In brief

An alternative to IncaMail

Both send confidential things. They do not solve the same problem.

IncaMail from Swiss Post is built for legally valid delivery: registered, with signed receipts, approved for proceedings with authorities and courts. If you need that proof, IncaMail is right. If you only need something to arrive confidentially and then disappear – with no account on the other side and no contract – the overhead is too large.

What IncaMail does well

Its strength is proof. The “registered” variant is approved for various proceedings with authorities – civil and criminal proceedings, debt collection, bankruptcy – and gives both sides digitally signed receipts for submission, acceptance, refusal or expiry. That is the electronic equivalent of a registered letter, and “just send a link” is no substitute.

Then the provenance: Swiss Post, operated in Switzerland, established in public administration. For law firms, accountants and authorities delivering to deadlines, this is exactly right.

Where it gets cumbersome

The other side has to join in. Whoever receives an IncaMail message has to sign in to read it. For a regular partner that is a one-off; for the tradesman you send one quote to, it is a hurdle.

The sender needs a contract. No account, no sending – a single confidential dispatch per year does not add up. Prices were also raised substantially in 2023, which caused debate in the legal profession.

It stays. IncaMail is delivery, not transience. What is delivered is delivered – which is the point of a registered letter.

Which for what

Take IncaMail when you must prove that and when something was delivered, when a deadline depends on it, or when an authority requires it.

Take something else when it is about confidentiality rather than proof: payslip, password, ID copy, quote. Things that should arrive and then disappear, to recipients you do not want to put through a sign-up.

And with tunnl.

tunnl. is built for the second case. The recipient needs no account, no app and no sign-in – they open a link. The content is encrypted in your browser before it leaves your device; we could not read it if we wanted to. A single message costs nothing, and the content expires by itself. Servers and company are in Switzerland.

What tunnl. cannot do here: tunnl. provides no legally valid proof of delivery and is approved for no proceedings. There is a printable delivery record with identifier, start and collection time – documentation for you, not a registered letter.

The comparison in detail · How tunnl. encrypts · What it costs