% ### How to use Tuta the smart way While Tuta offers lots of benefits, one of the biggest technical drawbacks is a search function which is not fast, nor very thorough. It might stem from the built-in encryption and lack of data ingestion/indexing like that of competitors. The app proves difficult to be used the 'casual' way (AKA searching 'on the fly'), hence creating the demand for granular processing rules. This is where one of the core functions of Tuta comes to play - the **regex** support [[#^2|(2)]]. As much as Tuta is trying, the documentation of certain features is rather lacking. >[!quote] Documentation [[#^2|(2)]] >"For inbox rules we support JavaScript regular expressions. You have to enclose the expression with slashes / like the literal definition of regular expressions. More information can be found [here](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Regular_Expressions)." <center><img src="https://media.tenor.com/cUjiXVi5AjUAAAAM/shrek-meme-disgust.gif"></center> This article is meant to spread a bit of awareness and share a tried and tested method. This comes from a long-time customer. Let's suppose the user might desire to register one email alias with multiple service providers - e.g. for paying multimedia bills, shopping on e-commerce platforms. Some use-cases are: - sorting out multiple senders replying to a single email alias (including an endless amount of aliases from their backend systems...) - automatically discarding non-significant replies, e.g. automatised payment confirmations - discarding newsletters (oh no...) %% ## How to use it %% ### Regular expressions in inbox rules To begin, the 'Email' tab must be selected in Tuta's app. That is where one may find many important settings such as: - default sender - email signature - autoresponder - email aliases - and said inbox rules ![[Pasted image 20260126000009.png#center | 'Email' tab in Tuta client - Screenshot by 'Mateusz Adamczyk' / blog.amatthew.eu, CC BY-SA 4.0]] Upon scrolling down, the 'Inbox rules' table contains entries defining processing rules depending on fields such as: - From/Sender - To recipient - CC recipient - BCC recipient - Subject contains - Header contains ![[Pasted image 20260126000245.png#center | 'Inbox rules' tab in Tuta client - Screenshot by 'Mateusz Adamczyk' / blog.amatthew.eu, CC BY-SA 4.0]] When creating a new rule, selecting From/Sender as target field allows to easily and effectively **filter out senders**. Offending actors may be **permanently blocked** (...), or multiple emails arriving at the same alias can be put into different folders. Let's analyse the situation on the example of `pyszne.pl`, which is a local food delivery service that loves sending surveys about quality of deliveries. We all find surveys just *delightful*... ![[Pasted image 20260126001830.png#center | Creating an inbox rule in Tuta client - Screenshot by 'Mateusz Adamczyk' / blog.amatthew.eu, CC BY-SA 4.0]] >[!info] Info >What is this? The power of the first Assembly language users? There is a website that helps decoding the language of wizards, it's called *regex101.com* [[#^3|(3)]]. `^[a-zA-Z0-9_.+-]{0,}@[a-zA-Z0-9-]{0,}\.{0,}pyszne\.pl ![[Pasted image 20260126003144.png#center | Using 'regex101' for regular expression prototyping - Screenshot by 'Mateusz Adamczyk' / blog.amatthew.eu, CC BY-SA 4.0]] Essentially, every character can be hovered over and analysed one by one. What this 'regular expression' does is: - it starts search from the beginning of the **email prefix** - through characters such as: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, \_, ., +, - - it then looks for them all over again, from 0 to infinity - as the **email prefix** may be very complex and long (especially for automatised services) - it then looks through the **email subdomain** - again through characters such as: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, \_, ., +, - - it then looks for them all over again, from 0 to infinity - it then looks through the **domain and top domain** - this part is hardcoded for security, as multiple same subdomains may be registered under different top domains. They may not be related at all ^{I believe my inbox rules had capital letters converted back to small letters at some point, whoops} When creating the inbox rule, the slash character ('/') must be wrapped around the regular expression as mentioned in the documentation [[#^2|(2)]]. This is essentially the entire process. Regular expressions allow to route ALL prefixes from a specific domain into a dedicated email folder, saving a tremendous amount of time and effort otherwise spent on manual searching. ## References ### Section 1 - European email providers - https://tuta.com/email-comparison ^1 ### Section 2 - How to use Tuta the smart way - https://tuta.com/support#settings-mail ^2 ### Section 3 - Regular expressions in inbox rules - https://regex101.com ^3 ## Metadata Date of creation: 2026-01-25 Date of revision: <...>