Tuta Mail should not offer a free tier

I tried creating tuta mail account using the free tier for 3 months. Each time the account is locked and eventually closed.

The fist two months I signed up once on a VPN and another time using Tor. Each time I got an alert that my account was restricted until I get approval. It said to email the approve@tutao.de to request approval. I tried that but guess what, I couldn’t send any emails not even to tuta’s customer service! I read many posts all the way back to 4 years ago from people having the same issue. Most people said wait 48 hours and you get the approval. I waited and boom my email was deactivated.

I decided to try again a few days ago again on Tor. I signed up and got an error but I was logged in anyway. I don’t know what the error was it just logged me in. A new alert popped up asking if I wanted to wait for approval or fast track approval by emailing customer service. I did the fast track. It added the approve email automatically. I added the hello@tutao.de just in case. Of course, mail delivery issue for the approve email address. It doesn’t exist. The email to hello@tutao.de went through.

I went to check if they responded and I couldn’t login. I get an error Invalid Credentials using the same password I signed up with. I tried Lost Account Access and got another error Illegal key length: 32 (expected: Aes128,Aes256,128,256). Did the recovery on a different browser too. Same thing.

Tuta mail, don’t offer a free version if you can’t actually use it. Most reports I’ve seen say the problems go away once you upgrade to a paid plan. That’s deceiving. Tuta just be transparent and don’t offer a free tier. Further, if a private email service doesn’t allow you to sign up on VPN or Tor (if that’s the issue, honestly couldn’t tell you) then what’s the point?