[@fuck.it]: The Messaging App for People Who Don’t Give a Damn About Anything, Not Even the Price

[@fuck.it] is a paid, invitation-only messaging service launched in September 2025 by the New York-based company Paradise Circus Inc. The name brings a smile, the domain raises eyebrows, but behind it lies a real infrastructure signed by Open-Xchange, with optional PGP encryption via OX Guard. But is the provocation really worth the cost?

Yes, handing an @fuck.it address to your accountant or adding it to your résumé takes a certain nerve. But beyond the domain’s provocative name, the service targets people who don’t care much for conventions—perhaps except when it comes to the privacy of their communications.

An email address that already sorts your contacts

[@fuck.it] was born in September 2025 in New York, led by Gerwin Beran. The service isn’t aimed at everyone: goodbye to jean.dupont1987@gmail.com, and welcome to artists, entrepreneurs, and free spirits who want their address to be memorable. Admittedly, that’s the marketing pitch the project puts forward. The bet is simple: an address that starts with @fuck.it stands out, becomes a story told at happy hour, and may raise an eyebrow in a job interview.

Access remains restricted. [@fuck.it] operates by invitation, with an initial cap of 10,000 accounts. At the time of our testing, 8,148 addresses were still available before entering a waiting list. The service also adds a digital art gallery, where independent artists rotate their works.

“This is about reclaiming space that has become dull and overly corporate,” summarizes Gerwin Beran in the launch press release. The jokey humor ends abruptly once you inspect the tech specs a bit more closely, which are far less oriented toward private jokes.

A real Open-Xchange infrastructure

[@fuck.it] could have been a student prank built on a simple Roundcube. But the infrastructure is nonetheless quite serious. The service does not develop its own messaging technology. It relies on Open-Xchange (OX), a German company founded in 2005 that outfits operators and hosting providers with millions of mailboxes. OX App Suite, the software component used, is based on an open-source foundation. It can therefore be audited by third parties and is not locked inside a black box.

The servers are hosted in Germany, with ISO 27001 information security certification and GDPR compliance. But since [@fuck.it] is a company registered in the United States, it remains subject to the Cloud Act. The company promises 99.9% uptime, a geo-redundant architecture, and TLS encryption for connections, complemented by encryption of data at rest.

On the Apex subscription tier, anti-spam and anti-phishing filtering rely on the Vade Secure engine, which also protects 1.4 billion mailboxes. The system analyzes links at click time to detect a phishing site activated after the click. In terms of usage, the interface remains a classic Open-Xchange webmail. The service supports IMAP, POP3 and SMTP to connect a third-party client or to retrieve an old Gmail or Outlook mailbox. In short, despite the domain’s provocative aura, the user does care about their emails.

A complete suite

Beyond email, [@fuck.it] positions itself as a complete office suite, with calendar, contacts, and task manager synchronized across devices. These three components are included with the Core subscription.

Starting with Edge, the service adds OX Drive, an online storage space, and a full office suite with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. Like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, you can comment on or co-edit documents. So you can draft a quarterly report from an address that begins with an insult while staying courteous with colleagues.

OX Guard, an optional PGP encryption

To be precise, end-to-end encryption is not available to all users. On [@fuck.it], only the Apex plan includes OX Guard, a PGP encryption layer applied to emails, attachments, and files stored on OX Drive. On the two other plans, protection stops at TLS in transit and encryption at rest, which protects in case of a server breach but, in theory, leaves the host able to read messages without a user-specific key.

Core, Edge, Apex: the price for attitude

[@fuck.it] offers no free tier, a position the company justifies by the monetization model of free services funded by data sales. In other words, you pay for your attitude rather than with your personal data, even if the wallet isn’t exactly thrilled about it. The entry tier, Core, costs $5.90 per month, billed as $17.70 per quarter, or $4.72 per month on annual commitment. It includes 10 GB of mail storage, attachments limited to 25 MB, and Identity Lock protection, which blocks usernames that are too close to yours (with or without dots or dashes), to prevent impersonation or, worse, damage to your rebellious reputation.

The Edge plan, at $11.90 per month, adds 10 GB of OX Drive storage, a office suite (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation), deferred sending, restoration of deleted emails, and an enhanced Identity Lock that also catches typos and substituted numbers. Apex, at $24.90 per month, unlocks access to OX Guard, priority support, and advanced anti-phishing protection, with 100 GB of mail storage. In short, the more you care about your privacy, the more your wallet pays.

And the competition? Do we even care?

To obtain the Open-Xchange infrastructure, [@fuck.it] is not the only option. The German mailbox service (formerly mailbox.org, Heinlein group) builds its mail on the same Postfix, Dovecot, and Open-Xchange stack, with a matching webmail. Its Standard plan starts at 3 euros per month with 20 GB of mail and 10 GB of storage, and Premium at 9 euros per month with 50 GB of mail and 100 GB of storage, well below the Core and Edge prices of [@fuck.it]. While an @mailbox.org address looks more respectable, at least the PGP option is offered on all plans.

For a mailbox emphasizing privacy more strongly, Proton Mail and Tuta are also cheaper. Proton charges its Mail Plus offer around 3.99 euros per month, and its Unlimited plan 9.99 euros per month with annual commitment, VPN, Drive, and password manager included. Meanwhile, Tuta offers its Revolutionary and Legend plans at 3 euros and 8 euros per month respectively.

On the sovereignty front, you can also turn to Infomaniak. Its Mail Service starts around 1.50 euros per mailbox per month, and the Swiss company has since added partial encryption of messages, free for all users. The surrounding kSuite (kDrive, kChat, kMeet) remains as complete as [@fuck.it], but at a much lighter bill.

With Core and Edge, end-to-end encryption on [@fuck.it] exists only if you configure your own PGP keys in a third-party client. Only the Apex plan includes an integrated encryption module (OX Guard), though it does not offer the zero-knowledge automation found in Proton or Tuta.

Difficult, then, to find arguments in favor of [@fuck.it], but after all, if the domain name makes you smile and you do not care much about the price, then why not.