ProtonMail
Secure email based in Switzerland.
Comments and Reviews
Categories
Security & Privacy • Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency • Home & Family • Online Services • Office & ProductivityPlatform details
Online: Only web interface is open source, backend and API are closed source
Tags
- Security & Privacy
- File Encryption
- Webmail
- secure-email
I try as much than I can't to avoid big corp like GAFAM and at the same time looking for open source and great product. I leave in Switzerland, which is a great country for individual privacy. Just for you info, Phil Zimmermann, the inventor of PGP, move from US to Switzerland to be more able protect his privacy.
I have few account with ProtonMail but, never use them on my smart device simply because I don't have Google Play on these device and when I download the ProtonMail APK it won't let's me login because it don't recognize my "GooglePlay" Account, which I think it's just wack to propose an alternative, claiming being secure and working for the privacy than forcing their user to have a Google Account after all.
Since than; I decide to go with Tutanota, which are in Germany, which still great for privacy and even if I still have to download the APK than install it, at least they don't force me to being authenticated by Google to use their App. O their also cheaper and the support is nicer.
Funny fact; en 2017; ProtonMail was victim of severals DDOS, which insane when you think about it because they are hosted at the CERN.
Tutanota have several major advantages over Protonmail:
Fewer DDoS attacks,
they developed search of encrypted email text via a local index file. Basically this means you can search the text of your emails, which is not possible in Protonmail unless you first download your email via their Bridge app,
Yubikey support (this is a limited advantage as they only support Yubikeys in Chrome (Google = yuck!) and Opera (based on Chrome and not open source). Support for Yubikey puts them ahead of Protonmail for 2-factor authentication (and therefore security) but it does not go far enough. Competitors (E.g. Fastmail (not encrypted) offer Yubikey support for all browsers).
Whichever plan you are paying for, you can always ask for more storage. In Protonmail, their Professional plan requires you to add users if you want to go beyond 5GB of storage -- a ridiculous requirement. Protonmail have not through through through their pricing strategy. I am a small business owner and I need something like 8GB for me as the only user, but I also need catch-all addresses. That means I either pay for the Professional package and don't get the storage, or I pay for Visionary, and pay through the nose for what should be stanard.
In the future, Protonmail's muscle, popularity, exposure and expertise will mean that they will win. They will become - in fact, they already have become - the default service for encrypted emailing. But they are also chronically distracted by mission creep. They have developed VPNs and ways of accessing email via the .onion network... and that's all fine. For example, charity workers in privacy-hostile environments, and human rights campaigners and journalists will be better off because of Protonmail, for sure. But if the mission is to move people from services like Gmail, Protonmail aren't doing nearly enough. Where is the search? Where is the calendaring? Where is the search by multiple labels?
Reply written over 2 years ago
Besides the fact that it is far away from the NSA, the encryption it provides is top notch. The GUI is extremely lovely, simple, and modern. I love it. I am slowly migrating from Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail to this. You should too.
Lots of promises of "this feature is coming soon" or "we're working on it" or "it's on the roadmap" for email services that one would naturally expect. External client support, longer than 64-character email address, calendar, to-do lists, etc. All the while they're spending the money they're making from their email services on more paid services like ProtonVPN. Two half-baked products != one good product. It has such potential, but the money they're spending shows that their priority isn't trying to make a great (or even good) email service, but to turn more profits.
ProtonMail Web Client
This is the most infuriating web client I have ever used. It's lacking basic features, ease of use and it’s slow.
Creating folders and labels is near impossible and incredibly tedious when you have to wade through 160+ pages due to 50 message limit and you also have to move them twice because ProtonMail's delete feature isn't all that.
Selecting 'all' messages in any given folder also only selects the first 50 messages.
ProtonMail Import / Export Tool
I had to use this tool because ProtonMail Bridge fails this task badly. So I imported my GMail messages to ProtonMail via it's Import/Export Tool which is very limiting because I had to do this in increments of 1000 (7000+) messages or it would just stop working. The tool would just shut down without warning or notice. Nothing about errors written to the log.
ProtonMail Bridge
Have to leave external email client(s) and log into the website client in order to permanently delete the messages because ProtonMail wants to horde everything despite what it's told. Delete should be delete and not will bombard you with delete confirmation after delete confirmation only to store it in the 'Inbox", the "All Mail" and "Archive" folders anyway. This is also true with dragging and dropping messages from one folder to another. Constant connection timeouts. The list goes on . . .
I joined ProtonMail October 11, 2018 and I'm still trying to get the messages organized. In theory the idea of an external client like Thunderbird or Outlook etc is great until it's not because it brings all the of the ProtonMail Web Client woes with it. Message downloads are very very slow (yes I am aware they are encrypted but something is not right). I shut everything down so that "ProtonMail Bridge" is the only app running. It connects and transfers 2.5-47.1 KiB/sec (less than Dial-up speeds). I have a 10GB network setup and ISP of 500Mbps download / 20Mbps upload. It is just as slow on the website.
ProtonMail iOS App
iPhone/iPad app rarely collects mail due to locks up and spinning ‘working’ icon. I'm forced to shut it down without being able to get recent messages. I finally had to remove the app on all my devices.
** Closing Remarks**
ProtonMail has been around for a few years now and should be better then it is. I am (was - moved to G Suite as of 10/21/2018 and incorporated mail client encryption via MailEnvelope/Enigma/GnuPG) a paying client and I do feel that PrtoonMail connections are throttled regardless if paying or not which would explain the slow and constant disconnects. This is still unacceptable when using their tools directly. I realize that they must protect the system from spam, etc. However, too much protection can also be a debilitating thing.
Whether ProtonMail’s target audience is businesses or general users they are going to have to streamline several things to make this more appealing and usable. As it stands ProtonMail is unstable, unable to handle large message databases both online, via mobile, and through the external mail client. And because of this it’s unique feature(s)- privacy via encryption - becomes a 'so what' feature when the service(s) are bugged and lacking. For what ProtonMail can do at this time, which is light emailing, the pricing plans are way too high for what you actually get.
I cannot not recommend ProtonMail to anyone who has more that 1000 messages to manage. Business stay or you’re going to be as frustrated as I am trying to deal with 7000+ messages on an alpha/beta platform. My only regret is that I bought into the hype of what ProtonMail could do.
I'm still waiting on a tool to import existing mail from my domains hosting my eMail. It is meant to be in the works now...
Now you can use ProtonMail Bridge to do that.
Reply written almost 3 years ago