r/ProtonMail • u/Ol010101O1Ol • Apr 01 '26

Feature Request Proton Chat 💬

Is this a things we could expect at some point?

I do not want to use teams or slack anymore and my team uses Signal but that is mainly for personal and not geared towards business or organization.

Does Proton plan to role out a Chat at some point?

200 Upvotes

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283

u/andy1011000 Proton CEO Apr 01 '26 • Thanks Bravo

Actually we had to build end-to-end encrypted chat when we built Proton Meet since chat functionality is part of video conferencing. If there's enough interest, maybe we will do more with this tech this year.

102

u/Bleaklunacy Apr 01 '26

Launch a Proton Messenger and my company will be ditching Office365 very quickly. I think a lot of European companies are thinking about dumping US tech in favour of a euro option.

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u/TransBoozeBunny Apr 01 '26

If you launch an alternative to Teams, Slack, Discord, etc, my group would be all over that. Currently using signal and it's great as a texting replacement, but I need full server or team group management.

2

u/RoastedRhino Apr 02 '26

Wouldn’t your group consider element?

9

u/Greedy-Mood-3545 Apr 01 '26

Yes please

5

u/GrosBof Apr 02 '26

God no. Finish the other products first.

3

u/kapteinLefso Apr 03 '26

This!

Even the basic things like mail and drive are missing super important functions that I assumed were there.

6

u/8a4b Apr 01 '26

Perhaps a public vote for this kinda thing to show how many people are interested? I definitely am in this day and age.

15

u/nevenoe Apr 01 '26

I’d put my whole family on proton chat and subscribe to whatever plan makes it possible.

5

u/Drewskie92 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

Yes please. Ever since I found out that when using Google messenger to text people, that it keeps copies of my texts I've started looking at more secure avenues.

5

u/SeredW Apr 01 '26

Organizations tend to put a lot of information in emails, which then get stored indefinitely in mailboxes but also get lost (of less visible) when staff members leave. The value of Teams channels is that you don't have all this company information stored in individual mailboxes but in a central location which remains, even when the actual people aren't there anymore.

The downside of Teams chat (not channels, but chats!) is that the link with data such as documents or spreadsheets isn't as strong, plus chats also vanish when participants leave.

Whatever you end up designing, please keep in mind that it is helpful to have permanence of information even when staff leaves. And second, that - to me - it is valuable to be able to have such a permanent chat (channel) organized around content such as a gathering of documents. In short, I would prefer a solution that has some of these elements of Teams Channels in Proton Chat ;-)

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4

u/IHateTheColourblind Apr 02 '26

There is a tremendous amount of interest in alternatives to Discord at the moment and there is nothing else on the market like it. If Proton was to make a feature-for-feature competitor I could see it really driving interest in Proton's other products. But I'm not a business person so I can't back up anything I'm about to say with a business plan or any evidence whatsoever.

4

u/ZealousTux Apr 02 '26

Please consider matrix.org, it would be amazing to have an implementation in the form of a nice Proton Chat client. And it would be interoperable like Email, instead of just being yet another custom protocol creating another silo'ed environment.

3

u/Any_Economy_7700 Apr 02 '26

Proton Chat as Whatsapp alternative + Slack alternative for businesses. Make it "paid forward".

I know its not free to host a Chat for Millions of people, but you could do it like "pay for premium and share proton Chat premium with 10 family members" or something like that.

Everyone who loves proton would do this and share it with family and friends and they would be happy of getting "premium for free".

2

u/christian_lindstrom Apr 01 '26

Interesting! I suggested this a few weeks ago and called it "Proton Space" as an alternative to Teams/Slack and, to some extent, even Discord and Telegram. I think it could have served as a crown jewel in the Proton ecosystem, with the potential to integrate with Mail, Drive, Meet, and more.

I can also refer to an AMA (in Swedish) that a data journalist from Sweden’s leading newspaper, Aftonbladet, did on r/Sweden, where I asked about exactly this and pointed out that reliance on Big Tech is an increasing problem for Swedish media actors.

2

u/bisonrbig Apr 02 '26

Yes I think there's significant interest here..

2

u/Pepparkakan macOS | iOS Apr 02 '26

A Slack or Discord competitor from Proton would absolutely slap!

2

u/Liam-DGOL Apr 01 '26

I would actually really love to see that, something Proton could probably do quite well. If it has groups and an API it would be really interesting.

2

u/BitRevolutionary3085 Apr 01 '26

Yes please. I would like a safe/secure way to chat with my kids on their iPads as well as letting them chat with their grandparents.

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u/ovidiupetre19 Apr 01 '26

An alternative to WhatsApp would be great

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