Paul O'Brien Proton Mail Free Plan (2026): What You Get and Where It Stops Proton Mail’s free plan is one of the few free inboxes that isn’t paid for with your data. It is also tightly capped. Here is exactly what you get, the limits you will hit first, and when it is worth paying. Email Providers12 min read Paul O'Brien PHP2Shell: What Website Owners Need to Do Now Two critical flaws in PHP, the language behind WordPress and most of the web, were fixed on 21 October. Here’s what they are, how to check your site, and what to ask your host. Infrastructure5 min read Paul O'Brien KT8 Mail vs Fastmail: Own Your Email, or Let Someone Else Worry About It? KT8 Mail puts your email on your own Cloudflare account. Fastmail looks after everything for you. I help develop one and I earn commission from the other, so here's an honest look at what owning your email really gives you, what it costs you in responsibility, and who should pick which. Email Providers10 min read Paul O'Brien Link Inspector: Find every broken link on your website Links quietly break over time, so I’ve helped build Link Inspector, a tool that checks your whole website and shows you exactly where each broken link is. Updates2 min read Paul O'Brien What’s New in KT8 Mail: Masked Email, Smarter Spam Checks and More A personal catch-up on what’s changed in KT8 Mail since launch, and a couple of side projects I’ve been helping with alongside it. Updates3 min read Paul O'Brien KT8 Mail: Private Email on Your Own Cloudflare Account KT8 Mail is a new email service that you own outright: your own domain and your own Cloudflare account, with no mail company in the middle. It starts from Cloudflare’s Agentic Inbox, improves on it and makes it simple to install. Members can request an invite code today. Email Providers6 min read Open all 76 posts I'm Paul. After more than 25 years working hands-on with email and DNS, from dial-up clients to strict DMARC rules, I test privacy tools and mail providers by using them for real.
You get direct, independent verdicts on what works, what breaks, and the trade-offs other reviews skip.
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X-Experience:25+ yearshands-on with email, DNS and the webX-Posts:76reviews, guides and explainersX-Sponsored:0sponsored posts, everX-Frequency:1 emailwhen I publish, nothing elseEvery review is written by someone who has used the tool for real. Every feature limit and price tells you exactly when it was last checked.
Not a weekend test account. Real domain, real contacts, real receipts.
"I ran Fastmail as my primary email for a long stretch. Not as a weekend test, not as a review account I logged into twice."Fastmail Review 2026: Pricing, Privacy and Features Rated
I track exact limits so you aren't caught out by unexpected caps or sudden paywalls.
Proton Mail free plan (checked October 2026)
| Mail storage | 1 GB |
| Daily sending | 150 messages |
| Folders & labels | 3 + 3 |
| Custom filters | 1 |
| Custom domain | No |
Some links earn me an affiliate commission. They are always clearly marked, and they never influence the final verdict.
The rules that decide whether your mail reaches the inbox were written while I was working with it.
POP3 + dial-upEmail meant one desktop app and a modem.GmailA free gigabyte changes what everyone expects from a mailbox, overnight.SPFDomains start publishing which servers are authorised to send for them.DKIMSignatures let inboxes check a message came from the signing domain and wasn't changed on the way.DMARCDomain owners can tell inboxes what to do with mail that fails the checks.Sender rulesGoogle and Yahoo make authentication a requirement for bulk senders.
Practical tools built to fix the real-world domain, email and website issues I run into every week.