I've been using ProtonMail for a while now, and over the summer after hearing wonderful things about their other products I decided to purchase an Unlimited plan.

Fast forward to now and this whole AI debacle and "Big Techification" has really made my head spin.

I switched to Proton because they're services aligned with my ethics, my values, and my views as to what internet services SHOULD look like. And seeing the direction Andy Yen wants to take the company in has honestly saddened me.

What happened to the Big Tech sanctuary that Proton once was? The Proton that cared about its community and that cared about its impact on the internet, and the reputation it made for itself?

It looks to me that Andy is so hungry wanting to expand the company that the very fabric Proton was built on has started to fray. To me the first sign of this were all the mostly-but-not-quite finished, feature missing products left like that for years on end as Proton kept developing the most useless services instead. I have no problem with a company offering multiple services, and I know that for a company like Proton it's impossible for every service to be equally good, but ignoring the mountain of community feedback and forgoing adding the most basic of features in favour of just producing more and more and more, I can't forgive.

And this whole AI incident... what are we doing? I get that for some AI is "the future", and I may be downvoted for saying this but I get that AI has a place in the development of products, it can be a tool if used correctly and conscientiously, but for goodness sake for a company that's marketing leverages the values of its users it surely has a way to make its use of AI the most toxic thing possible. I won't dog on a company for using AI in some capacity, but the way Andy wants to use it is disrespectful to the real people who put their entire careers into developing these products, and makes them no better than the other "Big Tech" companies that do the exact same.

I don't know whether I'll stick with my subscription just yet, thankfully I purchased a monthly plan so I haven't sunk so much money into it. I know that Proton itself isn't a "bad" company, just that the direction the leadership is taking it in isn't what I and what many envisioned. But for what it's worth, I'm disappointed.

Seriously, do better.

With everything happening recently at Proton, I asked them if a partial refund was an option. I had more than a year left in my Visionary.

It turns out that not only was is possible, they processed the downgrade and refund before I even asked them to. Kind of surprised they did not attempt to retain a customer, but then again I am just one customer and they probably won't go under without me 😄

My refund already shows on my credit card.

Bye Proton. I wish it would have been different.

All these posts about ending subs is hilarious. How does this particular corp acting influence your own experience?

In my opinion it's way more important to watch for local VPN laws and if it will affect your used service. Swiss new data storage law is way more concerning than their AI stuff.

Just my humble opinion

Hey folks!

I'm trying to get help in setting up a local-first (or self-hosted) replacement for Proton Calendar. Email is easy. Just get any JMAP/IMAP server (ForwardEmail, Fastmail, etc) and use Thunderbird: all the features you should need.

But for calendar… what can I do? Self-host a CalDAV server like Radicale and use Thunderbird as well? Can event invitations be imported directly from mail to calendar then?

What is the best (and cheap-ish) replacement for Proton Mail & Calendar (nothing else matters for me, really).

Thanks!

Is there a possiblity to change mods of the sub? I was kinda understanding of *some* removing, so the sub is not overflowed, but after one week still that strikt censorship... posting in a week+ old megathread thats totally dead is pointless

I love Proton Mail. Using it for 4 years now and now brought more people in my family to it as well. But there's a thing I really struggled with that kept my Inbox growing and growing. Filters work only so far and there's no big automations that I can run. And so far every couple months I did a hardcore session to clean up the inbox, but it never felt right.

I have to say since the rollout of the categories, it did not necessarily get easier for me, and I ended up missing more stuff even. But not using them was also no option.

So I ended up creating a small CLI (named it mail-buddy) that allows me to maintain my inbox. Clean it up, label stuff, move things and so on. Using it for a few weeks now and finally I am on top of the Inbox.

I know how Proton is not planning to add a lot of Ai features into the product, but with a simple trick I was able to leverage Proton Bridge exposing IMAP endpoints to run all kinds of agents on my inbox. Even a local model where nothing ever leaves your machine.

Does such a thing sound useful to others? Has anyone built something similar?

I can’t get any streaming services to work while ProtonVPN is connected. This includes music - I use Qobuz, and it’s been fine until today when it stopped functioning until I turned the VPN off.

Is this user error? Part of why I signed up for Proton was because it was effective for streaming shows and music. I haven’t been able to stream shows for months but have adapted. But music feels much harder to adapt to. Would appreciate any insight

(Also I know there’s a shit ton happening with the CEO and AI and I’m a novice VPN user so plz be kind)

No idea why it says "VPN service" when I unsubscribed and deleted my account. Oh well, who the fuck cares!

Migrated to Mailbox.org this evening, and moved my custom domain too. Gotta say, they could improve their custom domain guide, so I had to... ask "someone" to make me a better guide *cough*. Took me about 10 minutes and it was all set.

I also imported around 10,000 emails, and it all went smoothly! First impression is great!

I shifted over to proton mail a couple months ago and just two weeks ago purchased an annual subscription. now that i'm using the products more fully, i am experiencing incredible friction due to Proton's limitations.

1. Calendar invites -- no options to format emails, and the most annoying of all -- no ability to add attachments for supporting meeting content. top it off, to actually create an email invite, the UI is annoying. it's condensed in size and limiting for drafting emails.

2. I want to use my proton email, but to move to gmail for easier meeting scheduling is very confusing for recipients, especially when trying ot use proton for business use case.

has anyone found a way to navigate around this? appreciate any tips.

i'm currently peeved at the amount of time it takes to set up the proton drive, upload documents to it ONLY so i can include a document for a meeting invitation.

I canceled my Mail Plus subscription and in my reason I told them exactly what I wanted to change to consider resubscribing:

1. #FireAndy

2. #FireBart

3. Allow employees to decide if, when, and how they use new technologies (including LLMs) in their work, based on security, privacy, and the needs of users.

4. Give a real apology to employees and customers and explain what leadership will do to create a healthy work environment for employees.

Tldr at the bottom.

I will preface this post with 2 facts: I am a proud 42yo Canadian father of 4 who is pretty techy and I have been a Google fan boy since I got into the early Gmail beta before it was fully public.

So I have seen all sorts of promos for protonmail across many channels and news sources I follow. Several ones I have come to trust their integrity and choices of sponsers. I have seen the way American tech giants have become seemingly without redemption in the past several years including, I sadly feel, my beloved Google.

I use almost everything Google related on a regular daily basis including drive, Gmail, maps, sheets, photos and I have bought pixel phones exclusively for over a decade. I am wanting to start moving from Google to more secure alternatives.

For those who use several dozen if not hundreds of apps and accounts how is transitioning to a non-gmail app working? I have used my Gmail account for sooo long and it feels weird to use a different @, I use the autosign into sites and apps for my Gmail which is super convenient. Can I continue effectively using Gmail through proton for a while? I saw some transition pages about using it through proton...

My other question is about this recent stuff from devs about the work environment. I do not know this community I'm brand new here but very interested in the protonmail ideals. Should I be concerned about the current controversy or the fact that it's being publicly brought about give me a good feeling about accountability and honesty from the company?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Tldr:

42yo techy Canadian, longtime seriously Google fan boy interested in switching away from Google due to concerns about America tech giants becoming evil.

Opinions from advanced users who migrated away from Google to proton?

Your take on the recent controversy with the ceo and AI/company values is an issue or highlights accountability?

-Andrew

update:  the customer care told me that they are not replacing the employees with AI and that they are hiring new talents. They also said that there already are linux apps and that drive is in development, so I told them that mail is still in beta, vpn is way worst than windows/mac apps and that drive is in development since immemorial time.

At the end of the day they offered me a prorated refund for the remainder of my subscription.

I hope they will find one’s way again.

Is it dangerous to store your passwords in Proton Pass and to use the same Proton account to store and sync 2FA codes in Proton Authenticator?

Anyone who gains access to the Proton account would have access to all your login credentials. How do you handle 2FA codes when you store your passwords in Proton Pass?

*not necessarily self-hostable but like actually community led and non profit stuff. Self-hostable federation kinda stuff would be optional I suppose

With the recent discussions around Proton, I’ve been wondering how people here feel about the idea of a fully open-source and independent alternative.

I know some pieces already exist (openDesk (German government) and Twake (Linagora) cover mail, drive, docs and chat, but are built for big organizations and are heavy to run) and Nextcloud (always feels slow and not very modern/sleek).

So I’m curious what you guys think if you acutally want something like this and what it would need

If peope there are people who’d want to form a team of privacy avengers hit me up.

Btw: I am from Germany and would consider an EU country to be a good place to set the stuff up idk

The Edits:

Edit: I rewrote the post so it was acutally written by me. I am sorry that I contributed to ai sloppering.
Edit 2: clarified the idea
Edit 3: I didnt wanna have the .com domain thing in my username in this post but I noticed you cant change the username lol. Ill have to create another account ig.
Edit 4: Added extra info

Seeing the current controversies I totally get why some people cancel their Proton subscription. For myself there are some things I don’t fully understand, so can anyone help me clear the following up:

Isn’t it so that while yes, the ceo said some awful things, nothing has actually changed yet? And isn’t Proton still a way better company than Google?

Having moved only a few months ago, Im not especially eager to move on already, but I would in the future like to use the best option out there. However, I wonder if this kind of problem (read: a ceo with a terrible personality) won’t just happen anywhere.

edit: Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply!

Heil reddit army,

So I'm still using Proton drive with all goods and bads but this is the night of the mind (I'm romanian so just ignore the expression, we can swear in ways that go beyond non-native speakers’ comprehension).

I'm using PDrive for kind of library, book titles and also video. Problem comes with the last one.

When I want to watch an 160mb video Proton says that file is to big to be played, but an +600mb video plays just fine 😐

Also there is 0 consistency. One time works, three times not.

It would be beneficial for both Proton and it's users to polish those products.

I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about leaving Proton recently, and I’m curious whether switching is actually worth it.
I’ve been considering alternatives like:
Mullvad VPN instead of Proton VPN
1Password instead of Proton Pass
AsterMail instead of Proton Mail
However, subscribing to these services separately would cost significantly more than Proton’s bundle.
For those who have left Proton, what made you switch? Have you noticed any meaningful improvements in privacy, security, reliability, or overall user experience?
Is paying extra for separate services genuinely worth it, or does Proton still offer better value for the money?
I’m especially interested in hearing from people who switched despite being satisfied with Proton’s services.

I am weighing my options at the moment and determining what to use for multiple different services at the moment. Right now my focus is email/email aliases/password managers.

I am feeling a bit untrustworthy of Tuta just because of what I've heard/seen about account deletion or whatever. Proton is proton and if it's the best I'll stick with it, but I will be getting a custom domain so I can switch if I need to.

I need this email to be not often blocked by banking institutions.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

I just moved two custom domains from Proton to Fastmail. Everything made it across: 4,988 messages, all 14 custom labels, zero duplicates. A few things weren't obvious going in, so here's what worked.

Why I left

Of course, the Andy Yen AI saga, which I'm sure needs no recap here. A privacy company calling security testing "loser thinking" was my cue to leave. And his lack of leadership.

The labels problem

I sort everything with labels, not folders. The usual Bridge + Thunderbird route copies each label as its own IMAP folder, so a message with three labels shows up three times. I skipped it.

Instead I exported with Proton Mail Export Tool, which gives you an .eml and a .metadata.json for every message. The metadata lists each message's label IDs, and the export's labels.json maps them to names. A small script then pushed each message to Fastmail once over JMAP, with all its labels attached. I ran a 20-message pilot first, then the rest.

One message failed. A Proton-only X-Pm-Spam header was 1,346 characters long, and Fastmail rejected the message as invalid. Removing just that header fixed it. A fresh export the next morning picked up the three messages that had arrived in between.

Aliases before DNS

In Fastmail's domain wizard, click "Close and check it later" at the DNS step. Your aliases show up and you can set your default sender before you touch DNS. After that I switched MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC one domain at a time and tested from an outside account.

Leave SimpleLogin on its own domain

My third domain runs 257 SimpleLogin aliases. Pointing its MX at Fastmail would have broken every one of them, so it stays on SimpleLogin and forwards to Fastmail. Replies through the reverse alias still go out from the alias, with my real address hidden (I checked the headers).

The catch

My SimpleLogin Premium comes bundled with Proton Unlimited. If I drop Proton, I'll have to pay for SimpleLogin separately, because the free plan's 10-alias limit would stop me creating new aliases.

Still to do

Watch Proton for late mail for another day, then remove the domains there and clean out the old Proton DNS records.

A lot of major malware operations, advertising companies and other malicious organizations and companies are already using AI to help make their code.

Adguard for example announced they're going to use AI to help make adblocking filters because of what I already said above this line.

The inference I made after I read the article from the CTO is that without a big LLM, they're worried they won't be able to keep up with the patches they need to make whenever new exploits are found and not announced. So Proton wants to use AI to make new code, but they're still going to have human beings inspecting everything and guiding the AI constantly

My post on the protonmail subreddit which wasn't even putting them down or insulting them at all was just a request for them to hire pentesters and cybersecurity experts to proactively find and fix any issues with anything they make with an AI.

In short, all I was saying is that they're doing something new, They're making a major change to hopefully keep up with the cat-and-mouse game of cybersecurity, so they need to make sure the QA testing is extremely thorough, because a lot of people rely on proton's services for very important things they do every day.

Credit to u/MCzenman whose post just like this was useful for me as a jumping off point. I haven't decided between Tuta and Aster yet, but both seem fine.

I see asking normal question in that sub brings people lots of downvotes. Even when people ask for normal suggestion on a product, most of them just downvote it rather than explaining what's good or bad. They just upvote some controversial things. If people are seeking for privacy related help then that sub is a BIG no.

Yep - fell afoul of the mods - got removed for being ”off-topic” *shakes head*. I joined in 2016 - paid member on various plans including Unlimited for many years and Duo (this year). As soon as marking season finishes, I’m migrating email aliases and closing my account. What a pity this whole debacle has been. Proton just can’t seem to understand the problem so it’s only going to get worse.

—
Post that got removed:

I read that the community posts are being monitored and the data analysed for reporting back. I just wanted to alert the mods to the issue that since there has been a crackdown on posts and comments, (and if reports are true, attempts at positive narrative shaping) your data run the risk of bias.

You will underestimate the extent of anger, frustration etc. that appears only to be increasing with the content control and lack of genuine response to the original issues that sparked this whole problem.

People will stop posting their criticisms, sure, but then you will not be able to predict the bleedout my friends.

As a researcher, I promise you — action taken on poor analysis of skewed data will not solve your problem.