Hello everyone,
I am very new and recently have decided to move away our growing home/work network away from Google and also increase our digital security. I got recommended to try Proton as it is (as I understand) a full suite of feature we would use (be it mail, productivity apps, vpn, authenticator, cloud) but seeing some of the reactions here, I am concerned.
Are there any really grave concerns about Proton or any substantial flaws I should be aware of as a new user? I also got some mixed reviews about unstable gaming sessions (that would be a home disaster for the kids hehe) as it disconnects but I suppose that is a problem of the free limited VPN connecting to free servers.
Thank you in advance for any input.
EDIT: Thank you again very much to all of you for your time and insight <3 I will investigate all the suggestions/experience and slowly work my way to a better workframe. Again - thank you!
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Register your own domain and get that going as your email. Then you can try all the suggestions in this thread nearly risk free.
Proton hooked me with mail, vpn, password management, and drive. That was what I needed to replace Gmail and one drive at the time.
They’ve ignored the Linux development the community consistently asked for and introduced Lumo the useless chatbot instead.
They still check a lot of the boxes if you want something privacy respecting and easy. The ceo chose to run his mouth in a detrimental way, and walked it back slightly after backlash… so there’s that.
I’m also in the process of migrating away. Many reasons. Mainly that fastmail offers me a better experience. And I get simple website hosting and custom domains out of it. I’ve replaced pass with 1Password and will switch to mulvad once my proton subscription expires.
My drive hosting I’ve migrated to a copyparty container on tailnet. Cloud editing and such is solved by proxy as copyparty supports WebDAV so I can just edit files with onlyoffice or the like. Even works for obsidian and Todo list syncing.
VPN and pass is probably protons best offering. Everything else always feels half baked.
If you genuinely care about digital security, self host. No tech company will ever solve it. I’ve minimized my dependencies to fastmail (mail, calendar, webhost), desec (DNS), codeberg, 1password, and tailscale. YouTube is also unavailable as it’s an insane trove of knowledge. Also bit the bullet and bought a kagi subscription and it feels nice to find things on the internet again.
Best of luck in your journey.
I migrated away from proton for mail and calendar about 4 months ago. The services are fine, they do what they say, but the trade offs for “e2ee” email are large with a dubious benefit when it works and no benefit in 99% of cases because the vast majority of people don’t use Proton so your Mail is not encrypted anyways. I still use Pass, VPN, and SimpleLogin. They, IMO, are the best services Proton offers (though I may move passwords back to bitwarden, still deciding).
Overall it’s worth considering what secure email means to you, what your individual threat landscape looks like, and then comparing what Proton offers to your needs. Personally I migrated to Fastmail and have been pleased so far. It won’t be right for everyone, and for some the security offered by Proton may be valuable, but know there are a ton of asterisks to that security.
In my currency, VPN, pass, and simple login is the $199.01 a year.
However the bundle for everything is $119.88/year.
Not sure why you’d not use it all or nothing at that pricing structure.
I use them because I still have access through the last renewal I had, but won’t be renewing anything other than SimpleLogin once it runs out (and even that I may try and self host, not sure yet).
Yeah honestly despite kinda wanting to give my money to Proton, I think I came to the decision today to stick with vaultwarden + PIA + Fastmail. It’s just better value.
PIA was purchased by an ad agency a few years ago. They are not to be trusted. Happy to provide a source
“Happy to provide a source”
Provides no source.
Also, they’ve been independently audited so whatevs. Plus I don’t really care
https://www.techradar.com/news/cyberghost-owner-buys-pia-for-dollar955m-to-create-vpn-giant
Hope you feel better, have a great weekend
“VPN company buys other VPN company” is far from your original claim. Also, it’s irrelevant anyway.
Would you like a source? Happy to link just didn’t feel like digging before. What a strange adversarial response
If you had a source you’d have already provided it. Also, like I said, I don’t really care.
Proton & Gaming: There is more than one Proton, your concern may be about the compatability layer (which works quite well in fact).
Purple Proton: If you’re a Linux user, there is no official Drive Sync client yet. Calendar sharing with non-proton accounts has some shortcomings (e.g., no recurring event updates). I’m a happy user otherwise.
Thank you very much for your input, especially about the calendar, that points me to the fact I have yet to see if every other member of our family is ok with moving mail under Proton.
As for the gaming I have explained myself poorly (sorry about that) - the connectivity concern was aimed at multiplayer gaming while using VPN. While I understand some titles are not suitable for the use of VPN at all, I suppose ordinary disconnections can happen with VPN. That was what I tried to write :)
Thank you again!
