And if it is actually open source, I'd love to see a comparison to CryptPad[2]
> which is why we’ve made all our apps and encryption libraries open source
[0] https://proton.me/drive/security
Having their code be open source is a very important step in maintaining that image, and that image is not something a competitor can just plagiarize.
I don't think this segment exists. Most companies' top priority is a no hassle and reliable stack (Google or Microsoft) and not one that is trying to catch up from a feature standpoint.
They should just focus on their main customer segment: individual users.
But I do agree that there are probably some better things to be done, I don't think they can be competitive long term, someone who needs just a little bit of collaboration or more advanced tools will run back to Google/Microsoft very fast.
In a way it reminds me of the Apple Office suite: kinda cool but also very limited in many ways and a nightmare to collaborate with a wide range of people. The things you might want to use it for are pretty niche...
Proton has been doing this for a while, and they still exist. This means they have validated that some users exist for their product.
What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product?
Their email, calendar and contacts solutions work well with iOS and android (using the DAVx app).
WebApps work flawlessly on Firefox. They have all sorts of customisation for spam filtering, catch all email addresses, etc.
They don't do all the things (vpn, passwords, drive, what have you). But what they do, they do very well.
If you just have a single account with them though, their app is quite excellent and has everything (mail, calendar, notes), no need to get multiple apps and stuff like DAVx unless you want to.
Fastmail lays off 60% of union bargaining committee in surprise restructure (9 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40778214
It's a good product, no longer so sure about the company.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fastmail/comments/1do3ede/comment/l...
Luckily I have a few alternatives in mind (like mailbox.org), albeit without neat apps.
I switched from GMail to Fastmail about a year ago, but ever since my Inbox is just filled with lots of spam. I tried writing email filters, and have about 50 now, but it is just not cutting it.
And also those promotional mails that I don't want to mark as "spam" but still shouldn't end up in my Inbox ... they drive me nuts.
Since I started using Fastmail, my main means of communication is shifting away from e-mail, which is sad.
For the promotional emails, there are some general rules you can set up to catch a lot of it, such as https://pietrorea.com/2021/10/22/filter-emails-by-the-list-u.... However, the best way to manage them is to actually just unsubscribe to them as you receive them. If unsubscribe is ignored, then blacklist the sender.
For general spam, there's a setting under "privacy and security" to make the filtering more or less aggressive. My setting is on "standard" and I haven't had any problems, but you could try adjusting that.
But I still think migrating away from GMail should be less painful.
Some stuff like promotions or social messages deserve their own folder. Google did this right.
They have millions of users and they use aggregated data from all of them to manage the automatic categories.
(By the way, in GMail you can move emails to "promotional" and "social" folders, and then GMail automatically does that for you for future emails; this is quite handy, but after migrating to Fastmail this is leaving me with quite a mess in my Inbox, since Fastmail doesn't have this option).
It's not quite as elegant, but you can create a rule from an existing email in the mail options. It will try to guess at the best set of filters to match that type of email (and obviously you can refine that manually if needed), so you can send those types of mails to a Marketing folder.
For better or worse if you want to reliably control who you receive email from you need to control who knows your email addresses and have the ability to disable/filter them.
If the email gets sold, just tell the fastmail UI that everything sent to that address is spam. It hasn't failed yet, and i've been using fastmail since it was $5/year. It's $15/yr now and they recently doubled my storage from 500mb to 1000mb!
Matches NOT fromin:contacts -> Move to Screener
I'll check the Screener less frequently, and whenever I feel like it I'll take a message from it and use Actions -> Add rule from message.. and send messages from that sender to a Newsletter folder.
I still get lots of crap in the Screener, but then again I don't really use e-mail to communicate with humans, so in a sense all e-mail is automated nonsense from systems where I have some kind of user account.
Then, I send everything with a score of 5 or more to spam.
I don't delete any spam.
And I mark it all as read.
That cuts down on spam drastically in my inbox while still retaining it all in the spam folder should any legit email end up there.
That's what I've been doing and my inbox is pretty much empty from useless stuff.
I am pleasantly surprised that Fastmail has no AI cruft in it especially that Fastmail is founded by one of the godfathers of modern AI, Jeremy Howard.
It borderlines on the insulting that Google refuses to support CardDAV and CalDAV OOTB.
That's not to say that "one thing well" products are sure to be viable, and the "bullet point maximizers" that dominate product design for the last 10-15 years may know best, but this is what it looks like once they run the show either way.
I can get around this with the ProtonMail Bridge and using Mutt, which works fine and makes me feel cool, but the web app is considerably more convenient.
When I would type and send an email too fast, it would only send the first half or so. I would have to type out the email, wait about 30 seconds, then send it. Presumably it had to fully save some draft before sending it, but it came off as extremely amateurish. Not to mention that it just utterly killed my battery life.
The iOS app is fine, and since I'm on iPhone again I'm still on Proton, but I haven't completely lost the bitter taste in my mouth over the Android version.
I don't have an Android phone anymore, and to be potentially fair to Proton, my last Android phone was an utter piece of shit (Pixel 7 Pro). I know people who had the Pixel 7 Pro and they didn't seem to hate it, so it's possible that it had some hardware issues, but it certainly didn't seem like hardware issues. I hated that thing so much that it completely turned me off of Android for the foreseeable future, since this was not a cheap phone, and it was Google's flagship phone: if they couldn't get a good experience on the flagship product, I didn't see why the experience would be much better on anything else.
Anyway, it's possible that the Proton app didn't suck as generally on Android as it did for me, it could have been the phone's fault, but it did leave a very bad taste in my mouth. As stated, the iOS version of the Proton app is totally fine, I haven't had any issues with it other than I don't really like the theme, but that's hardly worth complaining about.
I'm happy enough with my Mutt solution, and the iOS app is generally ok, and I do like the service overall, so while I complain it's not out of hatred. I just want the service to get better.
Maybe not for everyone, but a way more feasible option than most people seem to realize.
Proton is on a good path in many ways, but these rapid launches of new apps will kill the company if they don't do it well.
New product often means new segment of customers they can go after. Whereas refining existing ones will help reduce the churn.
Their sales/marketing pitch gets that much better.
I like Proton Pass and switched to it about a month ago from 1Password. It's not quite there yet; I'm thinking of switching back. There are still some sharp edges like lack of support for credit cards, addresses, etc.
(Disclaimer: Work in Proton Pass)
You're essentially just shifting the person you're trusting from your ISP to proton.
Downloading copyrighted media is pretty much the only usecase I can think of for such a service, and most people don't do that.
The only other usecase would be to conceal your traffic on a public wifi, but you'd be better served just going through your home connection at that point. Pretty much all decent routers provide you with dyndns+VPN services builtin
VPNs are critical for getting around shenanigans when working out in the world. Especially from sketchy last miles.
The last time I've successfully used a VPN for that was around 2015, but there might be services around (which I just dont use) that can still be unlocked by changing the IP, so that'd be a valid usecase for a few people
Most people don't know how to use that or that it even exists. Hell, I didn't know it existed until right now and I'm decently tech savvy.
> You're essentially just shifting the person you're trusting from your ISP to proton.
Yes absolutely, this is the reason I use a VPN. I have negative trust of every ISP in the USA. They will harvest and sell your browsing history to anyone who will buy it. I have no doubt about that. Some VPN providers probably won't.
I agree that drive is underpowered, they still don't have a syncing client on Linux, and their android/iOS client is quite limited and the photo integration is really half baked. However Pass is really great, it has better UI/UX compared to Bitwarden.
Growth. I'm also a (happy) customer, I've been using their products for years and my personal impression is that they're trying to catch up and build a full productivity suite as fast as possible.
I suspect they're attempting to build up an attractive package for business customers, competing with the likes of O365 and G-Suite. There's probably a lot more money in that than in personal email hosting.
That's true for all email though, right? What is Protons value add?
Marketing copy would not likely care to include "E2EE" .... "at the point that Protonmail recieves your message" on their frontpage.
Further, this is explain quite clearly on their FAQ: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained
</pearlclutching>
My factory does not add any sugar to the soda. Therefore it’s clearly fair to market it as sugar-free!
But I do distinctly recall that Proton has said the feature isn't possible to implement due to E2EE when this question was brought up. What has changed?
On the other hand, Google’s ability to monitor the contents of Google Docs and engage in censorship is extremely concerning and Proton seems well-placed to provide an alternative.
1. Everyone make invoices PDF
2. Send them out every month
3. If I need to log in, make them easy to find on the first page
4. Name them <company>-<invoice>-<date>-<number>-<amount>.pdf
Thanks!So hopefully once they have tool parity with Gsuite they would buckle down and work on features of each application?
I'm sure people are asking for this stuff, but I hope it is sustainable. I'm a paying customer and only use the email today. With the pace of these releases, I'm not comfortable investing in these new tools, because I'm not sure how long they'll be around. I'm starting to question the email choice, since I'm worried they are spreading themselves too thin. I'm not sure what their financial situation is like, but I hope this isn't all from a bunch of funding or debt they will need to answer for at some point.
Well, with AI that's probably possible now.
This isn't even a "im a paranoid l33t hacker", just that I don't want someone capturing 100% of every document and communication in my business.
like holy shit, we're gonna let MS hookup their AI to monitor everything all the time? cuz that's what my org is doing with Copilot...
I agree and wish for Calendar to use much better integration
In the end I switched away from proton due to their negligence on this core product suite.
If you want to diversify, Pass may be a good candidate for not using it.
You can certainly implement an attachment viewer without having a full fledged document editor.
In our small company we tried a self hosted Nextcloud instance and we ended up moving away from that after years of pain. Now we are in HedgeDoc, that is neither ideal because of its lack of central way to manage files collectively, etc. So, I guess good news.
In everyday life as an adult, they just don't have the mindshare that the big clouds have. I default to Google Workspace for everything (or whatever it's called now) because that's what everyone else in my social circle use and what most employers use, and being able to seamlessly share stuff with other Google users is much lower friction than trying to get them to sign up (much less pay for) yet another similar service. The network effect is more important than any minor difference in technical merit...
A client who was using Google scheduled a meeting that I was invited too and I put it on my calendar. Then somebody had to move the meeting but didn’t click the option to send an update when they did.
Everyone’s Google calendars updated. My Proton didn’t because they didn’t send the update. Everybody else was on time and I wasn’t, making a terrible impression.
In investigating, I found that my Google calendar that had been setup prior to the Proton move also had the update even though it wasn’t on their domain.
That is the network effect in action.
When Google CAPTCHAs me on every single query from a known reputable exit node, yeah, I want that security.
I don't interact with the website, so I can't comment on that.
Imo, it's not. It's more like 80% baked. More than good enough for daily use, but not on the level of polish or quality of any of the market leaders. Proton Drive is not as nice and convenient as Dropbox, Proton Mail is not as nice and convenient Gmail, Proton Pass is not as nice and convenient as 1Password, and so on.
But each of their offerings are good enough to get the job done, the price is fair, and you get the added privacy.
Maybe, subconsciously, you’ve learnt not to put all your eggs in one corporate basket.
Pity, because on desktop - and, when it works, on mobile, it works great. I really like the company.
Switching email addresses has so much friction - maybe I should keep a notebook of everyone who has my address so I can let them know of my new address.
that's interesting. iirc the iPhone app got most of their attention early on, so I figured it would have been solid experience.
the early android app was so awful that they rewrote it. the rewrite is much better but it still has its issues.
one of the most painful issues I encountered: I'd reply to an email, hit send. then when my reply showed up in the thread, it would be incomplete. at first I thought it was truncating but it turned out to be the last draft that it auto saved before I hit send. I very nearly cancelled my subscription over that one.
the web and desktop (which is an electron/tauri/whatever app) does work great.
a bit off topic for this thread but sieve filtering is amazing. it makes email automation a breeze.
I have it set up so that when an email comes in from a contact, it applies the label that contact has to the email. then any email with certain labels gets (or doesn't) an expiration date. eg: webstore notifications, eg for shipments, are deleted in 30d while notifications about upcoming sales or product announcements are deleted in 3d.
likewise GitHub notifications for my repos get 7d expirations and go to my inbox while all others get 3d expirations and never hit the inbox.
Seriously, I've had this same thought after switching to HEY getting pretty frustrated with it. Considered other options, but worried that I'd just repeat the process. However, if I use a custom domain next time around, this whole problem goes away. Yay
I don't want ever to go through this nightmare.
Your solution is the one to go for though.
Say I have hello@example.com and hello@example.net, can I use one unified inbox, and can I use both addresses to send and receive calendar invites?
Moreover, how easy is it to combine my calendars with my work calendar?
I heard it's also not possible to sync contacts with iOS, is that true?
You can also turn on catch all addresses where you'll get all mail sent to anything @yourdomain.com. Very handy to create unique emails for sites I don't want to have my emails I actually use with contacts.
I can't really comment on multiple calendars. I haven't experimented much with that and get all my invites sent to one address.
I think their different plans allow different numbers.
The one what doesn't have any limits other than bandwidth is migadu. But they don't support second fact properly, last I looked.
I migrated from paid proton to fastmail years ago and still happy.
I’ve also used Google Workspace, O365 or whatever MS calls it this week, and Proton as well as self hosting mail in the past.
Usually after using a tool for an extended period of time, there's gonna be some annoyance that you just have to learn to deal with. After five or so years of me using Fastmail, I can't think of a single thing that actually bothers me.
Announcement post: https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive
I've long felt that gaming's "home OS" should be Linux (or at least an open-source OS... in my case, big fan of NixOS, even with its new-user warts). Especially when you look at the long term (running older games to show your kids, etc). I'm glad Gabe felt this way too (for a long time now, it seems). Microsoft is too capricious an overlord for what is essentially almost all of gaming, I think.
Now if only there was something like proton for macOS that enabled windows API gaming on M1/2/3/4 Macs... (I know Apple has some sort of half-baked-seeming "game porting toolkit" that I believe might make use of it, but just something native to Steam on Mac would be sweeeeet)
But I refuse to use their Pass app, and I similarly will refuse to use this new docs app. I use Standard Notes for all my notes (funny enough they joined with Proton this year lol) and Bitwarden for passwords. And then I just let Apple sync all my contacts, and for calendar it's kind of required that I use the ios calendars for family member sharing reasons.
Use a custom domain with ProtonMail or any other provider.
Frequently download email, calendar, etc. from Proton, Google, etc.
There are a lot of good comments in this whole conversation about nice to have Proton improvements, but I suggest we not lose sight of the benefits of not having personal and company data in the hands of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.
Companies and individuals who aren’t worried about the costs and risks of the lack of privacy should not use Proton.
If you want to be more cautious, sure. But the likelyhood that they're going to collapse so hard and quickly that you lose anything significant is pretty slim.
What is missing a great Excel or Sheets alternative. I wanted to break my business out of the Google Workspace ecosystem earlier this year, but the lack of a good spreadsheets alternative was one of the main things holding me back.
cryptpad.fr
If they developed an entire (web) wordprocessor from scratch that seems like an enormous effort and cost quite outside of the core offerings.
If they have (or will) open source it that would be grand.
Please. Fix. The. Android app! It's unusable. I feel like I beg for them to do this in every yearly survey, and then they change the design a little bit, it loses a few features and gets some new ones, while missing basic stuff like unmarking an email as spam. This wouldn't be a problem if it was possible to use K9 or AquaMail with Proton, but that's obviously not an option.
There is a ridiculous workaround involving a home server with Bridge and Wireguard on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/15nj8f7/comment...
It's not a hole, it's only natural. It's easier to add new products than it is to improve existing ones (tech debt), and new products can bring in new customers, make existing customers happier, etc. which is easier to see and justify.
That being said, the Android app has some weird gaps (like can't snooze an email) that probably won't take long to fix.
Doesn't seem to be much of the latter in this thread (but then again, this is HN...)
Insert famous "Dropbox is just FTP, who would pay for it" comment here :)
That's what I told myself about the spam thing I mentioned when they released the redesign, and it's still not possible, at least on the version I'm using at the moment.
I'm sure there's a lot of background here and corporate dynamics we're not aware of, it just doesn't feel great as a paying customer. The apps have never really been fully adequate.
https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-discloses-user-data-le...
From article:
> The core of the controversy stems from Proton Mail providing the Spanish police with the recovery email address associated with the Proton Mail account.
> Upon receiving the recovery email from Proton Mail, Spanish authorities further requested Apple to provide additional details linked to that email, leading to the identification of the individual.
https://proton.me/about/impact
And you don't even need to be a dissident in "one of those countries". As long as Europol's arm (or some other organization that Swiss is part of) can reach you, you are not covered, as in https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-logs-users/
I don't have an opinion on whether this is ok or not (protecting dissidents and protecting "real" criminals), I am just sick of false advertising.
It is because of these reasons I chose Fastmail over Proton when I was looking for an alternative. The E2EE itself is almost bogus, and I would rather look for othet features that I need.
> The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster. I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular.
Proton is guilty because they attempt to protect free speech and aren't able to do so completely. Fastmail is not guilty because they don't do anything more to protect free speech than any other provider.
Do you see the problem?
[0] https://gwern.net/doc/philosophy/ethics/2015-06-24-jai-theco...
And in what way would FastMail not be impacted by analogous events? https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers-face...
I do agree that the value of email encryption for 99% of users is overstated, given the fundamental nature of email communications to begin with.
Once account creation is successful, they will receive another email with the link that allows them to access the file.
Have they actually attempted to solve any problems associated with this space or are they just claiming it and getting the marketing points?
</shameless>
VPN might be nice so my ISP doesn't yell at me for torrenting if I screw it up, and my copy of VueMinder is getting pretty ancient at this point. I could stand to get a newer calendar app.
But Google Docs/Workspace already supports what they call "client-side encryption" [2] if you want to pay for it and enable it. Docs never sees your actual data.
How is this any different?
Trying to go up against MS Office and Google Docs/Workspace sounds like an unbelievably difficult, huge, and therefore risky proposition -- akin to writing your own browser from scratch and trying to compete with Chrome, Edge, and Safari. Not really sure this is a wise business move for Proton.
My guess is that Proton sees that it appeals to individuals wanting an alternative to Google and Microsoft's online services. Email alone is not enough to cut the umbilical, so Proton is adding more and more coverage.
Also because individuals tend to mostly use only Google Docs, much less Sheets and almost no Slides -- so the Docs clone by itself would be sufficient.
I'll be very glad to try this out.