For most people, email is the single most sensitive account they own. It's the master key to password resets, financial statements, medical results and private conversations. Yet for decades the default has been to send it in a form that providers — and anyone who compromises them — can read.
What end-to-end encryption actually means
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) means a message is encrypted on the sender's device and can only be decrypted by the intended recipient. The provider in the middle — including us — never holds the keys to read the plaintext. This is fundamentally different from "encryption in transit", where mail is protected on the wire but readable once it lands on a server.
At SendOrchard, every message between users is automatically encrypted using OpenPGP. There is no setting to enable, no certificate to install. It simply works.
Why it matters even if you have "nothing to hide"
Privacy is not about hiding wrongdoing — it's about control. You close the bathroom door, you seal envelopes, you draw the curtains. E2EE is the digital equivalent: it ensures that the contents of your conversations are seen only by the people you chose to share them with.
It also dramatically limits the blast radius of a data breach. If a server is compromised, attackers find ciphertext they cannot read instead of a searchable archive of your life.
The bottom line
Strong encryption should be the floor, not a premium upgrade. That's why we turn it on for every account — free plans included.
