I've been using proton for a year after migrating from Rackspace and I'm done. Not because of this article, but I might as well pile on:
1. I use a custom domain.
Turns out that there are two competing features, not-at-all documented. If you use a catch-all, like I do, AND use specific addresses for sending, the two are incompatible to some degree. Which is bonkers.
Example: with a catchall I can create any address I want (and I do). Some store wants an email for a big discount, cool, here's a throwaway. Buying something online, here's a throwaway.
Now sometimes, I need to reply using that throwaway. Turns out in Proton, this triggers a gotcha. As soon as I add the throwaway email to my list of email addresses for sending, I enter a world with a limit of 10 max.
That's fine, I can disable them right?
Nope, it turns out if I disable them in order to add aothers, Proton blocks those addresses *even though I have a catch-all*. WHAT?? Worse, if I try to delete the addresses, Proton will also delete the associated messages in my Inbox/folders. Excuse me?
2. What really pushed me away: Search.
Whatever proton is using under the hood is easily the worst search experience I've ever had from a mail product, and I use Thunderbird on my work machine.
Notable: Proton Bridge. I get why, but it's just terrible.
Isn't the search bad because they can't search email contents? As long as the term is somewhere in the metadata (title, sender email, sender name) it seems to work ok.
I agree though that the user experience isn't great because of this limitation. You kind of have to remember what the title of the email was for what you're looking for. Searching for "flight ticket" results in mixed success
I want to emphasize just how bad bridge is. It's so bad that they nuked the issues section on the repo. They didn't lock it, they removed all record of issues. I found out when trying to click on a useful/familiar issue that was cached by a search engine. Proton says to talk to their support directly, but that is a totally different solution for a totally different problem. The fact that they deleted public history of comments really flares my unsubscribe feelings.
As for the "why is bridge bad / why were you searching for issues": keeping it logged in on a headless server is an exercise in pain. It will latch onto whatever keyring it feels like then fail to integrate. Okay, capitulate and do it through the GUI. That works until the token expires. So you're expected to log in every few days for email backups? I only have so many weekend hours I am willing to waste troubleshooting with an llm before I say "fuck it, I'm going somewhere else".
Absolutely you give up a lot of convenience of searching email content. After using it twice, I stopped using their Bridge and instead on my laptop set search to download and index locally. On mobile I live with just searching metadata, like subject lines.
The good news is that you use your own domain and there are a lot of good alternatives that support search of content for you where you can use your domain, like Apple Mail, FastMail, etc.
Yeah, even when you turn on "enable local cache of emails", the search is still terrible.
What's pretty surprising to me is that for everything they say about privacy etc., getting Mail Plus gives you nothing better than a free user in terms of VPN options. That was the case in their previous set of plans, too - I've been paying for Proton for some years now, at a cost of like $100-150/yr, and only ever had the same level of VPN offering from them as a free user, which is pretty lame.
I agree this is bad UX, but you can send from throwaway emails by setting new contacts for said email in simplelogin, which as someone else comented, you get for free with proton, linked to your account. It handles your catchall.
What are you going to do instead? I am very close to moving from a 20-year-old GMail address to a custom domain and was planning to use Proton as the email host.
I was in your shoes a few years ago. Just move already. Don't worry about it. Get your own domain and point the MX records at literally any email service out there. If you don't like it you can just switch later. Just start using your own domain as soon as possible.
It really is life changing. When you have your own domain switching email services is risk free since your addresses don't change. You can literally try out all the email services out there.
For the record I'm a happy Proton customer. They seem to be the only ones who still care about PGP. I even interacted with them here on HN a few times.
I've been reasonably happy with Runbox. Decent features, pricing, and servers in Norway. The webmail isn't great, but I don't really use it. If you must have encryption, I think the only option is Tuta.
Proton. There are some other good alternatives. But since the rest of the family was also using Fastmail, I needed a solution that was user-friendly enough. Besides that, Proton Drive also made it possible to finally move away from our Dropbox Family subscription.
I' migrated to purelymail.com around 2 years ago and. Reaaally cheap, easy to set up and without any bloat whatsoever. The webpage might look sketchy at first, but don't judge a book by its cover :)
I have a catch-all and can reply from any address I please. If I reply from an email sent to retailer@mydomain.com it even auto populates the "from" address for me with "retailer", or I can choose to reply from one of my named accounts. It's really slick.
I think the big downside for a lot of people is that it's hosted in the USA where the government is definitely headed in an autocratic direction that is abusive of most countries who don't comply to rantings from an orange madman. Definitely a huge downside.
They are actively hostile to their customers. Author's experience is just the Proton experience. It was so when they were tiny, it is the same now
Ultimately you have to trust the company that offers you E2E encryption. I don't know why anyone would trust this company given the way they interact with people.
Agreed on both of these. Proton search is so dogshit.
Re: the custom domain catch all reply, this is a bit annoying but there js a workaround. I made a SendGrid account which allows me like 100 sends per month, and I can reply in Thunderbird via SendGrid as any email account. Annoying to boot up Thunderbird, and I haven't found a way to do this on my iPhone, but I don't need ti reply from a throwaway frequently so it's sufficient for now.
1. I use a custom domain.
Turns out that there are two competing features, not-at-all documented. If you use a catch-all, like I do, AND use specific addresses for sending, the two are incompatible to some degree. Which is bonkers.
Example: with a catchall I can create any address I want (and I do). Some store wants an email for a big discount, cool, here's a throwaway. Buying something online, here's a throwaway.
Now sometimes, I need to reply using that throwaway. Turns out in Proton, this triggers a gotcha. As soon as I add the throwaway email to my list of email addresses for sending, I enter a world with a limit of 10 max.
That's fine, I can disable them right?
Nope, it turns out if I disable them in order to add aothers, Proton blocks those addresses *even though I have a catch-all*. WHAT?? Worse, if I try to delete the addresses, Proton will also delete the associated messages in my Inbox/folders. Excuse me?
2. What really pushed me away: Search.
Whatever proton is using under the hood is easily the worst search experience I've ever had from a mail product, and I use Thunderbird on my work machine.
Notable: Proton Bridge. I get why, but it's just terrible.
So many rough edges. Just not worth it.