Proton Mail gets lots of attention as a private and secure email service. You see lots of recommendations in various media outlets, and you surely have at least a few friends who are already using it. But when you strip away the flowery language, does this email provider really stand above the competition?
Have the major product changes that have rolled out recently changed the equation? Is Proton Mail worth testing for yourself? We’ll answer all this and more in our new and updated Proton Mail review for 2023.
If you want to protect your email from prying eyes, but don’t need the kind of protection that keeps spies and whistleblowers alive, Proton Mail could be the secure email service for you. It utilizes PGP encryption standards, end-to-end and zero-knowledge encryption. A high level of encryption is very important in an age of eroding security and regular data breaches in the news.
Because Proto Mail positions its service as one of the most secure email options available, above and beyond other secure email providers, we’re really going to put it under the microscope in this updated Proton Mail review for 2023.
| Website | Proton.me |
| Based in | Switzerland |
| Storage | 15-500 GB |
| Price | $3.33/mo. |
| Free Tier | Up to 1 GB |
| Coupon | 33% off Proton Mail > |
But remember, we can only give you information about Proton Mail. Only you can decide which is the best secure email service for your unique needs and threat model. So let’s get started.
+ Pros
- End-to-end (E2E) and zero-access encryption for Email, Calendar, and Contact information
- Operates under Swiss jurisdiction
- All data stored on servers in Switzerland
- Apps for Android and iOS mobile devices
- Web client, encryption algorithms, Android and iOS code are all open source
- Support for custom domains
- Strips IP address from emails
- Can be used with third-party email clients through the Proton Mail Bridge feature
- Can import contacts and emails
– Cons
- Subject lines not encrypted
- May require personal information for verification of new accounts
Proton Mail Coupon:
Get 33% Off Proton Mail with two-year plans using the coupon below:
(Coupon is applied automatically.)
Proton Mail feature overview
Proton Mail utilizes strong end-to-end (E2E) and zero-access encryption standards to protect all email, contacts, and calendar data. All your data is encrypted when stored on Proton Mail servers, except for email subject lines (more on this later).
Note: To understand the difference between E2E and zero-access encryption, check out this excellent explanation.
Aside from this multi-tiered encryption system, Proton Mail has plenty of interesting features, including:
- The ability to send “self-destructing messages,” which are automatically deleted at the time the sender specifies.
- Address Verification, a way to ensure that a Public Key received from another user hasn’t been tampered with since you first verified it.
- Full PGP support.
- Premium accounts with a range of additional benefits, including a brandable Business account.
- The ability to send encrypted emails to non-Proton Mail users.
- Android and iOS mobile apps plus a web client.
- Proton Mail Bridge, which allows Proton Mail to integrate with other email clients that support the IMAP and SMTP protocols.
- Easy Switch, which makes it easy to switch to Proton Mail by importing messages from other services.
Overall, this is a good lineup of features.
Since our last review of Proton Mail, it and its siblings (Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, and Proton Drive) have been joined together under a single Proton Account. Signing up for a free Proton Account automatically gives you access to the free versions of all four products.
Proton Mail company history and funding sources
The Proton Mail family of products is run by Proton AG, a company based in Geneva, Switzerland. The founders met while scientists at CERN, and came up with the idea for a secure email provider in the CERN cafeteria, as the story goes.
Funding for Proton Mail has come from various sources over the years. Aside from regular paying users, Proton Mail has also benefited from the following funding sources:
- In 2014, Proton Mail launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that brought in over half a million dollars.
- In 2015, Proton Mail accepted a $2 million investment from a US-based firm called Charles River Ventures (CRV).
- In 2019, Proton Mail accepted €2 million from the EU government to “develop a suite of encrypted services.”
Proton Mail is more expensive than some of the other secure email services we’ve reviewed, such as Tutanota and Posteo for example.
Proton Mail does not encrypt email subject lines
One concern I have is that Proton Mail does not encrypt the subject lines of messages. From the Proton Mail website:
All ProtonMail data at rest and in transit is encrypted. However, subject lines in ProtonMail are not end-to-end encrypted, which means if served with a valid Swiss court order, we do have the ability to turn over the subjects of your messages. Your message content and attachments are end to end encrypted.
Proton Mail complies with the OpenPGP encryption standard, which is based on the proprietary PGP standard. In that standard, address-related metadata is part of the message header and must remain unencrypted to allow a message to reach its destination.
If this lack of encryption for the subject line is a problem for you, check out our Tutanota review. Tutanota does not rely on PGP and fully encrypts subject lines.
The ProtonMail approach makes them compliant with the PGP specification but leaves this potentially-revealing data unencrypted.
Proton Mail servers and data security
All Proton Mail servers are physically located in Switzerland in secure facilities. This means user data is protected by Swiss law, which generally provides for better privacy than USA or EU law.
However, Proton Mail makes it clear that if you violate Swiss laws, and they receive a Swiss court order, they will have to turn over whatever information they have on you to the Swiss authorities. This is where the lack of encryption for the Subject line of messages can become a problem.
While the bodies of your messages and any attachments should remain safely encrypted, addressing information and the Subject lines of your messages are stored in the clear and would be provided to the authorities. This information is enough to give anyone possessing it a good idea of who you communicate with and the subjects you discuss with them.
See all Proton Mail security features here >
Proton Mail logging IP addresses
Additionally, Proton Mail may also log your IP address if they think you are doing something that violates their terms and conditions or if ordered to do so by the Swiss government. You can find more information on this in section 2.7 of the Proton Privacy Policy.
This is another reason we recommend using a good VPN service that hides your true IP address and location. Using a good VPN is also essential for basic digital privacy in a world when ISPs log everything you do online.
With the large investments that have been made by a US firm and the EU government, some people question how free from USA and EU influence Proton AG really is. Additionally, Switzerland now has data retention regulations, but Proton Mail argues that these regulations do not apply to their services, but rather to Swiss internet providers.
All that said, the Proton Mail threat model document specifically states that,
“we cannot guarantee your safety against a powerful adversary.”
The spy agencies serving the USA and EU definitely qualify as “powerful adversaries.” Under most circumstances, this is a secure email service. But if you decide to take on one of the Five Eyes, violate Swiss laws, or do something else equally crazy, using Proton Mail is unlikely to save you.
Proton Mail security, privacy, and anonymity – Addressing user comments
We’ve received several comments from our readers related to the security, privacy, and anonymity of Proton Mail. It is easy to see why.
It used to be that the Proton Mail home page claimed that the service, “provided an anonymous email gateway”, and “requires no personal information to create an account.” However, the algorithm that controlled the registration process sometimes decided that it needed some personal information before allowing you to create an account. You would see an, “Are you human?” dialog box like this one:
Clearly, if you are required to enter personally identifiable information, the system is not very anonymous. Proton Mail has addressed this issue by eliminating any mention of anonymity on their home page. They have also created a page explaining their “Registration Human Verification” procedures, which you can read about here.
First, the system doesn’t always force you to enter personal information. They have, “an intelligent algorithm that determines the required verification method based on a number of factors.” Sometimes it will only require a reCaptcha to confirm that you are human.
At other times you will be forced to use email or SMS verification, or make a “donation” using a credit card or PayPal. In other words, their algorithm will decide for itself whether or not you are allowed to create an account without disclosing personal information. So let’s call it conditional anonymity.
The page also explains that if you do use email or SMS for verification, only a cryptographic hash of this information is stored. This hash, “is not permanently associated with the account that you create.” The page doesn’t explain if “not permanently associated” means “never associated,” or “temporarily associated.” Nor does it explain how credit card and PayPal verification is tracked.
I can understand the company’s desire to have processes in place to prevent spammers from abusing the system. But I couldn’t understand their claim that no personal information was required to create your secure email account despite the fact that sometimes personal information was required. The fact that the email and SMS hashes are not permanently associated with your account doesn’t change the fact that you must provide them, then trust Proton Mail’s handling of them.
We have reviewed other secure email services that give you more privacy when registering for an account. For an example of this, see our Tutanota review.
To wrap things up, here are the things you need to know:
- Proton Mail Subjects are not encrypted
- Proton Mail can, and has, logged user IP addresses, at least once turning over that information to the authorities
- Proton Mail is not anonymous — but it is private
If you want a secure email service that is more private than services like Gmail and Outlook, Proton Mail could be a good choice.
If you want anonymity, or a guarantee that the Swiss government can’t find out your IP Address, Proton Mail can’t give you that.
If you want a guarantee that a powerful adversary like the NSA can’t read your email, Proton Mail can’t guarantee that. But neither can any of the Proton Mail alternatives.
Proton Mail technical specifications
Proton Mail uses a variety of encryption algorithms to protect your messages. All messages are end-to-end encrypted and also remain encrypted in your mailbox until actively being read. The algorithms they use are open source versions of AES and RSA along with OpenPGPjs algorithms:
- AES-128
- TLS 1.0
- DHE RSA
- SHA 3
QuoVadis Trustlink Schweiz AG signs SSL certificates for Proton Mail.
Security features of the certificates include:
- Extended Validation (EV)
- Certificate Transparency (CT)
- 4096-bit RSA
- SHA-256 hash
Proton Mail hands-on testing
If you’ve used email services like Microsoft Outlook or Gmail, you will find Proton Mail to be easy to work with. For this review, we’ll be looking at the Proton Mail Plus plan, the paid version of the Proton Mail service.
Creating a Proton Mail account
To create an account with Proton Mail, you need to sign up for a Proton account. This gives you access to versions of the entire Proton product family (Proton Mail Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, and Proton Drive),
You can get an account in a matter of minutes:
- Go to the Proton.me website and click the Create a free account button.
- You will see three plan options. I recommend starting with the Free Plan so you can get the feel of the service.
- Create your Proton Account by entering a username and password. This gives you access to the Proton Mail plan you selected plus the free versions of the other products in the Proton family.
- Go through the verification steps.
I’ve seen complaints that Proton Mail sometimes forces people to go through phone (SMS) verification if they try to sign up using a VPN or the Tor network. While I don’t like the idea that Proton Mail may force you to use SMS verification, I understand their desire to protect the service from spammers and bots.
Note: While Proton Mail wants to make sure you aren’t doing anything shady, you may want to use Proton Mail truly anonymously. I could imagine someone in that situation using an anonymous payment method like a new, virtual credit card to make a donation. Or maybe renting an SMS number just long enough to complete the process. Even using a disposable email address and then discarding it once the verification is done.
Proton Mail betas
Before we go further, we have to discuss how Proton Mail handles beta versions. They are serious about wanting community involvement in the process. As a result, the newest version of Proton Mail can be stuck in beta for a long time. How long? Years.
Proton Mail version 4 went live in October 2019. The new Proton Mail was finally released in June of 2021, more than a year and a half later. I find this mind-boggling but that’s the way this team rolls, apparently. In response to the various complaints on Reddit, Proton Mail acknowledges the missed deadlines and delays:
So what does this mean to you? At the moment, not too much. Right now the only product that is in beta appears to be Proton Drive. And while you may be interested in using that product, today we are talking about Proton Mail, Contacts, and Calendar, all of which are fine to use in their current released versions.
That said, I don’t think it is a good idea for a privacy-oriented person to rely on beta software. By definition, beta software isn’t completely ready yet. This could include flaws, bugs, and/or exploits that undermine your privacy and security.
Unless you are comfortable with the real, but hard to quantify privacy risks of using beta software, I recommend you stick with the released version of Proton Mail, Contacts, and Calendar. Avoid the Proton Drive beta for anything other than testing until there is a released version to use.
Signing in to Proton Mail
Signing in to Proton Mail is easy and straightforward. Simply go to the homepage and enter your login credentials. When using Proton Mail, you have the option to create a recovery email inbox, which can be used if you lose your password.
Once you sign into Proton Mail, you can stay with the free plan or upgrade to one of the paid plans. As is common with most secure email services, the paid plans offer more storage and additional features over the free plan. We noted this same dichotomy in our Proton VPN review.
Note: As we go through this review, I’ll let you know which features are available only in a paid plan or only in the beta.
The look and feel of Proton Mail
The latest version of Proton Mail has a pretty standard interface, although it was updated in April 2022 to be consistent with the other products in the Proton family. There’s a 3-pane “Row View” layout (we saw that when talking about encrypted subject lines earlier). They also offer the “Column View” option, as you can see here:
With Column View, you get all the usual folders in the left-most pane, with the ability to add as many custom ones as you wish if you are using a paid version of Proton Mail. And like other privacy-oriented mail services, Proton Mail blocks remote content like images by default, giving you the option to load them right at the top of the window.
The web client works smoothly although there can be a delay when opening a message, given that the message must be decrypted before you can read it. Since the client is browser-based, instead of a stand-alone app, you might find that it slows down as the number of messages as your folders increase, but I didn’t notice any problems during testing.
Proton Mail Settings
You can customize the layout of your Proton Mail inbox by clicking the Settings icon. In the menu that appears, select Go to settings, which opens the Settings window.
Select Appearance in the left-hand column of the Settings window. You’ll be presented with several Themes, along with Layout options for the Inbox and the Composer window (see below). There is also an option to change the Density (how closely packed the text is) of the content Proton Mail displays.
Composing messages with Proton Mail
By default, you compose Proton Mail messages in a pop-up window called Composer. It comes with a good set of HTML formatting options, including inline images. This window appears in the lower-right corner of the Proton Mail window, and looks like this:
Once you get used to the layout, the composition window makes things like Attachments, an Expiration time, a Read Receipt Request, and Encryption fast and easy. If you don’t like working in this little window, you can make the Composer window large by clicking the Settings icon, then Go to Settings, then Appearance. In the Composer section that appears, select Maximized.
Note: You can only set an expiration time on messages sent to other Proton Mail users or encrypted messages sent to non-Proton Mail users. You cannot make an unencrypted message to a non-Proton Mail user expire.
There are a few keyboard shortcuts that help you to compose and send encrypted messages. But you won’t find more advanced editing features such as macros and automatic suggestions.
Sending messages to non-Proton Mail users
Like some other secure email services, such as Tutanota and Mailfence, Proton Mail gives you the option to send encrypted messages to people who don’t use the service. The recipient will need to know the shared password you are using, so that will need to be arranged outside the system. These encrypted messages automatically expire in 28 days (but you can set a shorter date if you wish). Here’s a screenshot from our tests:
The recipient will then get an email with a secure link. If they enter the correct password and click the View Secure Message button, they will be able to see the message you sent them.
This system seems to work very well, as long as you can share the password outside the Proton Mail system to get the process started. For this endeavor, you could consider using a secure messaging app.
Searching for messages in Proton Mail
Proton Mail has a very limited ability to search your messages. Because messages are encrypted (except while you are actually viewing them), the client can’t search message bodies. This, of course, can be frustrating and really limit your ability to find the message you are looking for. Here’s a screenshot of the search feature:
If you give Proton Mail permission to do so, it can download, decrypt, and index the bodies of your messages to facilitate searching them. This approach appears very similar to that taken by Tutanota several years ago.
Comparison to Tutanota search – In comparison, we noted in our Tutanota review how this email offers full-text search capabilities — and has done so since 2017. To do this, Tutanota creates an encrypted search index which can then be searched locally on the users’ device.
Proton Contacts
The Proton Contacts secure contact manager is integrated into Proton Mail, giving users a secure way to protect their contacts while functioning smoothly with Proton Mail.
Proton Mail creates Proton Contacts encryption keys for you. It uses those keys in their zero access encryption system to encrypt clear text contact data, ensuring that once they do encrypt your data this way, even Proton Mail can’t read it. Proton Contacts also uses digital signature verification to ensure that no one else can secretly tamper with your contact information.
Note: Email addresses in contacts are not encrypted using zero knowledge encryption. Why? Because Proton Mail needs to be able to read the email address to know where to send your messages.
Proton Calendar
Building an encrypted calendar sounds pretty easy at first. Just encrypt all the data until the user opens the calendar, then decrypt the data for them. But just as an email service has to interact with other email services, a calendar service needs to be able to interact with other calendar services.
Even worse, a full-powered calendar system needs to be able to share events with other calendar systems. The engineers battled with this complexity for over a year, and on December 20, 2019, they announced the arrival of Proton Calendar.
It features:
- Calendar sharing
- Event invitations to anyone (whether they use Proton Mail or not)
- The ability to sync the calendar with events found in your Proton Mail inbox
- The ability to import other calendars in .ICS format
All Proton Mail users get access to Proton Calendar.
Proton Drive
In November 2020, Proton announced the release of Proton Drive in beta. This is a basic secure cloud storage feature that can be used with certain accounts. However, as we noted in our ProtonVPN vs NordVPN comparison, the Proton team has a habit of restricting the feature set, with more features as the price of your subscription climbs. In this case, access to Proton Drive is only available for paid users.
How long did ProtonDrive stay in beta? Almost 2 years. That fits with Proton AG’s history or multi-year test cycles. The beta went on so long that we recommended anyone who needed secure cloud storage that wasn’t stuck in beta to the best cloud storage instead of waiting for Proton Drive to come out of beta. But with Proton Drive finally out of beta, you should definitely give it a try!
Proton Mail mobile apps
Proton Mail has apps for both iOS and Android. I’ve been working with the Android app and it looks good and functions smoothly. At the time of this Proton Mail review, the Android app had over 5 million downloads and a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Since our last major review, Proton Technologies completed the process of making their Android app open source. However, it is still not available on F-Droid.
The iOS app is also open source. The iOS app gets a score of 4.0 out of 5, with over 3,200 reviews.
Proton Mail business features
Proton Mail also offers a service for businesses that provides “end-to-end encryption to secure your business communications.”
This service includes migration tools and dedicated support to transition your business from its current hosting to the Proton Mail infrastructure. It incorporates a user hierarchy allowing your Email Administrators to manage user accounts appropriately.
Given the current limitations with search and calendar, I’m not sure Proton Mail would be a great fit for businesses that need all these features. There are other good options that are more fully featured, such as Mailfence or Mailbox.org.
Proton Mail Support
Proton Mail provides differing levels of customer support depending on which subscription plan you have. Not surprisingly, free users get a basic support level, with access to a searchable knowledge base and some helpful step-by-step guides. As you move up through the paid plans you get email support and eventually priority support.
Proton Mail cost and pricing plans
Since they don’t display ads in their clients or sell access to your messages to advertisers, Proton Mail charges for their services. Proton Mail has three pricing plans, including a free tier with up to 1 GB of storage.
The Free plan, with 1 GB of storage, 150 messages per day, and 3 folders/labels could be enough for you. If not, one of the paid plans will likely meet your needs.
The image above shows the details of each pricing plan as of August 2022. But these tend to change so your best bet for current info is to go to the signup page and see what the current offer looks like.
Proton Mail’s paid plans have historically been more expensive than the competition. They are still higher than you might like, but the company has dropped the prices somewhat since our last review. It still isn’t a cheap service, but I think the improved features and reduced-price make it a better value than just a few months ago.
Deal: (opens in a new tab)”>Get 33% off Proton Mail here >
Proton Mail FAQ
Here are some of the more common questions about this product and its related components such as Proton Mail Bridge.
There is a lot of debate out there about how secure Proton Mail really is. Aside from the financial ties to the US and EU that we discussed earlier, there have been some criticisms of the service on other grounds as well.
The browser client uses JavaScript encryption libraries. These are considered to be less secure than the libraries used in the Proton Mail mobile apps.
Leaving the Subject field in the clear (for PGP compatibility) means more data could be exposed to those spying on the message traffic.
A paper published at the end of 2018 criticized Proton Mail’s cryptographic architecture on a number of grounds. However, these same criticisms could be applied to any browser-based email client (not just Proton Mail). Here is the response from Proton Mail.
On the subject of using PGP, there are also some benefits in terms of security. OpenPGP is an open standard, which has been extensively audited for security and is battle-tested, and well-proven to be secure. Proton Mail is also the maintainer of OpenPGPjs, which is the most widely used open source encryption library and has therefore been thoroughly audited.
Lastly, we also have to keep in mind that Proton Mail is arguably the biggest name in the private email space. This makes it a good target for criticism, as we also noted in our NordVPN review, as the largest VPN provider.
Because Proton Mail uses E2E and zero-knowledge encryption, there isn’t a lot of data that they can hand over to anyone. The only thing that is stored unencrypted is message headers and the email addresses of contacts.
Even here, Proton AG says they won’t hand over any data unless directed to by the appropriate Swiss authority. Your data is about as safe as it can be using publicly available tech.
A bigger risk to the security of your data, is the way governments are pushing to break end-to-end encryption. There are constant efforts to force companies to insert “backdoors” into their software that would allow law enforcement to bypass encryption. This recent Fortune magazine article nicely describes the situation in the United States today.
Proton Technologies allows you to switch between the free and paid versions of this encrypted email service. You can go from a paid version to the free version, but if you do you’ll lose all the premium features of the paid version you are leaving. You can also return to a paid version from the free version. How? By subscribing to the paid version you want. You won’t lose any of your messages when you do this.
Proton Mail review conclusion
Proton Mail is a polished and popular end-to-end encrypted email service that will meet the needs of many regular users. Thanks to their recent user interface updates, the entire Proton family of products now has a consistent look consistent with their treatment of the products as more of a suite of tools, than a bunch of standalone privacy products. This made an already good product even more appealing.
As perhaps the most popular secure email provider on the market, with a free account, it is a great option for regular encrypted communications with friends, business partners, and others who want protection from routine snooping and hacking. You will, however, need to be patient about getting additional features thanks to Proton Mail’s extended beta test cycles.
While Proton Mail will suit many users, those who want maximum security with full encryption of subject lines and strong data security (or simply faster delivery of new features), Tutanota might be a better fit.
Is Proton Mail the best secure email service for you?
I can’t tell you that since everyone’s needs are different. There are many factors to consider when selecting a secure email provider and the choice all comes down to your own preferences. You can learn more about Proton Mail and get a great deal with the coupon below:
Proton Mail Coupon:
Get 33% Off Proton Mail with two-year plans using the coupon below:
(Coupon is applied automatically.)
Alternatives to Proton Mail
We have numerous email solutions that offer a higher level of privacy and security. You can also check out our full lineup of recommended secure email providers.
We also have a roundup guide on temporary disposable email services if you need a quick email for registration.
And here is a list of other email services we have reviewed:
Tutanota Review
Mailfence Review
Mailbox.org Review
Hushmail Review
Posteo Review
Fastmail Review
Runbox Review
This Proton Mail review was last updated on August 7, 2023.
Protonmail would be great, but it won’t work with some email providers like AOL. This is a huge flaw and rather makes protonmail a totally bad choice. Seriously guys? It has been like this for months too.
I had Protonmail for years, but it takes years for them to add basic functionality. What is still missing after years of development is:
– no contact integration on phone
– no calendar integration on phone
– no tasks or reminders
– no desktop sync app for proton drive
I’m tired of paying for promises.
I have been a paying user for several years now and as others have written Proton’s support leaves much to be desired. Last few times I wrote their support I never even got a reply. At this point I don’t bother anymore. As soon as I find a provider who does not have a mountain of legal documents to read I will likely be leaving.
I HATE Protonmail. If you want anything private – don’t use them. The FBI was constantly hacking into my account and changing my password. When I followed all their protocalls to get my account restored – they wouldnt work. Now I cant get my apple and MS id’s because – oh sob – they cant restore encrypted emails. IT’s BULLSHIT. And why is the FBI following me? I have no idea – apparently there is a program created by Biden to track all Republicans, Independents, and now Christians because many of them are opposed to the Democratic party here in America. They told my bank I was a bomb carrying terrorist to get them to turn over my bank statements – a bank account that had Biden’s pandemic payments in it!!!! I turned out not to be the RICH Republican they were after. So much for their security policies
Beware of Protonmail. I’ve had a free account for years. I tried their VPN for for a year ($78), but now ProtonMail sent a $158 charge to my credit card. I declined to pay and my account was disabled/shut down.
They said I needed to pay the $158—without saying what for PLUS an additional $15 for disputing the charge in order to get my account.
Truly foul business practice.
No separation for email addresses equals no privacy between different email addresses.
I needed three email addresses, not for privacy, but for organizational purposes – only to find that with a single account, I could not separate the three email addresses in Thunderbird.
So I sucked it up and purchased three accounts – only to find that their website does not work for renewing the subscriptions if the credit card number needed to change during the year. It’s hell on a keyboard to pay to renew, and not only do I need to pay three times, but suffer the deficiencies of their website trying to pay three times. I’m going to start looking for an alternative that allows me to have three separate email addresses and can renew each year without going through the hell I am now.
I have been a paid subscriber for years and their customer service is horrible! I sent a very simple question on Dec 6, 2022 and received this reply on Dec 12th.
“Proton Mail Support (ProtonMail)
Dec 12, 2022, 13:44 GMT+1
Dear Customer,
First of all, allow us to apologize for not responding sooner. We are doing everything we can to help all users that have questions or encountered an issue while using our service. However, due to the high load of tickets, we are unable to check each older inquiry. If you still need our assistance, please respond to this message and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
As always, we remain committed to building a close and friendly relationship with the community and we greatly appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.
Kind regards,
The Proton Mail Team”.
I’ve had nothing but problems with their non customer service not responding. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY! WHAT A HEADACHE!
This is my case too. Their support team is full of attitude, arrogance and neglect. I used their SimpleLogin aliases. Mails to my bank got blocked. These are high priority mails. When I contacted their support, they replied 3 days later with no proper information on the actual issue.
When I explained this and requested for the refund due to poor support, they happily refunded my money. To this day, I don’t know why my mails got blocked.
Also, I don’t like the way they do the product updates. The voting system they use doesn’t work for all the users. If you need a feature SO BADLY and if majority of their COMMUNITY user doesn’t require it, then you will have to wait ONLY GOD KNOWS for how long.
Useless without search in body locally. And no use of bridge (mobile)
A playgarden sandbox from Msoft&Friends with their dominant github background.
Useless without search in body locally. And no use of bridge (mobile)
The GUI is very anti-communicative minded slowly improving. Recently their ios was for months jumping the cursor in edit.
A playgarden sandbox from Msoft&Friends with their dominant github background.
Useless without search in body locally. And no use of bridge (mobile)
The GUI is very anti-communicative minded slowly improving. Recently their ios was for months jumping the cursor in edit.
Proton Mail censors your email.
Photos they do not like, get removed and a Placeholder replaces it.
Proof Positive this is not what you think it is.
Do NOT use proton Mail if you want privacy, this is not the place.
Protonmail is HORRIFIC when it comes to privacy. In fact it’s one of the WORST. When you have a business account and want to organize your emails in subfolders, then you must know that their “folder” structure is SHARED amongst ALL email addresses in your account.
So if you have info@domain.com, sales@domain.com, whatever@domain.com, everyone that has access to one of these mailboxes has access to ALL emails in ALL email accounts. Nothing is separated. Everything is just there. for everyone to read. Super, super, super privacy unfriendly.
Of course their support doesn’t care. This problem was already there in 2022 (probably earlier) and it’s still here in 2023. So if you want privacy, forget protonmail. It’s a lot of blabla and promises, but the *only* thing that’s good is that they’re in Switzerland. Their infrastructure and privacy is horrific.
With all this good information, what is best way to close the proton I just subscribed to for a year? Ride it out and call bank to prevent auto rebill? Basically Proton mail is a fraud? Pointless? Why did I read such great reviews prior? Funded misinformation by entities that want to spy?
I agree with you. I am getting out of it. For e.g. a simple issue when composing an email TO with a BCC at the end of the message the BCC jumps up to the TO. When it is corrected it still jumps up
to the TO. Then I find on checking the BCC is STILL included in the TO when sent which is enfuriating. That is just one example.
Then one attempts to use their own reported email to inform them of this it comes back “not known”.
One checks and sure enough had the email they give for complaints. So it is impossible to connect with them. So obviously they do not want complaints. Also a nice little trick to get your banking info is they require $1 to answer ones question.
I asked to where do I mail the one dollar bill…obviously no response ergo I do NOT recommend Protonmail. I chose Protonmail because I went to school in Switzerland and love the country.
It’s a PITA. If you want to forward a message, up pops the composer and the original message is hidden unless one clicks the 3 dot ellipses which is down the page; totally useless function. It’s not until you click are you able to edit the message content. It’s like whoever set up Protonmail is a gamer and likes to ‘gamefy’ the tools and functions by hiding them. I’d love to go to their house and hide their tools and see how much they like the game when they want to get something done. Protonmail is supposed to be about privacy and encryption but what good is it if you find yourself having to scrounge around the site for items one would expect to be at hand? We have another proton account and they hid the address book by default. WTH??? Are they afraid that while you’re using your private secure email that someone is looking over your shoulder to see your address book?
I’ve found Protonmail to be totally unusable. I work with a multitude of clients and businesses, the overwhelming majority (roughly >80%) of the time the client’s spam filter, internal network, or service provider(s) will block emails from Protonmail accounts even if the account has an established history with GMail/Apple/Microsoft major email providers. Protonmail accounts, by default, are exclusively sent to GMail spam boxes in my experience. This discrimination by their mainstream competition, ISPs, governments, and whitelisting practices by corporations makes the hurdles of using a Protonmail account for daily work completely untenable. RIP Protonmail, RIP human rights.
A random email I received 2 months after I created my Proton Mail free account – I wonder why would I get rewarded with increased storage for free if I agreed to import contacts and emails from other accounts AND try the mobile app” ? Since the early 2010s I was advised by more tech-savvy people to be a bit suspicious when I am prompted to import contacts or other data into an online service or when a business tries to push an app for a small reward or as a condition for accessing a necessary service/ option ( even taxi companies and private clinics try that)
Here is the email I got in my Proton Mail inbox:
“Dear Proton community member,
Don’t miss your chance to increase your ProtonMail storage to 1 GB for free. You only have a few more days to complete the four actions that will help you maximize your inbox:
Import your emails and contacts
Send your first message
Set up a recovery method
Try our mobile app (available on iOS and Android)
Once you’ve completed all four actions, we’ll upgrade your storage to 1 GB.”
Heinrich,
One thing that you forgot to mention is the use of gag orders.
According to the Proton privacy policy, Proton does not provide notice to the Proton account holder if Proton receives a legal order to perform live monitoring of email traffic of the account. Proton “requires” law enforcement to provide notice. Which means, if law enforcement if from another country, then Swiss law does not apply to notifying the Proton account holder. The account holder may never been informed.
If you look at the Proton transparency report, you can see there is an exponential growing number of legal orders to Proton in recent years. If you look at the Way Back Machine to see how Proton previously provided the transparency report, you will notice most of the legal orders are from foreign law enforcement.
After comparing the privacy policy and transparency reports of Proton and Tutanota, it becomes very clear that the “Swiss Law claim of privacy” is hype and not as good at German privacy laws. Tutanota points out that German law does not allow for gag orders, so Tutanota will inform the account holder if a legal order is received. Also, according to Tutanota, German law requires only severe legal offences before allowing access to German email (Tutanota).
I think whistle blowers will find this to be important information that would helpful to include in your review.
Heinrich,
Here is a thorough document by Tutanota that explains what I described above.
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/data-protection-germany
Here is the Tutantota and Proton transparency report. Notice how few legal orders go to Tutanota compared to Proton. This would suggest Tutanota is correct that German law is more protective of privacy than Swiss law.
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/transparency-report/
https://proton.me/legal/transparency
Here is the Way Back Machine that shows most of the legal orders to Proton are from foreign countries.
https://web.archive.org/web/diff/20190425155330/20190622144331/https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/https://web.archive.org/web/diff/20190425155330/20190622144331/https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/
Here is the Proton notification policy. Notice that Proton will NOT notify the Proton account owner if a legal order is executed for a Proton account. Proton has law enforcement provide notice per Swiss law. If law enforcement is from another country then law enforcement does not have to follow Swiss law an may not ever tell the account owner. This is a loop hole that is not obvious.
https://proton.me/legal/law-enforcement
I believe whistle blowers will find this as important information. Maybe you could include this in your review of Proton and Tutanota to better help whistle blowers.
Unable to login!!!!!! With different browsers no vpns etc
you go round in circles with picture clue window/login/wrong login details. Fortunately I was just testing you.
ABSOLUTE TIMEWASTER
I can’t, either. It says my old account cannot be retrieved & each time I attempt to set up a new one (only allowed via protonme now), it leads me absolutely NOWHERE.
That’s why I think it must have been hacked & am wondering if the protonme is even a legitimate email.
All these comments do not inspire me to switch to Proton, even though I was 80% convinced that the benefits were significant. Some of these scenarios sound nightmarish! I did have a question for the author of this article, Heinrich Long. I don’t think you shared any information about the migration process. I am currently with Google I have used about 5GB of my 15GB storage capacity with them. This indicates I will need a paid account with Proton. It would be good to have some information about how the migration process works, does that process automatically wipe all of my emails in my gmail account, if I have more than one gmail account can I import and merge all those accounts into my Proton mail account etc. This may all be academic at this stage as the comments here do not encourage uptake of Proton mail. Reliability is as important as security, and also being charged correctly and having customer support available during critical scenarios such as those described by commenters here. Sounds like these are not strong points with Proton making it a highly unattractive option.
Don’t believe all these bad comments herqw it almost seems orchestrated by bots. I use ProtonMail since years and emails don’t get censored etc.
Customer support is responsive and they always charged me on time and correctly.
Concerning an other commenters stupid remark. Obviously you can’t ask them to restore mails for you since they don’t have access to them duh.
PM advertises they upgrade you to 1 GB storage if you let them connect with your existing email providers. Now the thing is that PM is considered by people who privacy-minded. Why would I want my existing email provider to know that I am using PM to send/receive emails? That’s counterintuitive to privacy.
There is something amiss with this company. My recommendation is to avoid them unless you’d like to be charged for services you never bought in perpetuity. I purchased a VPN and wasn’t all that happy with it. I paid one year in advance and cancelled my account a few months before the one-year mark. On the anniversary of the purchase, Proton auto-charged me for the mail product, which I never purchased. When I explained to them that they were using my credit card to charge me for a purchase I never made, they said they were not. They said that since they offered a free mail account with VPN, they couldn’t refund my money. Is this incompetence, double-speak or fraud? I am leaning toward fraud supported by double-speak. No one at the company would remove the false charge. I contacted my credit card company and opened a dispute. To be safe, I closed my credit card, as I know full well Proton would continue to charge my card for services never purchased, as they did it once, pretended it never happened, and refused to acknowledge what they had done. From what I experienced firsthand, I believe Proton may be involved in consumer fraud in the U.S.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Every so often ProtonMail decides to shoot incoming email from long-trusted correspondents into SPAM. Email from people in Proton Contacts who’ve sent/received dozens of emails over years.
Proton Support has no idea what is causing it.
They advise manually moving spam to Inbox to “fix”
It keeps happening over and over.
Lame.
Conundrum: Oh thank your for jogging my memory re: my above response. My grown children have
the same surname as I YET Protonmail CONTINUALLY places emails from them into the SPAM no matter how many times I ask them to correct this. It’s enfuriating to have to constantly check SPAM
only to find missed emails from my children that were important such as “Mom I’ll be picking you up at 3 p.m.” which I do not get until past that time!!! Also no matter how much one deletes emails I note it doesn’t register or lower the count towards useage.. It’s a time waster to have continually to read through all the SPAM to find that important email that should not be there. I wish I had read these reviews before signing up.
When Microsoft destroyed the Hotmail account that I had used from the time I owned my first computer, I searched online to find a reliable email service that I could use to replace the Hotmail account. Proton Mail had rave reviews and my search on Google accessed many reviews claiming that Proton Mail was the best email service for personal use. The reviews were all positive, so when I signed up, I carefully set up an account and programmed in the email addresses that I frequently use.
Up until this past week, I was very happy with Proton Mail and the service was excellent. However, there was another technical problem on my laptop that required me to clear all the cookies. I have done this before, so I knew I would have to log into many accounts after doing the operation. I logged into Proton Mail, thinking it was also affected, but I discovered that my password was not accepted. I tried more than once; I keep the passwords saved in an encrypted file to make sure I won’t forget. However, the password did not log into the account. I was prompted to change my password, so I made the change. However, when I got into my email account, I had a terrible shock to see that all my stored email messages had been trashed. Instead of the contents that I received, each email had a long field of random characters with no hint of the email messages that I had received. I was panicked, and I checked several of the emails; the damage had been done to all of them. I saw there is a button on the window of each email at the end of the title that says “Decryption error: decryption of this message’s encrypted content failed.” I clicked on the “Try Again” button and saw the message: “Sorry, Proton can’t decrypt your message. Please check that all your keys are active.” I had no idea what that meant. I did some searching to find out what were keys. I didn’t find anything that helped me, so I contacted Customer Support at Proton Mail. An email was sent back to me with a list of procedures to follow that allegedly would restore my account to its former state. However, I soon found that following those procedures carefully restored nothing; my whole email account had been totally trashed.
I contacted Proton Mail Customer Support to ask for assistance. I was sent a list of procedures and I followed them to the letter, only to see that they did nothing to restore my emails. I tried the procedures again and again, but nothing changed; the emails were all destroyed. I contacted Customer Support again and again I was sent the same procedures, but the response this time stated clearly that Proton Mail could not restore my account. I was left with useless trash. I wrote and asked if there were special procedures that I needed to perform, why was I not given then when I opened the account as a new account. That question went without an answer. If the email account was booby-trapped — and that does seem to be what was the case — why was I left defenseless? Proton Mail assumed no responsibility; I was stuck with damages only.
How am i supposed to feel? I was left with nothing but damages and no hope of ever recovering what I had stored in my email account. It does make me ponder what can I do in the future that won’t put me at risk for a similar disaster with another provider. Proton Mail had such positive reviews that I fell in; is there any provider who has integrity and can be trusted? I don’t know anymore. I have to mention that I was paying to have this damage done; I was not a free customer, but that didn’t seem to mean anything to Proton Mail. I just wonder how many other victims are there who experienced similar ravages; if there were essential procedures that I was to follow when I opened the account, why were they not given to me when I began service? I’ll probably never have an answer to that question and that disturbs me greatly. In effect, I was scammed by a Swiss company; that deserves to be advertised as a warning to others who consider using it.
This happens to any Internet company, any form of cloud.
Cryptographic libraries, movies, all kinds of forms. Turns out you had nothing. It’s only my own if I put it on my own computer, It’s nonsense, but if you don’t make a choice, the same thing will keep happening.
I have just had the same experience. – all trashed as you say. Still hoping for a miracle that they will suddenly come right.
In December 1, 2022, subscribed for Proton VPN. But it did not have a feature I was looking for. Asked for a refund. What I got, was very difficult, annoying and irritating experience to get a refund. I spent already a WEEK, trying to get a refund (still did not get it), while support pulls me through seems like never ending questions about why, offering different alternatives, even though I said them straight from the beginning that I just need a REFUND, and please do not offer other options. Then, when I got to that point that they agreed to issue a refund, I had to close my account first, then inform them, submitting proofs, and what happens after that, I don’t know yet, since I still did not get a refund (for Proton VPN). Given my grave experience, I don’t expect anything good further from this company, and frankly speaking said goodby to my money. Absolutely inhuman and callositious attitude towards people, absolutely no respect. And it seems that they even don’t know about that, they think it’s normal.