Well known to professionals, Infomaniak is developing its consumer offer with free and generous online services that compete with the giants of the Web while respecting privacy. The opportunity to benefit from a 100% European solution.
If the name ofInfomaniak certainly does not evoke much in the general public, it is quite different among professionals. Indeed, for more than twenty-five years, this Swiss company has been providing many services to businesses and the self-employed, starting with website hosting and domain name management. Like many other players in the sector, it has gradually extended its field of action by enriching its offer and thus offers electronic messaging solutions (with calendar and diary), storage and backup, but also marketing (newsletter, ticketing, invitations, etc. and even multimedia (with audio and video streaming). All based on proprietary technologies and, above all, servers hosted in Switzerland, a country renowned for its sense of confidentiality.
Over the past few years, Infomaniak has gradually opened up to individuals, with free services, including the excellent Kmeet videoconferencing tool (see our practical sheet). And it is still very discreetly – a tradition that stands out in the Internet landscape… – that the company has just changed its free offer, in a formula called Etik.comwhich presents itself quite simply – and very modestly – as “the best free alternative to the web giants”. Without displaying it explicitly, Infomaniak aims to compete directly with the famous GAFAM (Google Apple Facebook Amazon Microsoft) with similar services. In fact, Etik.com includes electronic messaging (with calendar and agenda), online storage (for documents and images, with sharing and collaboration functions), and a file transfer module, not to mention the system audio-video communication. In short, an anthology that works just as well on the platforms of Google (Gmail, Meet, Drive, etc.) as those of Microsoft (Outlook.com, OneDrive) or WeTransfer.
But behind the similarities, Etik.com hides three major assets. First, the generosity: messaging thus offers 20 GB of free storage – when Google now only grants 15 GB in total for all the free services associated with an account –, 15 GB of storage in the cloud – in more space dedicated to messaging – and even 50 GB of storage for 30 days for storing files to share. That is an impressive total of 85 GB. Then, and this should not be overlooked, confidentiality: unlike the aforementioned giants, Infomaniak ensures that it does not resell its users’ personal data to third parties, contrary to the practices of many companies offering free services. “You are not the product”, proclaims the company, whose economic model is based on the sale of paid solutions. Finally, security all data – information and files – are indeed hosted on secure servers located in Switzerland and managed directly by Infomaniak. Something to reassure those who are worried about seeing their data systematically kept across the Atlantic, in mysterious centers obeying non-European regulations.
Added to this are very practical functions such as the choice of several domains for the email address, protection against spam and phishing in the mailbox, automatic synchronization of messages, contacts and appointments on all devices. associated with an account, automatic import of data from Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or any other IMAP provider, or automatic import of files from Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive, NextCloud, Hubic and WebDav. Everything is thus provided for easy migration from other online services. Not to mention the absence of advertising in messaging!
Taken end to end, all these arguments are enough to seduce those who would like to escape the grip of GAFAM and the American companies that dominate the Internet. Admittedly, Infomaniak is not a philanthropic foundation, and we suspect that the Swiss would like to convince its free users to adopt paid formulas. The fact remains that its Etik.com offer has the merit of being rich and practical. So there is no reason not to take advantage. All you have to do is open an account to discover these services.