I need a new professional email address and i was thinking of going with an encrypted email service, do you guys have any recommendations on what to use?

My only requirement is that it needs to work with desktop email clients like Thunderbird, i am too lazy to use a web browser :)

Posteo gas an encrypting service. Every email can be gpg encrypted on the serverside.

Take a look on tutanota

@stop both of those look pretty good, i am not sure however what happens when i send email to normal people (a.k.a people without encrypted email): can i choose to send the message either in cleartext or encrypted? and if it is encrypted, how are they gonna see it?

You can send email without problems. Incoming mail get GPG-encrypted and saved. Posteo cant even say who owns the account, because payment and accounts are seperated.

Ok thanks, just wanted to make sure i dont accidentally annoy people by sending them encrypted enails they can't open

Protonmail with an alias or use another service to redirect using dns entries.

You can send unencrypted or encrypted emails.

Tutanota is best
Proton is second best*

* correct me if I'm wrong, and something else goes here instead!

@jurion Seriously?

Yes, let's send everything across the big scary internet in plaintext, likely through at least one MITM like Cloudflare, and store the data (also in plaintext, on both ends) on other people's servers, and hope nothing along the entire freaking chain is ever compromised. Or mishandled because Microsoft, etc. would never.

What could possibly go wrong?
This is where I'm eyerolling so hard it's painful.

@jurion Try harder on your research. Turanota is free, though you can pay for premium if you want to support them. The OR says "professional" but means "personal," not a business plan with employees.

Also, while most connections are indeed encrypted, they're encrypted via TLS (transport layer security, aka https). MITMs like Cloudflare downgrade all traffic to http (meaning plaintext) within their network, rendering this somewhat moot if (and there totally are) things sniffing traffic therein.

As for misbehaving: tutanota (and proton, etc.) Have almost zero knowledge of your emails, so they really cannot misbehave even if legally ordered to.

I'd say tutanota. Its not available through Thunderbird yet due to its encryption but its awesome!